I had heard a lot of good things about the Noura chain, a string of up market Lebanese restaurants in the capital. I was therefore a bit disappointed with my experience here, which did not even get close to Levant.

My dining partner and I were sat in the front part of the restaurant, which was pleasant enough but seemed to lack in atmosphere compared to the rest of the place. A high ceiling, white linen clad tables and a reliance of daylight to light up the front part of the room did not compare to the candles, bright cushions and arabic pictures, several metres away from us at the back of the restaurant.

The service didn’t start off too great, with me having to start moving the table away from the wall seat in order to sit down, before the waiter then took over. We were also not offered somewhere to put our jackets, neither of which were incidents I really thought twice about at the time, but were added to a list of little annoyances that added up at the end.

Both starters were excellent, the houmous being very light and not too garlicky and the Lebanese style lamb pizza well spiced and a perfectly judged, light, portion for a starter. The red Lebanese wine we chose with the help of the waiter (one of the few redeeming points in his favour) was also very good, being fairly light with lots of berry tastes to it (a Chateau Ksara 2002). We were also given a bowl of vegetables which seems customary in quite a few middle eastern restaurants I’ve eaten in. I’m still not sure of the significance of the vegetable  bowl, although I did help myself to the plate of pickled chillies, pickled turnip and olives that came with it. Is the offering cultural or are you supposed to tuck into it, as I saw another lone diner doing at another table?

Whilst waiting for our mains, my dining partner decided to claim his authority on food and we initiated a quiz, asking eachother foodie questions. A correct answer earned a point to the answerer and an incorrect answer earned a point to the asker. I’m not quite sure why he claimed an authority, considering that he lived on takeaway’s throughout university (the local KFC manager and him were on first name terms) whilst I was cooking Christmas dinners and curries for a dozen people at a time (not together, mind you).  I was pretty sure of my victory early on, when he couldn’t even name three ingredients of his favourite starter (houmous). The end result was a 7-2 whipping.

The mains were a little disappointing, but were well made nonetheless. We ended up swapping, as I preferred the his Kafta Kashkash (Lamb kofte with spicy tomato sauce) over my Kafta Tarator (lamb meatballs with sesame and lemon sauce). The lamb kofte & sauce was fine, but didn’t really excite in any way. The meatballs had a tahini sauce in which I couldn’t detect much, if any, lemon. They did have a good texture, even if the taste wasn’t anything to enthuse about, but the dish certainly didn’t feel like it was worth the £14.50 price tag. The Lebanese Mountain salad also disappointed, the dressing being far too lemony and was really rather a rip-off for five pounds a hit.

We forewent dessert, although some tasty little baklava was brought anyway, but we went daringly off menu, with a couple of Irish coffees. Although the waiter said this was no problem, it clearly was, as their first effort took 15 mins to prepare and looked more like normal coffee with cream. These were sent back (to the obvious displeasure of the waiter) and it took another 15 mins to bring coffees which looked and tasted like the real thing. Whilst I fully accept that an Irish coffee is not a typical Lebanese drink, if a restaurant say they can do it, they should be able to back this up rather better than Noura demonstrated.

Noura did not live up to it’s reputation at all on this visit and was coupled with service which was perfectly described by my dining partner as sullen. The waiter really seemed as though he didn’t want to be serving us and although he delivered on the wine, the dour face rather put a downer on the whole experience, especially when coupled with the fact he missed several of the little things a decent waiter would do, like noticing when we were trying to get his attention and

apologising when taking the first Irish coffees away. I am not planning on coming back here again and would choose Levant over Noura every time.