Zenobia

Rating: OK
Meal: Dinner
Price: 5150 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Shishtawouk, fattoush, 3 dip set (mutabel, yogurt, muhammara)
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: Yes

We were on a roll this last weekend with several Very Good restaurants, so we were hopeful the trend would continue as we looked for a place to eat dinner near the New Sanno hotel in Tokyo.  There is a road near Hiroo station that we call "restaurant row" as there are lots of restaurants all up and down.  We happened to find Zenobia, an arabic restaurant, and we had to try it.

Fatoush salad and dips

It was nice enough down the stairs to the subterranean area, the decor reminiscent more of Moroccan, but hey, who cares?  The prices were definitely up there.  We were hoping this meant quality ingredients.  Since we weren't terribly hungry, we shared a shishtawouk (grilled chicken pieces) and got a salad (fatoush) and the 3 dip set, choosing mutabel, yogurt and muhammara.  See the links above for more info on anything you don't recognize.  We had to order individual pieces of bread, a "thin" and "thick" variety.  This was not at all proper as bread should just come with your meal...but oh well.  The thin bread was basically a bad tortilla shell.  The thick one was a real piece of arabic bread, hot and puffed.  Pity it was so expensive.

Shishtawouk

The tawouk was ok, a mixture of white and dark meat.  The dark meat was good, the white was dry.  The fattoush was disappointing in its consistency and size.  The pita croutons were weird, like they had been deep fried and soaked in oil.  Most disappointing of all was the muhammara which was very weaksauce and had a strange consistency.  The mutabel could have come from a can.  The yogurt was...yogurt...it was fine.

So pretty disappointing, but not terrible.  If it had been cheap, I wouldn't have minded so much.  As it is we can only give it an Ok.