La Fonda Latino Grill: Colombian for All You Can Eat

In the course of our culinary adventure, we've had lunch, dinner, and brunch, but this week we got to enjoy a first.  After returning from another culinary adventure in West Virginia (Neil got to eat all his favorites, pepperoni rolls, hot dogs, and Minards!), we had a rare chance for a week day lunch out.  Wanting to stay close to home, we picked a restaurant that is just a few blocks away from us, La Fonda Latino Grill.  We'd eaten here a time or two, but hadn't been in a while.   Knowing that it was Colombian, we decided to take a trip to South America and walked over on a beautiful afternoon.  We sat down and the waitress came over to greet us and ask if we were doing the buffet.  We didn't even know that they had a buffet!  After a brief description, we decided to give it a go and experience everything that a Colombian all you can eat lunch had to offer!

Adriatic Cafe Restaurant: A Nice Place for a Leisurely Meal

Adriatic Cafe is a place in our neighborhood that immediately was on our radar when we came up with this idea.  How many Croatian restaurants do you know about within walking distance of your house?  This place has a few things going for it.  The food has been pretty consistently good.  The wine list is exotic with lots of Balkan wines.  The patio is great on a nice day.  The issues?  Well, don't come on a day when you're in a hurry.  Service has certainly never been a strong point, so patience is necessary as we set out on another Balkan adventure, this time to Croatia!

Baghdad Kabab: Your 24 Hour a Day Iraqi Food Solution

Have you ever had a late night hankering for a kabab and/or perhaps some quality time with a cab driver or two?  Well, we've found the place for you, Baghdad Kabab!  We spotted this place from the Lawrence bus several months ago when we were on our way to check out Saravejo Restaurant and had been looking forward to coming back to try it since.  We hopped on the Lawrence bus and headed west to get our Middle Eastern fix!

Drinks

Baghdad Kabab is BYO and offers the usual coffee, soft drinks, and tea (free!), which Beth went with on a rainy Saturday.

Food

When you're judging the authenticity of a place, it's always a good sign when there is a page of the menu that isn't even in English, or an alphabet that we have any familiarity with!

Oh, they have cherry pie!

We were surprised to see that they had multiple soups on the menu.  That isn't something that we've run into before at Middle Eastern restaurants, so we gave it a shot.  Neil went with the white bean soup.  It had a tomato based broth and terrific flavor with nice spices.  You know it's good, when Neil uses the pita to clean the bowl up!

White Bean Soup

Beth went with the okra soup.  It had big chunks of okra along with big chunks of garlic.  No worries about vampires here, and the soup was great--flavorful and creamy.

Okra Soup

We ordered a side of dill Royale rice.  Good to know that they don't skimp on the portions!

Dill Royale Rice

Neil's entree was kallaya lamb, a finely diced lamb sauteed with onion, tomatoes, and green pepper.  The flavors mixed together well and the sauce went great over the rice.  This was a tasty dish!

Kallaya Lamb

Beth originally ordered a dish with potato dough filled with meat, but they were out of this.  She settled for schwarma chicken with rice.  The tender, boneless chicken seemed to be thigh meat and was seasoned with a mix of spices.  Behind the counter along the side of the restaurant were two giant, slowly spinning cones of meat. We think that one of those was this chicken.

Schwarma Chicken with Rice

Overall
Baghdad Kabab is a comfortable and welcoming space.  Since it was Saturday, I'm pretty sure our waitress was the high school age daughter of the proprietor.  The menu is fairly extensive and offers some things that we hadn't run across before in Middle Eastern restaurants, such as the soups and the fancy potato thingy that they were out of.  The food was all really good and well seasoned and the portions guaranteed that we would get multiple meals out of this lunch!

Foreign Factor
8 out of 10  One thing we've learned when exploring ethnic restaurants is that a place with a TV showing programming in the native language is a good sign--and often entertaining.  Since we were there in the middle of the afternoon, the place wasn't busy but the other folks there appeared to be native speakers.  The menu features a page in the native language, so this place gets the foreign seal of approval.

What We Learned
Iraqi food isn't the same stuff you run across at every Middle Eastern restaurant.  With the mix of herbs and spices, the food is really flavorful and satisfying.  The soups were something we didn't expect but turned out to be a real highlight of our trip.

More

They deliver, which is always a plus!
While it's not a surprise when you think about, the Iraqi culinary tradition goes back a ways!