Habibi (1012 SW Morrison St.)

Chelsea and I tried a new restaurant the other night. Kind of. Habibi (from what I can tell from my amateur research online) is owned by the same people that own Nicholas' Restaurant and Arabian Breeze, both of which have really yummy food. Except that the first and last time I ate at Arabian Breeze I got violently ill for two days. I'm not sure if it was the food (which was great) or the flu, but from my mental association with the place, I'm still not able to go back.

Habibi seemed like baby steps back to Arabian Breeze, so we tried it. We sat down and saw this on our table. It was there to hold bread (on her head). I thought it was kind of cool and amusing. Chelsea thought it was freaky.

Then I ordered a Habibi Lemonade (lemonade with mint). Which tasted lovely, but see that brown thing in my glass? That's the fresh mint leaf. It actually tasted fine. Until Chelsea said. "That leaf is rotting in your glass." Um, okay. I took it out.

For dinner, I had a Fatayr, which is dough filled with seasoned beef, tomato, onions and a side of hummus and served with fresh pita bread. Except the dough wasn't really filled with all that stuff. It was spread out on top of it, like pizza. It WAS excellent though. Very tender beef and all those vegetables sweating onto crunchy pita bread crust. Melt in my mouth yum.

Chelsea had the Falafel Mezza Plate. They served it on a fancy gold leaf plate. Pretty!

Overall, Habibi was pretty good. I think I have to go back and have a really GREAT experience to really get over my Arabian Breeze association and the dead mint leaf in my glass. It's a completely reasonable expectation I think. Fresh herbs aren't that hard to come by this time of year.