I was helping set up a computer at Arbor Farms where Debbie works. Needing fuel to face the horror of dealing with a balky installation of HP printer bloatware, Debbie and I went to Ali Baba’s Grille for lunch. It’s located just down the road from Arbor Farms, or in the nearly totally inaccessible Valley Centre strip mall just north of Coldwater and Dupont for those who are not Arbor Farms-centric.
We’d never been there before nor even seen a review of it. It was a great find! Delicious food, pleasant decor, and a staff consisting of the chef and one server who kept it all together and were friendly even when the lunch service got busy.
Their menu can be found here.
I had chicken shawarma and fries, and Debbie had chicken kabob and hummus. We had kebbie for an appetizer. Now, I know next to nothing about this kind of cooking, so I can’t attest to its authenticity. But I can say it was delicious. I’m no fan of hummus, the grocery store stuff is gritty and tastes like sawdust to me. The hummus I stole from Debbie’s plate nothing like that, it was creamy and flavorful.
I wasn’t willing to trade my fries for them though. While getting fries at a Mediterranean may seem like an ugly American thing to do, these were perfectly fried, crispy on the outside and tender in the middle. Best of all, they were dusted with some spices, something like paprika, cumin, garlic, that melded with cuisine and made me feel less like an ugly American.
The chicken shawarma and the chicken kabob were both fresh-tasting and wrapped in wonderfully tasty pita bread.
Ali Baba’s isn’t fancy, but it sure is tasty. Debbie grabbed a takeout menu on the way out, it’ll make a great supper that she can pick up for us after a busy day at Arbor Farms.
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