Balade has a lot of fans and many positive reviews, but our experience with the food and service was not quite up to par. Nothing about this place stood out in terms of the quality and flavor of its food and the service was equally mediocre. I can’t say whether it’s just an exception, but I can say based on our experience, I wouldn’t recommend it as a place to try.
It’s a Lebanese restaurant in a comfortable setting. It has able seating and there’s rarely too much of a crowd, particularly during lunch. It serves traditional Lebanese food with a few other Middle Eastern dishes on the menu as well.
Kebbe Kras – Lebanon’s National Dish. Essentially fried meatballs made of bulgur (cracked wheat), diced onions, pine nuts, and finely ground beef. These came four to an order and were served with Laban (yogurt with cucumber and mint) to dip them in. The kebbe were very dry, crunchy, and not too flavorful. It was reminiscent of the problem that falafel often suffers from, which is that it easily looses its softness and moisture and ends up being a bland, hard, oily, dry ball. It’s the type of dish that takes a lot of expertise and subtly of hand. Mediocre versions abound, and this was one of them. The great versions are few and far between.
Lebanese Salata – a salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and green peppers chopped excessively finely, so much so that it essentially took the form of a pico de gallo. Olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper dressed. It could’ve benefited from a rougher chop to give it more texture and certainly more flavor. Mediocre and a very small portion.
We also ordered two of the manakeesh, which is “Lebanese pizza,” similar to the Turkish lahmacun. One was again mediocre and the other one was actually something finally worth eating!
1. Jebne – a combination of white cheese served with sliced tomatoes. This tasted like an ordinary kid-sized personal cheese pizza without tomato sauce that you could find at a chain restaurant. It’s slabs of mediocre quality cheese coating pizza dough with 4 small slices of tomato on top. There is nothing special about this pizza at all.
2. Banadoura Harra – now this is why the review gets 2.5 stars in the first place and not lower. This had really good flavor. It’s pizza dough coated in diced tomatoes, onions and spicy pepper flakes, pretty much like a spicy bruschetta pizza. If I ever came back to this restaurant, I would get this again in a heartbeat, but I don’t imagine going back to this restaurant.
Also the service is so very slow and we specifically requested that all of our food be brought at the same time because we weren’t intending to order tapas style. They really didn’t care to accommodate this request at all and brought everything out one by one about 8 minutes apart so we were all eating at individual times. If the place had been particularly crowded at that time, perhaps it could’ve been justified. It was pretty empty, though. Maybe 3-4 tables maximum.
There’s so much good Middle Eastern food in the city. This is not a place that’s worth your time or money.
