Kubeh — Restaurant in New York

The definition of the word "myriad" is pretty simple: a countless or extremely great number. If you push the search a bit more, myriad is technically the number ten thousand.

That was the promise of Kubeh for the New Year Eve menu: "One Night a year we transform our kitchen stove into a barbeque and grill up Middle Eastern skewers of meats and vegetables and set the table with a myriad of salads & spreads". What they call "a myriad" was actually 6: taboule, pickles, hummus, tehina, tomato salad, baba ghanoush roasted pepper spread. If they count two kinds of bread, the myriad goes up to 8. Not even something special, original, surprising, new, just the basic mezzes you can find on any table the 364 other days of the year. Quite far from the "1001 nights". Despite the disappointment, a hope for the following dishes remained strong. The fall was even more brutal: 5 skewers of grilled meats: steak, chicken, liver, lamb veggies with no sauce, not even some parsley and a bowl of rice, that's it. As the peace in middle east, the hope became very thin for the dessert and we knew as soon as they served it that our so promising dinner was a failure: big fat off season white and tasteless strawberries (driscolls looks like) with chocolate and cream and a 1 inch piece of balklava. No mint tea or white coffee! When the check arrived, we understood where the myriad was:

6 NYE pre fix early seating: $390 4 Arak: $36 4 Ozy: $56 Service: $99 Taxes: $43 Total: $637!

So, was Kubeh a joke or a scam that night? Definitely both. You know this kind of restaurant that takes advantage of a special evening to charge the maximum and give the minimum. The opposite of what should be a celebration night, what should be to share a meal and have dreams for the new year, what should to taking care of each other. And two lessons learned: first stay home for NYE, and second, choose a good food truck or a restaurant in Queens: it will be probably better, much cheaper and looks like a real feast, not a fake...

My friend and I walked in on a Friday night and were able to get a table right away. The restaurant had a lot of indoor and outdoor seating, and the vibes were good. We’re both veg and got a lot of dishes to share. To start we got muhammara, torshi and paprika fries. The fried were satisfying and the torshi was refreshing — I’m a big fan of pickled vegetables and the Torshi hit the spot. The Muhammara was standout though! I would say it’s a must try. We liked it so much, we almost ordered a second serving, though we opted instead to try the hummus. The hummus was pretty average. Then we got our entrees. The staff was super helpful about bringing sharing bowls so we could split the soup. We got the Iraqi vegetable kubeh soup in the selek broth. I would highly recommend! My friend and I both really enjoyed it. The kubeh are on the doughier side, which is typical for this style of dumpling, but might not be to everyone’s taste. The broth was delightful with a nice earthiness from the beets and a good assortment of veggies. Safta’s rice was good, but not standout. If you like dill, you’d probably enjoy it and I think it worked as an entree to share, but I think if you were eating it by yourself it’d be too much of the...

Summary: Great spot with outdoor and indoor dining. Reservations on Resy.com. Book early for popular nights. Great for sharing.

Location: outdoor seating is on the south corner of 11th Street, not the entrance on Ave of Americas.

Service: Friendly staff that managed the outdoor and indoor elements well. Menus are using phone only at this point. Just use you camera on iPhone to scan (not take a photo) in the QR code.

Food & Drink: They have bottle wine or by the glass. I think they can continue to work on their cocktails menu. The food is fantastic though. Great for sharing. There are 2 types of humus. I preferred the one with the beans on top. The sausage dish was a hit, as was the ground beef and shrimp and avocado dishes. The mains can be split. The hanger steak was cooked and seasoned well. They ran out of lamb, which I’m intrigued to try (given it’s popularity). The Schnitzel was well executed, though in truth, I think I’d have been happy just getting 2 hanger steaks.

The Vibe: very chill experience. While there are technically time limits on all restaurants right now in COVID times, we did not feel rushed. Perfect spot for a place to relax...