Nuba

Hi everyone!

This is a really late post and has been in my drafts folder since September. Oops! But better late than never right? =) Enjoy the post!

I have heard really great things about Nuba from a number of different people. I’ve passed this restaurant quite often, as the bus I normally take to downtown drives by it. Each time I pass Nuba, I wonder when I am able to finally try this seemingly delicious place. I finally got the opportunity to last week, when my company was holding a company welcome lunch for myself and the other co-op student (I wrote this post back in September… oops)!

To start, my coworker and I decided to split the roasted potato and garlic soup, which was their special that day. It came drizzled with olive oil, which we stirred into the soup. The soup had a mild spiciness to it, and a strong garlic taste. There wasn’t any potato chunks in the soup, I think it was pureed into the soup because it had a thicker consistency. In addition, there was an abundant flavour of spices which went well with the garlic taste. To all the health conscious folks out there, their daily soup is always vegan and gluten free!

I ordered the chicken tawook with hummus. It came with a side salad, chickpeas, pita bread, and choice of roasted potatoes or brown rice. All of our pita bread came in the same bowl. The pita was a thinner than I was used to, but perhaps that is the style?

I wanted to eat it with tzatziki sauce, but it came at a surcharge so I decided not to. Judging from the menu, I was not expecting the chicken to be on skewers, but it was tasty and savoury nonetheless! There was a slight grilled taste on the chicken, and it was very juicy and flavourful. The chicken was marinated in paprika, lemon, thyme, and garlic. Apart from the chicken, I regretted ordering the brown rice as my side rather than the roasted potatoes.

The brown rice was a bit hard and undercooked for my personal taste, but that’s just the Asian inside me speaking, we love our rice really well cooked and soft 🙂 I was also told that the roasted potatoes were really good and one of their specialty dishes. I think the dish came to around $15-17, which seemed a bit overpriced for what was received although the chicken was really good.

Another dish that was ordered that day; I forgot if it was the lamb kafta or lamb kibbeh. Sorry! I didn’t try this so I can’t give much of an opinion on it, so a picture will have to do 🙂

At the end of our scrumptious meal, my coworker ordered a Turkish coffee. I thought that the presentation of it was very cool and unique! I didn’t try any because I have extremely high sensitivity to caffeine (once, I drank a Pepsi Lime at dinner and couldn’t sleep until 3am. Or had milk tea at 10am and slept the next morning at 6am…), but I was told that there was a strong chai flavour to it. So a mix of chai tea and coffee!

For dessert, we all split two dessert plates. I’m not too sure of what each pastry was called since I wasn’t the one that ordered it, but I did enjoy the taste of all of them. In particular, I enjoyed the almond nougat type pastry, but I’m pretty sure there is a specific Lebanese name for it.

All the pastries were really sweet. The two next to the center pastry had some sort of carmelized sugar on top, and was a flaky pastry. The one in the center had the same idea, but with a custard-type topping.

-Carmen