First visit to Tarboush. This is a lovely quaint restaurant that packs a punch with flavour. For starters we had Beiruti hummus and harrissa prawns, both of which were awesome. Portions are huge! For mains we had the mixed grill and spicy tawouk. Again, the flavours were just on point and the meat quality and cookery is excellent. Delicious breads, sauces and salad for accompaniments too.

Two things I think could be improved, though:

1. Desserts - the dessert menu didn’t feel as authentic/homemade/traditional as the starters and main menus. There are two pages of what feels like a random assortment of desserts - Portuguese tarts, orange chocolate cake, lemon cake, crème Catalana, Victoria sponge to name a few. It gave the impression of a well stocked fridge/freezer of pre-prepared desserts that have nothing to do with the restaurant. There is a special dessert of the day, but we were told there wasn’t one when we visited (a busy Saturday evening). We ended up ordering the baklava with ice cream, which was underwhelming, especially the ice cream, which was very icy.

2. Service - it started off really well with warm welcoming smiles and greetings. But as the night went on the service did get slower, and in the end we needed to grab someone’s attention to ask for our main dishes to be cleared off the table and for the desserts menu. We then had to go up to the bar and ask for the bill at the very end.

Despite all of this, the starters and mains are just too good and outweigh the negatives we experienced. So, we would definitely return but would just skip the desserts the next time we visit…

But if the Tarboush team can reinvent the desserts menu, they would be onto a winner! It would be amazing to showcase more Lebanese/Middle Eastern desserts in my opinion.