Saturday, July 7, 2007
The Eye of the Tiger
It's mildly greeeaaatt.
The Tiger Lebanese Bakery in Toledo, Ohio (not Spain...) is tasty, but.
I'm a little torn on this for a few reasons. The food was good, some of it was great, but the presentation and the microwaved quality was less than superb.
Let me start again.
The Tiger Lebanese Bakery is a store with a deli counter filled with delicious looking Middle-Eastern food and a front dining area. The shelves are stocked with some pretty hard to find (and I'm not sure what to do with) goods like dried whole lemons. A great resource for any Middle Eastern ingredients, though admittedly I didn't spend a whole lot of time checking out the shelves. It's by no means a grocery store, but does have some variety.
Now, the food. A large deli case offers a wide array of food. With either of the combos - 1. Pick 4 side items for $5.99; 2. Any sandwich plus two sides for $5.99 it ends up being a lot of food.
The selections range from lentil rice, spinach rice, rice pilaf to fatoush and hommos to kabobs and any kind of hand held pie you can imagine.
I've been a few times now and the things that are good seem consistently good, but that also goes for the things that are bad.
I ordered a spicy chicken tawook sandwich (hunks of chicken cooked on a skewer, wrapped in a pita) with a side order of rice pilaf with peas and almonds and a kibbe (ground lamb and pine nuts coated in ground bulgur and then fried).
The chicken was perfect as far as tenderness and spice level went. However, since anything you order that you want hot has to be microwaved, that kind of ruins it. The chicken hunks were still cold in the middle while the rest of the chicken was hot. The rice was a little dry, the kibbe was a little mushy, instead of the crunchiness others have when freshly prepared.
Chefy ordered the four side items special. There was some miscommunication though, which brought me secret delight since it's usually me doing the babbling. The seemingly 13-year old boy who was doing the serving did not seem to really be paying attention and was grabbing errantly at pies Mr. Chefman did not request.
In the end, he received a vegetable pie, a kibbe also, cooked greenbeans with tomatoes and baba ganoush. The greenbeans were fantastic - well flavored, but not overpowering. The kibbe again was a little soggy, not a good quality in a kibbe. The pie was a little flimsy on the outside but tasty. He also ended up with some kind of egg and tomato filled pie, that neither one of us was impressed with.
Overall I guess I would definitely recommend going to the Tiger Bakery, but it might be better to bring home and take care of a little better yourself (such as sauteing the kibbe to make it crunchy, or heating the pies in the oven to avoid sog.)
Summary:
Flavor: Greeatttt, sort of.
Prices: Arms and legs are still intact. $5.99 will get you a meal and a snack.
Ambiance/service: Nicely decorated and full of interesting things/the young boy was less than enthusiastic (as one might expect) and got some of the order wrong.
Location: Two places. This one was at 6710 W. Central Avenue, Toledo OH.
Website: http://www.tigerbakery.com/
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