Sometimes a restaurant site changes personalities so many times you stop paying attention. Ho-hum, another name for the California Avenue restaurant and club that used to be the Edge.
My editor made me go.
Surprise! Illusions Fayrouz Dining & Entertainment is better than good. Freedom of choice rules the menu, covering kebabs, lots of vegetarian dishes, small plates and large plates that make a meal. Have lunch, dinner, or just a snack, outdoors or in. And, service is delightful. Really.
Often, restaurants plunk tables on the sidewalk and call it a patio. Illusions’ breath of fresh air is protected from the street, with murals of Italian vineyards and the cedars of Lebanon dancing up the restaurant’s wall.
Inside you’ll notice an attractive bar and a handy place for large parties to the left, a human-sized dining area to the right. Tables are dressed in white. It feels a little formal, but don’t worry. Business casual, jeans, the usual California dress code applies.
On a weeknight, the dining room was sparsely populated. What often happens in those situations is that servers and kitchens get lax. There isn’t much to do, and they don’t do it. At Illusions, all engines were firing when the restaurant was slow as well as when it got busier later in the evening.
While studying the menu you get a dish of olive oil studded with sesame seeds and zesty zatar, a symphony of spices. The pool is held in place by a circle of creamy Lebanese yogurt, so you can mix or not. Freshly grilled pita bread, cut into triangles, is warm and chewy.
The small-plates section of the menu is particularly enticing. A sampler plate ($10.99) introduces you to three hot dishes and three cold, artfully presented. No offense to the hummus, baba ghanoush and tabouleh, but the hot appetizers star in this show. Varied in their spices, fillings and fried coats, they make you feel you are eating an exotic food.
Entrees make you feel very full. Each immense dinner starts with a small chopped salad of romaine lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers drizzled in lemon.
Lamb couscous ($18.95) offers good-size chunks of tender lamb on a steaming bed of couscous infused with tomato sauce. Also there are stewed carrots and potatoes.
Half a boneless chicken ($15.95) sings with lemon and garlic.
The mixed grill ($20.95) tops the price list, with a particularly wonderful version of minced lamb and beef. Lamb cubes also were good. Only the chicken kebabs had gotten a little dry.
At this point we asked the server to recommend one dessert for three people to share, and it was luscious kenafeh ($5.95), warmed sweet cheese in shredded wheat and honey.
At lunch, the server was even more personable, and reliable with suggestions.
Four dolmas ($5.50) melt in your mouth, not in a pool of grease. Four kebbe ($5.95) are lemon-shaped wonders of ground meat, pine nuts and bulgur, deep-fried in a thin falafel coat. You can dip them in creamy tahini sauce that doesn’t overdose on garlic.
Under the heading “House Dishes,” sheikh mehsi ($12.50) offers up a good-size baby eggplant cut in half lengthwise and stuffed with minced beef, pine nuts and onions, baked in tomato sauce. It comes with rice.
For dessert, Turkish coffee ($2.25) stays hot in a little metal pitcher.
The Fayrouz part of Illusions comes from the name of a legendary Lebanese diva and the restaurant in Malta where Chef Paul Sarkis worked for five years. It also means turquoise in Arabic.
If Illusions Fayrouz has a loser, I didn’t find it. Only the roasted tomatoes were disappointing. At this time of year, they should be at their peak.
Illusions
260 S. California Ave., Palo Alto
(650) 321-6464
www.illusionssuperclub.com
Hours:
Lunch 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday.
Dinner 5-10 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday
