Salt & Pepper's hummus a hit

Call the cuisine Middle Eastern or Mediterranean, there's been a recent boom-let along North Rodney Parham Road.

With the opening in June of Al Seraj and in August of Salt & Pepper Middle-Eastern Restaurant, in what had been a short-lived "IndoPak" restaurant called Shalimar, attached to Shalimar Halal Market and Groceries in the Galleria Shopping Center, gyros and hummus fans will now find four outlets along a 20-block stretch. (Interestingly, that's about the same number of Mexican places in that patch.)

Apparently the market and restaurant recently came under new ownership, which could explain the short life of the Shalimar restaurant, which came and went in a matter of months.

The food, and especially the hummus, is the principal reason to visit Salt & Pepper. Whether it's good enough to threaten the more venerable establishments, however -- Layla Gyros & Pizzeria, just a couple of blocks east, and the Terrace, on North Rodney Parham's north spur -- will be a matter of how much you like Salt & Pepper's style and whether you're willing to put up with service problems and, particularly, communication problems, considering the staff (particularly at dinner) speaks about as much English as we speak Arabic.

There's no mistaking Salt & Pepper's Arabic antecedents, from the terra cotta fresco/mural that decorates one wall to the framed photos of Petra in Jordan, the Kaaba surrounded by Hajj pilgrims in Mecca, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the "Visit Palestine" poster behind the cash register.

Otherwise, the decor is sort of cosmopolitan, with plaid padded chairs, black-clothed tables topped by food-service-provided napkin dispensers and artificial camellias in marble-filled blue Mason jars. A flat-screen TV by the cash register shows Travel Channel food shows. Setups include unusually heavy flatware -- fork and spoon only -- wrapped in a contrastingly flimsy paper napkin.

The new owners have brightened up the place, with the walls painted in cream and sand tones to match the mural (dimly lit Shalimar was painted sort of dark mauve). Early evening customers closed the front-window blinds to avoid being blinded by the setting sun. At dinner, Middle Eastern music wafted out of the sound system; at breakfast, it was an a cappella solo chant.

As early evening dinner customers, we were greeted by a complimentary tasty chicken-and-rice soup in dual-brass-handled metal bowls, a nice touch of Middle Eastern hospitality.

We highly recommend Salt & Pepper's Tahini Hummus ($3.99). The consistency is quite creamy, but garnishing with whole chickpeas gives it an additional layer of texture for folks who prefer theirs a little chunkier. And while it may not be as spicy as Layla's, it has just the right levels of lemon-juice tartness and particularly sesame essence from the tahini. It didn't look like that much on the plate, but there was plenty for two.

And though we don't particularly favor this style, we also liked the taste of the Baba Ghanouj (also $3.99); it retains just a little too much of the goopy texture of the eggplant base (the texture of eggplant is the principal reason we're not big fans), but there's a nice balance among eggplant, lemon, tahini, olive oil and garlic flavors.

Both come with the largest and freshest pieces of pita bread we've encountered -- possibly prepared to order, piping hot out of the oven. They are so large they far overflow wicker bowls on the tabletop to contain them; your server will ask if you want more and keep bringing it, too. (Five pieces of pita a la carte are $2.49.)

Tabbouleh ($2.99) is on the menu, not as an appetizer, but as a salad: plenty of parsley, chopped red onion, tomato and bulgur wheat in a lemon juice and olive oil "dressing" that was too heavy on the lemon juice and thus rather too tart to finish.

The menu concentrates a little more on appetizers and salads than sandwiches and entrees, the latter including some "IndoPak" holdovers (evidently Shalimar's tandoor oven is still in the kitchen).

We liked our pleasantly spicy, skewered Chicken Tikka ($7.99), chicken coated in a masala spice mixture. A cake of yellow rice (could it be saffron rice? The language barrier kept us from asking, or at least from getting answers, on any number of specific questions) topped with some kind of pleasant creamy sauce we couldn't quite identify (ditto), Jerusalem salad and some ordinary green beans come on the side. The same sides came with our excellent Lamb Kebab ($9.99), which was spiced just right, remarkably tender (in many places, stuff on skewers is overcooked and tough) and nongamy (a bonus for lamb).

We can also recommend Salt & Pepper's gyros, which we tried via the Lamb Gyro Plate ($9.99), half a dozen or so surprisingly uniform and even more surprisingly tender strips of seasoned lamb, crisp at the edges and not nearly as salty or spicy as it is at most places. All those factors lead us to conclude that a) it's made on the premises and doesn't come from a food service and b) that it hasn't been shaved off a saddle on a vertical spit, as gyros usually are. Accompanying was a good-size puddle of unusually tangy tzatziki (could the component cucumber be pickled?), a cake of the maybe-saffron rice and more Jerusalem salad, but not the tahini hummus the menu promised -- more's the pity.

Our sense of adventure brought us to try Salt & Pepper's breakfast one recent morning, then abandoned us, which explains why we passed on the Kalwi (pan-fried lamb kidney) and Kebdah (pan-fried lamb liver), and went with the safer, substantial and very satisfying Hummus With Beef ($7.99), with more of the very fresh pita bread and a surprisingly good-sized mug (not a demitasse) of Turkish coffee (giveaway priced at 99 cents), hot, strong, sweet and spicy -- properly redolent with cardamom.

The one area where Salt & Pepper didn't quite satisfy was the Baklava ($1.79), which, from its goopy-honey stickiness, we gauged was not that-day fresh.

From the photos on the wall, we were already certain we wouldn't have the option of wine or beer with our meals, but we were a bit surprised to discover that, with the exception of the Turkish coffee (and we're guessing it's also available at lunch and dinner), all other beverage choices, right down to water, come in a bottle ($1.29), with an accompanying plastic cup, without ice.

The Salt & Pepper folks couldn't have been friendlier or more helpful, but the language barrier was a particularly big handicap at dinner. Communicating with the lone guy on the floor made it difficult to even let him know we needed something, including the two bottles of water we'd ordered but which it took him a while to remember to deliver. It took what seemed like forever to get (mostly via sign language) our check.

We had less of a communication problem at breakfast, where our server (who appears also to be the chef/cook) spoke better English. However, the restaurant opens earlier than the next-door grocery store, where the restrooms are, and that might have been difficult (or worse) if we'd been worse off than just a little uncomfortable. And when we finished our meal before the morning arrival of the cashier, we had a rather difficult choice: to sit tight for awhile or come back to the place later to pay for our meal.

Weekend on 10/29/2015