Category

Lebanese

Category

Paramount Fine Foods on Robson street is a chain restaurant that recently opened in Vancouver and specializes in Lebanese cuisine. I passed by several times and there always seems to be long line ups during peak hours. So, I came with a few foodie friends to check this place out after work.

Interior

The interior isn’t too large but there are tables great for groups of 2’s or 4’s. There are some large tables but you probably gotta wait.

Mezza Plate

This trio has their hummus, moutabbal, and tabbouleh. Getting this was a good way to try all three appetizers. The hummus has chickpea paste, tahini paste drizzles with olive oil. The moutabbal has grilled eggplant, blended with tahini sauce with some olive oil. Tabbouleh is made of finely chopped tomatoes, parsley, onion, and other stuff. A good way to start the meal and its good to have it with the complimentary bread.

Musakaa

This has eggplant, green and red peppers, onions, chickpeas mixed with homemade tomato sauce. It was ok, but nothing about it really stood out to me.

Labneh with Zaatar Manakeesh

This was recommended to us by our server and it has creamy yogurt and zaatar, which is a thyme and sesame mix. It was interesting, but none of us liked zaatar and yogurt for the topping.

Mini Mixed Grilled Plate

It is served with rice, hummus, spicy bread, garlic sauce, grilled vegetables and the chicken shish tawouk skewer, beef striploin skewer, and kafta skewers. It’s a good item to get if you want to try all the meats to taste which one is the best. We personally found the chicken was the best of the bunch.

Tabliyah Saj Chicken Shawarma

It is served on a wooden board with fries, pickles, turnips and garlic sauce. There are shredded pieces of chicken wrapped in their freshly baked thin Saj bread. It’s so good dipped in the garlic sauce. I would get this again.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it was great to try Paramount Fine Food to see what all the hype is about, but some dishes that we got were hit and misses. They have unique items here that other Lebanese restaurants in Vancouver don’t have.

We Rate Paramount Fine Foods

Address:
560 Robson St, Vancouver

Website:
http://www.paramountfinefoodsbc.com/

Paramount Fine Foods Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

Nuba Yaletown

Nuba Yaletown is located on Seymour and Davie Street. If you are a fan of the Nuba chain of restaurants, this location is equally as good. Since Flo moved in across the street,  we wanted to search for some dinner close by. When turning on the Urbanspoon App, we discovered this was literally half a block away.

They sell amazing Lebanese cuisine and fresh juices.

Nuba Yaletown

The interior is very different from the other Nuba’s. It’s smaller and structured more for take out orders. There are a few tables, but can get quite busy during peak hours.

Nuba Yaletown

Najib’s Special ($11.25)  is crispy cauliflower tossed with lemon and sea salt, served with tahini. It also has hummus, salad, pickled cabbage, olives, pita and your choice of organic brown rice or roasted potatoes. I usually choose the organic brown rice. This item was very delicious as usual and is one of the most popular items. It’s vegetarian and gluten free.

Nuba Yaletown

Beef Brochette ($13) has a local grass-fed beef skewer and served with tahini sauce. It is also has hummus, salad, pickled cabbage, olives, pita and your choice of organic brown rice or roasted potatoes. Flo chose the brown rice for her dish. The beef was nice and tender and was super delicious.

Overall, food at Nuba is always great. The ingredients are fresh and the portions are good. I particularly like this location because they serve the lunch time items for dinner. I much prefer the lunch time items over dinner as the prices are better and its more of individual portions.

We Rate Nuba Yaletown:

 Address:
1206 Seymour St
Vancouver, BC

Website:
http://www.nuba.ca/

Nuba on Urbanspoon

 

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Nuba on Main

Whats awesome about my new job is that I’m so close to some pretty yummy food. When I discovered Nuba is close by on 3rd and Main…I just had to have a taste of their food. I come here at least once a month since the closest places – Starbucks, McDonalds and Tim Hortons are not the best options for lunch.

Nuba offers up authentic Lebanese cuisine that is fresh and healthy. Trust me, its good stuff! I usually go for lunch for their plates.

Nuba on Main

Since it was anti-bullying day, they had a special beet juice on special. I’ve never had beets before and wow, did it ever taste like dirt. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the taste profile of beets is very earthly like dirt. If you had beets, you will know what I’m talking about. It’s also quite healthy for you too.

Nuba on Main

Lamb Hushwie ($9) has sauteed lamb, onions, peppers, pine nuts and spices on top of  hummus. There is avocado, pickled cabbage and a spicy sauce.

Nuba on Main

Sometimes they have specials and this one was a lamb of some sort. I should have written it down, but alas my memory does fail me.

Nuba on Main

Najib’s Special ($11.25) has crispy cauliflower tossed with lemon and sea salt, served with tahini. It also has hummus, olives, pickled cabbage, and salad. The crispy cauliflower is deep-fried and tastes sinfully delicious. It’s a very popular dish during the lunch hour. All the ingredients are fresh and it’s so addictive.

This was my first time going to this location and I have to say, the food was pretty consistent. It can get pretty busy during a weekday lunch.

We Rate Nuba on Main

Address:
146 3rd Ave E
Vancouver, BC

Website:
nuba.ca

Nuba on Urbanspoon

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Nuba serves up authentic Lebanese cuisine which cater to both vegetarians and meat eaters. It’s quite popular and even AdventureTimeGirl heard about it from half way across the world. When she came to town, I knew it was a place that M and I had to take her. I haven’t been disappointed by this location yet. With their 4 locations, some items are a bit different, but I like this one the most.

Since the place is usually packed for lunch and dinner, it always good to make reservations for larger groups. We arrived 10 minutes earlier, but they wouldn’t seat us even though our table was clean and unoccupied. We thought this was pretty weird.

La Feast ($30) is a shared platter and comes with hummus, taboulleh, baba ghanooj, pickles, fattoush salad, najibs special (Baked Cauliflower), vegan stew, falafel, mjadra, macedonian feta, avocado and marinated olives.

The hummus, taboulleh, baba ghanooj, pickles and the pita bread (aka Le Petit Feast ($12)) comes first. Each person had their own personal favorite item of the first dish, but the hummus was really good!

Next, the rest of the items of La Feast arrived. There are more pickles, fattoush salad, najibs special (Baked Cauliflower), vegan stew, falafel, mjadra, macedonian feta, avocado and marinated olives. It’s really great for sharing if you want to try an array of items. Everything in La Feast is vegetarian! The taste of everything was really good and the nijibs special was the most popular item…so we ordered an extra order of it. Yum!

La Grande Feast ($50) is another shared platter that’s NOT vegetarian. It comes with hummus, taboulleh, baba ghanooj, pickles, fattoush salad, najibs special, roasted potatoes, lamb skewers, prawns with eggplant relish and chicken skewers.

The hummus, taboulleh, baba ghanooj, pickles and the pita bread came first too and its the exact same as the La Feast.

Then the rest of the items arrived. The fattoush salad, najibs special, roasted potatoes, lamb skewers, prawns with eggplant relish and chicken skewers! The meat eaters gobbled up all the skewers right away. There wasn’t a lot of meat, but the quality of the skewers were really amazing. The lamb skewers were so tender and medium rare. The prawns were ok, but not too amazing. The chicken skewers were good size, but a tad dry. It comes with a few dips too, so it will counter act the dry texture.

Overall, the food was good. 2 platters + an extra order of najibs special were good for 5 people.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Platters are good for sharing
  • Make reservations
  • Hummas + tabouleh is so good!
  • Vegetarian friendly

We Rate Nuba:

Address:

207 W Hastings St
Vancouver, BC

Website:
nuba.ca

Nuba (Hastings) on Urbanspoon


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Nuba Cafe opened up at the renovated Waldorf Hotel on Hastings. They serve up delicious Lebanese food.

When we arrived, the place was packed. The hostess greeted us and we had to wait a 5 minutes for a table, so they told us to wait at the bar. They had lots of reservations, but the only table available was a table at the back of the restaurant beside the back exit to the hotel. It seemed like the most out of place table in the entire restaurant. We still didn’t mind since we were looking forward to the meal.

Looking around, it is a beautiful venue and it was quite lively at night.

At a later point in the night, all the lights get dimmer to set the mood.

Mexican Cola ($4) is similar to the usual coca-cola, but made with cane sugar. The old school bottle made it fun to drink!

Young Coconut ($6.50) is a real coconut that is brought to your table. The juice is very sweet and crisp! You even get a small spoon to scoop out the coconut meat to eat.

Fruit et Feta with chicken($9.50 +$4) has Macedonian feta, dried nuts and apricots with organic greens and a red wine pomegranate vinaigrette. I added on chicken for an additional $4. I have to say, I was quite disappointed by the size of the skewer…and for $4…quite a rip off! The salad did get me quite full since it was filled with lots of dried fruits and nuts!

Here is where the dining experience started to take a turn for the worse.

As I got my entree, M’s Lamb stew never arrived. We thought that the lamb stew would take a bit longer since salads are so much faster to prepare. I thought I would wait till he got his entree, but since he’s a gentleman, he told me to go ahead and start. I was hungry, so I didn’t mind. Half way though my salad, I dropped my fork, so I thought I would wave down a waitress to get me a new one. I tried flagging them a few times but no one seemed to notice us. I shrugged it off and just took M’s fork since his food didn’t arrive yet.

I ate the salad pretty slowly for 40 minutes but still no sign of the entree. We thought this was particularly strange, so we tried yet again to flag down the waitress. A few of them passed us by and we saw our waitress tend to a few tables 2/3 times…and she didn’t even once stop by our table to ask how we were doing.

Now it was an hour later, I was close to finishing my dish and the waitress finally see our hands up. We ask what the status of M’s entree was and she said she did not hear us ordering the lamb strew. She felt bad and asked us if we still wanted it, M politely declined since there was no point since I was almost done my dish. She told us we should of totally flagged her down. (We tried!!!! Oh god! We really tried hard!). She even offered the dish free of charge, but we declined again since we had to go. She said the music in the room was quite loud and she also didn’t hear an order at another table.

I don’t completely blame her since it was a busy night, but it would be good to repeat customers orders just in case you didn’t hear anything, also check up on them. Plus, isn’t it strange that 2 people walk into a restaurant and order 2 drinks and a salad? We’re asian, but we aren’t that cheap.

To compensate us, they didn’t charge us for the coconut drink. It was nice of them, but still left us feeling bitter. In the end, I spent $24 eating a salad, drinking drinks, flaggin down waitresses, and watching M get hungry & frustrated. This might have just been my asian side, but I thought they should have compensated us for the whole meal.

Thanks Nuba, you ruined a perfectly good date for us. You may have good food, but you ruined our night.

Do keep in mind that this is probably those rare occurrences that happen, so I’m sure it doesn’t happen every night.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Special Menu’s every month
  • Make reservations in advanced and ask to be seated by the booths near the window
  • More expensive than the other Nuba locations

We Rate Nuba Waldorf: 

Address:

1489 E Hastings St
Vancouver, BC V5L

Website:
www.waldorfhotel.com/nuba/
Nuba (Waldorf Hotel) on Urbanspoon

Nuba is a fantastic Lebanese restaurant and even does catering for events Downtown! The first time I had a taste of Nuba was at Marketer’s Night – SFU’s Marketing Networking Event where they served appetizers.

After this day, I vowed to visit here one day. 9 months later I did!

CanuckGirl, TaiwaneseGirl, BigBaby and I were just in the Downtown area and used the Yelp App on the Iphone and this was on the list of most popular restaurants!

The restaurant was located almost near the sketchy part of Hastings so we were walking past the Scientology building and got really weirded out … then saw a few Hemp shops but we got there alright.

When we got there, we really didn’t know what to choose since there were so many options to choose from. We were in a sharing mood so we had the La Feast and Le Grande Feast. The waitress said it would fill us all up and we would be able to taste the varieties of the menu.

I started of with the Organic Sangria, which was really nice since it was made out of Cono Sur Organic Carbernet-Carmenere Wine, OJ, Lemon Juice, pomegranate and a hint of cinnamon. I really wish I could have had more.

Everyone else had the water but this was no tap water, or lemon water, this was CUCUMBER WATER. It was really refreshing and unique. I know this other restaurant – Le Cobre that does this too.

When the Le Grand Feast arrived and it contained a plate of – Hummus, baba ghanooj, taboulleh with pita bread. I personally liked the Hummas a bit more because I am in love with garlic! Thats why the vampires don’t ever come close!

I didn’t love the Baba Ghanooj because of the citrus flavour but it was still a good dip which others at the table liked more.

The next dish that arrived with the Feast was the grilled lamb chops and chicken. The lamb chops were medium rare as requested which was fantastically done. It had an incredible flavour and you could taste that there was a mint aftertaste to it.

The last one with this combo was the roasted potatoes, salad and Najib’s Special.

The Najib’s Special is crispy cauliflower tossed with lemon and sea salt served with tahini. It was surprisingly really good but looks really awkward.

The roasted potato was nothing special, it was what normal roasted potatoes would taste like.

La Feast came and boy, this was a FEAST! There was so much food that it did not fit on our table. We had an additional plate of hummas, taboulleh and baba ghanooj! The waitress even gave us extra pita bread for our left over dips.

For the main feast, there was more cauliflower, eggplant stew, falafels, olives, feta and so many other things that I have no idea what they were called.

We were so stuffed after the platters that we could not continue eating.

If you are looking for authentic Lebanese, go to Nuba! There are 3 locations, so there is no excuse to not eat here.  The staff is very helpful when choosing your dishes because you probably won’t know what to choose!

We rate Nuba:

Check out Nuba’s Website: http://nuba.ca/

Nuba (Hastings) on Urbanspoon