Al Zaytouna

Review

Fattoush with difficulties

Photo: Heribert Corn It's always a little sad when a restaurant says goodbye after almost 30 years. Especially when it's the best Greek in town, who was actually a Cretan. But Taverna Lefteris' time had simply come, and when the best Greek/Cretan restaurant in the city is followed by a Lebanese restaurant, it's somehow a little more bearable - because Lebanese cuisine is great and far too rare in Vienna anyway. Three months were spent renovating, you learn, and the taverna, which was always so pleasantly simple, was transformed into a, well, palazzo-like hall with three crystal chandeliers, a natural stone wall and decorative pillars glued on. The menu at Al Zaytouna sounds promising, with hot and cold starters in almost 40 different variations, and the explanations are helpful. At least for the guest, because the friendly head waiter couldn't do much with all these names, no matter how hard we tried to pronounce them correctly. Okay, we just helped together, pointed our fingers at the name of the dish, he noted down the obviously unfamiliar names with difficulty. And then came back again because he remembered that we had ordered seven starters, not six as it said on his receipt. We then went through it again, realized that hardly anything was correct and wrote down by hand what we would like to eat. Well, it all took a while, not least because hot and cold dishes had to be served at the same time and because the chef and the head waiter had to discuss without any haste how they could arrange the seven small plates on a serving trolley.
Once that had landed with us, we had tabbouleh, the wonderful parsley-bulgur-tomato-onion salad, fresh and good (€ 5.90); moutabal batinjan, the pureed, grilled melanzani with tahini (sesame paste) was a little bland, the smoky note very subtle (€ 5.90); Kibbeh Nayeh, declared as lamb tartare with bulgur, turned out to be more of a kind of meat spread, but very okay anyway, you just had to season it (€ 11.80); Kibbeh Meklieh, deep-fried bulgur dumplings with a lamb and nut filling, were great (€ 5.90), as were the tiny, gingerbread-spiced Makanek lamb sausages with peperonata (€ 7.80), Jawanieh Meklieh, fried chicken wings with garlic-lemon-coriander pesto also (€ 5.90), and Foul Medammas, a bean stew with chickpeas, garlic and lemon, actually the best of all (€ 5.90).
A little more seasoning, a little better service and a little less smartphone surfing while the guests wait for their drink wouldn't be a bad thing, then the Olive Tree would be great. Summary: A new Lebanese restaurant that still seems a little unsure/unroutined, but has already got the basics down pretty well: Al Zaytouna, 3rd, Hörnesg. 17 Tel. 01/710 34 47 Tue-Fri 11-23, Sat 11-24, Sun 11-21

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