Liquid had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb...

This was an unplanned for dinner at Banoo with my old friend Eddie. With the memory of the tasty kebab koobideh still fresh from the prior visit, I decided to bring Ed down to check out more of the Persian food that this place served. Early dinner it was, we were the first 2 customers to step in at 6 in the evening with no one else yet in sight.

Kashk-e Baademjaan

The Kashk-e Baademjaan was a dish of roasted eggplant with fried onions, mashed together with mint and yoghurt sauce. It was served hot. Banoo's rendition of the minted eggplant mash came finely ground. The imagination of machines crushing these crossed my mind then. It tasted fine but as an appetizer, it didn't come across as appetising much. Beat their Naan-o-Paneer-0-Sabzi which I thought was too fresh and raw.

Kuftah

This curious giant meatball was the Kuftah and was not on the menu. It was introduced by the waiter and I remember having seen it in D's visit. I like meat so there wasn't a question to do or not. The Kuftah came with a broth like a spicy tomato curry which was great pairing with the butter rice of their kebab koobideh. The minced lamb ball had rice fillers which was different from the one that D had which was described to have potato filler. I thought this ball tasted pretty good. It was also large and pretty filling.

Double butter Kebab Koobideh

We couldn't not do their kebab koobideh. Today, I asked for an extra butter. This dish does come with the option for flat bread instead of rice as well. I personally thought that the rice was so damn good so I had the rice again. It was even better when it got buttered up. For $15.50, one gets a generously portioned and delicious meal of grilled mince lamb kebab with fragrant basmati rice. Sounds like an expensive nasi bryani? This was better than many nasi bryani out there.

Today's dinner came with a unexpected surprise. The proprietress of the restaurant brought over a dessert and mentioned that it was on the house. Wow, that was certainly a nice gesture. That dessert was by the way, the Sholeh-Zard which was made of rice, sugar, saffron and rosewater with cinnamon and almond bits. Something I had noticed from the previous visit but didn't get to try. It tasted like chilled jellied sago with rose and it was actually very good. The two of us, as stuffed as we were from the food still managed to finish it.