Surprises elevate Khalil’s Pub fare

By Eric E. Harrison

Photo by Stephen B. Thornton

Pork Chops and Peaches are among the surprises on the entree list at Khalil’s Pub & Grill on Shackleford Road.

ADVERSTISMENT

LITTLE ROCK — The demise of Julie’s on Shackleford Road, just south of Markham Street, left a hole in the restaurant landscape - not just an empty building but also a dining-and-drinking niche.

It’s not like there aren’t plenty of places for casual dining and drinking (not necessarily in that order) in that part of west Little Rock, even within a two- or three-block radius.

But Julie’s had a particular appeal: It attracted a somewhat older clientele than, say, the West End. And it allowed people to smoke in the bar while keeping the restaurant area “nonsmoking.” (And yes, we know all about that argument that no place that allows smoking can really have a nonsmoking area. We’ll get to that.)

Enter Khalil Moussa, formerly general manager of Cregeen’s Pub in North Little Rock, and Khalil’s Pub & Grill.

Moussa has made very few physical changes. The booth-and-table set-up is the same - bigger booths around the edges, smaller two-person booths in the middle, a big private party room to the back. Even the color scheme - booths upholstered in green vinyl, lots of brick, woodwork and hanging plants and hanging lighting fixtures - has remained the same. For-sale framed artworks enhance the walls. The lobby area is pretty stark; just a couple of beer promotion items mark the entryway.

You can smoke in the bar and also on a small outside deck, so the restaurant only admits patrons age 21 and older, in keeping with state law. That’s the official policy; however, there’s no hostess on duty - Moussa stays busy between the kitchen, the floor (he does a good job of making patrons feel welcome and looked after) and, when he’s not doing those things, the door. Otherwise it’s up to the wait staff to seat people.

We saw a lot of people, especially bar patrons, just walk on in. We didn’t see anybody check an ID, ever, on either visit, although a waitress did sorrowfully inform a woman and her son, who looked to be about 11 or 12, that they couldn’t enter.

On one visit we didn’t notice any smoke aroma at all; on the other we did catch a faint whiff as the bar door swung open and closed, which it does often.

The menu has a lot of similarities to Cregeen’s, although it’s considerably broader - for example, 21 appetizers, not counting three soups and five dips. That’s no surprise. Nor is it a surprise that it primarily consists of pub options, including a of lot stuff in beer batter.

But the menu does include a few surprises. The beer in the batter for the fish-and-chips fish is different from the beer in the batter for the onion rings, which is different from the beer in the onion soup, which is different from the beer in the beer cheese soup. A couple of entrees were completely unexpected, and not just for a place like Khalil’s. Another surprise: The unusual items were a lot more successful than most of the pub-type items.

Both our onion-soup-jaded diners were quite impressed with the delightful Onion Soup ($4.95), “traditional style,” a rich, not too salty broth made with a healthy dose of stout, with a large submerged crouton and topped with melted Swiss and Parmesan.

Considering that the contents of the small tureen were about 50 percent crouton, however, we wondered who would really need the four packets of crackers around the foot - some whole-grain jobs and, even more surprising, the first Sunshine Hi-Ho’s we’d seen in, well, forever.

That was one cracker packet more than we got with our cup of Beer Cheese Soup ($2.95, $4.75 bowl), which needed the crackers for texture. (One packet of Hi-Ho’s was kind of stale, too.) We could taste the German lager around the periphery, since it stood out against the rather mild cheese. We could have done just as well without the parsley shreds that, having shriveled and died, became partly submerged depth charges.

The Scottish Eggs ($5.75) are the first we’ve seen on an area menu since the demise, more than two decades ago, of the old Rose & Thistle, across from the train station on Victory Street. (Now that was a pub.)

“Scotch eggs” (but maybe Khalil’s chef doesn’t want anybody to think that they’re made with Scotch whiskey?) are hardboiled, coated with sausage, dipped in egg and bread crumbs and deep-fried. In our previous experience, the sausage was fairly coarse and the bread crumbs minimal; here it’s a very thin coating of about equal sausage and crumbs, which after deep frying forms a thin shell so that the three eggs on the plate look like dark brown billiard balls, and, until you crack the shell after a brief struggle, of roughly the same hardness.

They taste fine, especially with a honey-mustard dipping sauce, but they’re very filling and by the middle of the second egg we had begun to lose interest.

The Fresh Guacamole ($5.75), on the other hand, was a delight, nicely chunky and just the right balance of flavors between avocado and garlic with a nice citric kick. It comes with an abundance of very lightly salted tri-color chips, many more than we needed to scoop the dip.

We were intrigued by one of those entree surprises we mentioned, the Sauerbraten ($12.95), prime rib “topped with our Jager Sauce of sauteed fresh peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and wine, served with mashed [potatoes] and cabbage,” but not enough to order it. We’ll save that for another visit.

But the Pork Chops and Peaches ($8.95) were a pleasant surprise, mostly - two pan-seared chops, just a little on the tough side (hint to the wait staff: We could have used a steak knife), simmered with peaches and barbecue sauce, served with very nice mashed potatoes with an entirely different gravy. The sauce had peach overtones without being peach dominated, a nice touch.

The same barbecue sauce comes on the side of the excellent Smoked Ribs ($9.95 half rack, $16.95 for a full one if you’re feeding two or three - the half rack was plenty for one-and sharing). The pork ribs were large and fall-off-the-bone tender (one member of our party would have liked them a little less tender, actually, and a bit more chewy, but there’s no accounting for tastes).

The Beer Battered Fish and Chips ($7.75) - a huge Pacific cod filet wrapped in a lager based batter that was thick and very crisp at the ends and thick but rather soft and even gummy in the middle - looked more on the plate like a corn dog or a chimichanga. The fish was very moist and flaky, but cod by itself doesn’t really have much of a flavor. We noticed, after we had finished, that another table had a bottle of malt vinegar, which we could have used but hadn’t thought to ask for.

The ribs come with some fine crisp-outside, soft-inside fries, but we didn’t get the onion rings we’d requested ($2.95 a la carte, $1 extra as a substitute side). So we made sure to substitute them this time for the chips, and they were worth the wait, in yet another beer batter, fairly well drained and so not that greasy.

We allowed our waitress to jolly us into a cherry cheesecake (a huge portion for $4.95) for dessert, and while neither the embedded maraschino cherries nor the maraschino topping made much of an impression, the cheesecake itself was light and fluffy and came on a creditable graham-cracker crust.

Khalil’s doesn’t have much of a wine list but it does offer several dozen beers on tap and in bottles.

Service was very good on both visits, although the wait staff has been “chain-ganged” into hard-selling, more or less, appetizers and desserts. On our second visit, the waitress insisted on labeling an unmarried and nonroyal female diner first as “princess” and thereafter as “missus,” which was a little amusing at first but eventually became annoying.

Khalil’s Pub & Grill Address: 110 S. Shackleford Road, Little Rock Hours: 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-1 a.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-midnight Sunday Cuisine: Bar food with a few surprises Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D Alcoholic beverages: Yes Reservations: Very large parties Wheelchair accessible: Yes Carryout: Yes Smoking: Yes; 21 and older only (501) 224-0224, khalilspub.com

Weekend, Pages 31 on 10/15/2009