Every other Friday, I organize a “Friday Lunch Buddies”, where a bunch of us go out into Albuquerque and try a new cuisine/restaurant. I decided to do this for these reasons: to sample as many restaurants in abq (and to find the best ones), try new cuisines and of course to have a relaxing and fun Friday! =) I’ll eventually post all the places we went in the past two months…but for now, this is the most recent one!
BTW, a new feature on hungrycactus: you can now see all the restaurant reviews on our very own Food Map! (so far this will be the only one)
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This Friday we decided to go:
Cafe Istanbul
1415 Wyoming Blvd NE
Albuquerque, NM 87112-3849
(505) 294-9900
This cafe is actually inside a grocery store. Weird. But the first thing you notice when you step in the store is the smell. It smells good. There are around 8 bare tables on the side (looks a little weird imho), and you can shop around while waiting for your order.
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The price is around $6, sandwich combo or platters):
We ordered an appetizer called Baba Ghanoug…had eggplants…hmm…I still had some…it wasn’t too bad, but I prefer humus:
I ordered the Shawerma Platter:
A close up of the humus with some purple thing on it:
Somehow no one liked the salad on the side because of the parsley…but I liked it! I even got an awesome shot of it!
Conclusion: The food had a great authentic taste, meat was not overcooked, flavor was rich. The meat, humus, salad all had very distinct tastes which made the meal more enjoyable. The only two complaints I have is 1) they were not a hungry man’s portion. I would say I was 90% full. 2) service was slow.
Hungry cactus’ verdict: B+