Two years ago folks around here went nuts when the New York Times included AlTayeb in Dearborn on its list of the country’s 50 exciting restaurants. I was one of many who flocked there for “breakfast” — available until 4 p.m. — and loved it.
The Dearborn store was actually the second AlTayeb, the first a tiny flagship having opened in 2017 in Garden City. Now the GC OG, not to be outdone by its famous sister, is pioneering a dinner menu, offered until 8 p.m. I liked AlTayeb’s less breakfasty, non-chickpea-based dishes better anyway, so dinner was good news for me.
The new dinner menu is short and to the point. It includes five meat dishes, three salads, eight sandwiches, seven appetizers, and no eggs or bean dishes such as fool, a popular Middle Eastern comfort food. To make the most of the evening hours, I suggest going with the meats, but vegetarians can still find something to love. Bear in mind that as in Dearborn, free dishes magically appear on your table, for me one time spicy potatoes, another time hummus.
Perhaps my very favorites were the baba ghannouj and those potatoes. They are chunks deep fried to a crisp exterior and sprinkled with tons of cilantro, an excellent combination of crusty and fatty with a cooling herb. The baba is deeply smoky and perfectly creamy, with a pool of olive oil in the center and some tomato cubes for garnish. A lot of work goes into baba ghannouj and it is worth paying for, especially here.
Hummus is also fine, though less garlicky than I prefer, also pooled with olive oil and parsley. It’s thick rather than creamy. Falafel bites are about an inch in diameter, and lighter than most, according to Samir Hamade, chef and co-owner. He serves them (I counted 18 in my order, so a lot) with a light tahini sauce.
Though you can get a grilled kafta skewer, just like anywhere else, I recommend three dishes that are less common: makanek, sujuk, and harhoura. Harhoura is thin strips of beef fried with jalapeños and onions, so it’s both hot and sweet; tahini sauce is on the side. Sujuk Hamade-style is ground beef cooked with tomatoes, garlic, and 16 spices, and served with big chunks of lemon — nothing is done stingily here.
Makanek is 20 baby beef sausages, prepared the Lebanese way with no casing, dressed with your choice of pomegranate syrup or lemon juice. The sticky-sweet pomegranate is what lifts this out of the ordinary. Hamade says that in Lebanon, sujuk and makanek are felt to complement each other and “go hand in hand” — people might put both in a sandwich.
All these dishes, including the potatoes, are also available on sandwiches.
In the salad category, I found, as so often in restaurants, too much dressing. Fattoush and tabbouleh are made to order on the spot, so you can request a lighter hand, or on the side. For fattoush, it’s the pita chips that make the salad, because they are the very best, deep brown and crisp, with far more flavor than elsewhere. They’re brought separately so you can crumble in your own. One salad I hadn’t seen before is fattoush atop hummus, where we found the bounteous dressing soaked the hummus — but maybe you like that!
The only place AlTayeb doesn’t match up to a few other Lebanese restaurants is the pita, which does not come warm and puffed from the oven but room temperature, folded and bagged. You will, however, get a complimentary plate of tomatoes, pickles, pickled turnip, and mint leaves.
The drinks menu is catch as catch can; what’s listed isn’t necessarily always available. You can’t get tap water, only bottled. I liked fresh mango juice, which is deep golden, sizable and extracted in-house, and laban, tangy liquid yogurt, 16 oz. for $2.99. I’m waiting for strawberry juice, mint lemonade (which in a different Middle Eastern restaurant was out of this world), and especially jalab. Our server gave up on trying to describe jalab, starting with raisins and ending with “it’s smoked.” The world wide web says it’s made from carob, dates, grape molasses, and rose water, then smoked with incense. Hard for me to imagine, but could be a knockout.
Garden City AlTayeb continues to offer its long breakfast menu with eggs, chickpeas every way you can think of, fool, and fatteh till 3 p.m. The other, much larger AlTayeb is open 8 a.m.-4 p.m. every day at 15010 W. Warren in Dearborn; 313-633-1752.
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