Lunch at Al Halabi

It was not often that a restaurant which looked good on the outside, served good food. At least not often here in Kuala Lumpur. So, Anita and I decided to be a bit more adventurous this Sunday lunchtime and for some reason, I fancied some Arab food. I passed by this particular restaurant on a newly opened section of Pavilion recently but it was too late for lunch then.

So, I decided to give this one a go. It was called Al Halabi, located on the seventh floor, through the escalator near Times Bookstore. It was part of a new section called Dining Loft.

It was spacious with a separate seating area in filled with natural light right at the back. A lot of shisha smoker back there, so we decided to take one of the seats in the main area. Very nice setting, true to Middle Eastern theme, with some of the waiters who were actually Arabic.

The cooks were definitely from the Middle East and they have a butcher there preparing fresh meat and ingredients, plus a baker who actually baked the puffs and bread traditionally. The grilling was also done in-house as well and the produce were displayed by the main counter as if you were sitting in a market. It was reminiscent of Marche.

What did we order? I started with some hummus with sliced grilled meat, and for the mains I had grilled pomfret while Anita had chicken tikka. We had some rice with them and I had some Arabic mint tea in the end.

I was impressed. I could feel the succulent fish melting in my mouth and the dips were amazing. Even the mint sauce tasted authentic - and made from real mint - while the rice was a joy. The mint in the tea was a touch to light to be honest and it finished up tasting rather bitter.

We gave up on desserts since we were just too full.

The seats were very comfortable as we were on a sofa, and I now understood why the patron seemed to sit down there for hours! We ended up sitting there for nearly a couple of hours, nibbling away at our food, before finally leaving the place. The staff were OK, although the Arabs struggled somewhat with their English. The other staffs who spoke English were Filipino or Bangladeshi. How I wished that the locals would work there, as I could see that most of the patron were locals.

Highly recommended although I hope that they could maintain their standard in the future. The place was still rather new when we visited.