Snafus aside, Al Seraj fills bill

Great Wraps Grill wrapped up business on Rodney Parham Road (it headed east to Little Rock's Park Plaza), making way for a new tenant: Al Seraj Mediterranean Restaurant.

Or Al "Sera" Mediterranean "Restauran," as it is misspelled on a menu on its Facebook page, with a few other charming gaffes. The fast-casual restaurant that serves items like gyros with "lattuce" and "tuzikka" sauce had its "Grand Open" next to Bedford Camera in June.

As it has only been open a month, there are some understandable kinks to work out. The first was temperature.

We traveled to Al Seraj to dine on a sweltering June day when the cooling system was on the fritz and the restaurant, which remained open, had only a few room fans to fight the heat. Sweat beaded the faces of the kitchen staff as they cut meat from spools. After spending a few minutes in the order line and trying to tough it out (well, my friends tried to tough it out; I stood meanwhile in the opened drink cooler for relief), we gave up and headed to the frosty refuge of nearby Delicious Temptations instead.

Calling ahead to make sure the AC was functioning a few weeks later (it was), I returned for a recent dinner and lunch from the same all-day menu of chicken, beef and lamb gyros, kabobs and shawarma, as well as dips and salads.

The first meal, my date and I ordered two of the platters ($8.99-$12.99) that include two sides: A Gyro ($9.99) for me and a "Fillet" Beef Kabob ($12.99) for him. We paid, fetched soft drinks and flatware and took our number to a table in the serviceable dining room with framed Middle Eastern scenes on the walls. My food arrived considerably earlier than his did; at Al Seraj, food appears when it's ready.

The Gyro platter featured a hearty amount of food: a heap of shaved meat topped with onion and parsley, requested sides of hummus and tabouli salad that was served with a mild side of tzatziki sauce and a side plate of flat and particularly chewy pita. While it was a plentiful portion of meat, I ended up leaving most of it behind: It was just too salty for my liking -- and this from someone with a high sodium tolerance. The lemony, parsley-dominated tabouli added a pop of tart freshness. But the zesty hummus, dotted with olive oil and additional chickpeas, was the zenith.

My date was displeased with the beef kabob, chunks of a rather gamey-tasting meat that made us wonder if he had been served lamb instead. So he just made a meal of the accompanying vegetables and his sides, the safe basmati rice and the fresh cucumber salad.

Seeking something sweet, we ordered the baklava ($2.69 for two pieces) and were blown away by the big size of the wedges, as well as the richness of the phyllo dough, nuts and honey.

Returning with a friend for lunch, I went vegetarian, ordering "Stuff" Grape Leaves ($2.99) and a Falafel Sandwich ($4.99), while she requested a Chicken Kabob platter ($9.49), with sides of tahini salad (lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes with sesame paste) and hummus.

So we were surprised when we were first served a tabouli salad and a Greek salad. Um, we didn't order those, and I told a worker behind the counter as much. He took away the tabouli, but left the salad, which my friend would later tote home. It seemed a shame to waste it.

Lemony and packed with rice, the six grape leaves that were next to arrive were perfectly puckery.

The falafel, dressed with tahini salad, was a little crumbly and gritty inside the stiff bread, and it didn't have a tremendous amount of flavor to me. (Then again, I would wake up with cold symptoms the next day; the problem certainly could have been dulled taste buds.)

Several minutes later, instead of the platter my friend was served a chicken kabob sandwich and no sides. Because kabobs can take up to 20 minutes to prepare, she kept it, and the counter worker eventually brought over hummus (but no bread) and her tahini salad.

Her take: "The grilled chicken was good, with a few satisfyingly charred edges for those (like myself) who get into that. Don't expect to eat it 'cute' -- cut it with a knife because the wrap bread is hard to cut. Advantageous, I guess, for those who hate sandwiches made with flimsy wraps or bread."

If she was at all perturbed by the jumbled order and lack of pita for the hummus, the baklava that she had packaged to go made up for it. A mere hour later, she emailed, "And, yeah, I already wolfed down the baklava. To die for."

Weekend on 07/16/2015