Kuala Lumpur - Al Amar

I have favourite cuisines I tend to fall onto, I love Japanese food....I love Spanish tapas....I love home made Chinese food...and I do hate to admit it a little bit, but they are the very trendy cuisines you tend to find everywhere at the moment. But I promise that's not the reason I love them! What do you guys like eating?

While I was in Hong Kong, I had a friend who said her favourite type of food was Lebanese food and I was taken aback for a bit. Had I had Lebanese food before?

One of mum's favourite food magazines, is one called 'Flavours' in Malaysia, for those playing the macaron game, it's where she got her recipe for macarons and it's the only recipe that's almost always given her macarons shells feet. Excellent magazine!

This month, they had some of Malaysia's top chefs, vote on their top 30 or so restaurants, I flipped eagerly through trying to see if there was anything nearby me and lo and behold, the best Lebanese? Al Amar, right across the road in Pavillion.

It's sumptuous, it's magenta (or maybe a crimson?), its huge! I love the mixture of the ornate lamps and decor, with the pristine white tablecloths and all the cutlery perfectly in line. It's really an interesting contrast.

My family and I were pretty much the only people in the restaurant and we had a sweet girl from Myanmar as our waitress. The menu was quite sizeable, cold mezze, hot mezze, salads, things of the grill, platters...it's a pain when your eyes are bigger than your stomach isn't it?

Whilst my mum and I settled for some lovely mint tea (which I didn't realise had caffeine in it and kept me up all night...) I convinced my brother to get the non-alcoholic apple flavoured beer. Out of curiosity. It really just tastes like fizzy apple juice, but it was very refreshing. Don't know why they bother to sell it as non-alcoholic beer though...

Ah the bread. Oh the bread. I could smell it coming from two feet away, that warm, fresh from the oven smell was absolutely intoxicating. And aren't they just adorable? I thought they sort of looked like little cushions. They were lovely, fluffy and hot, a little pocket of hot air inside them. I don't normally swoon so hard over bread...but my goodness.

We started with two cold mezze dips, this one was the hommos, more commonly spelt hummus, a chick pea cream made of mashed chickpeas mixed with tahina sauce and topped with olive oil. This was just delightful, isn't the presentation just gorgeous? There was a nice citrus zing to it and the texture was just to die for.

Isn't this one presented beautifully too? I absolutely adore the colour! This was the Mhammara, spicy chilli and tomato paste mixed with tahina and topped with walnuts and bread crumbs. This really had a spicy bite to it, and was very much in your face, but oh so tasty. Tomatoes! I think I had this one first and then the hommos, it did initially make the hommos taste much less impressive, but the hommos subtle taste really comes out afterwards, would definitely recommend both of these!

In an attempt to be healthy we decided to get a salad, this was the Fattouch (I think), apparently a traditional 'must have' comprising of tomato, cucumber, lettuce, radish, served with their special sumac sauce. I honestly always forget you shouldn't get salads in Asia. They're always quite uninspiring and quite bland. This was really just a bowl full of lettuce with some extra stuff on top.

Then our hot mezze arrived! This was fried chicken liver, topped with pomegranate molasses. Aaaah. I get my love of offal from my dad. Whilst obviously not as fine as foie gras per say, it was still really quite rich. I didn't quite get the sweetness of the molasses, the meatiness of the liver was really all you needed. Perfect mouth size bites to pop in your mouth and purr happily about (or maybe that's just what I do...).

My dad's very well chosen choice, the Makanek, lamb sausages. These were piping hot and just had a wee bit of spice to them. Nothing negative to say about these!

My brother decided we should get the chicken chawarma platter, which I turned my nose down on initially, who needs french fries at a Lebanese restaurant? However though, the chicken itself was scrumptious, torn about and tender, my mum and I kept picking at it with our sneaky fingers. There was a nice char to it and it was served with a delicious garlic sauce. I'm assuming aioli.

My brother demonstrates how to stuff the flat bread provided and eat it.

We were nicely full but my brother also decided that we needed to have the lamb Kabbseh. Sadly, after the salad, this was the most lack lustre dish of the meal, shame it had to come out last. Meat wasn't so tender, with that kind of stewed texture, rice was underwhelming and flavours overall, not impressive.

We decided not to have some dessert....although we did indulge in a little shisha/hookah/whatever you call it. I don't do it on a regular basis!

An impressive interior, nice efficient and quiet service during lunch (I think I've seen belly dancers around this place at night) and overall quite tasty food. I would definitely stick to the mezze's next time and just get an assortment of them rather than getting the bigger items on the menu. Them seem to get the little guys right.

Al Amar

Top Floor, Pavillion

168 Jalan Bukit Bintang

55100 Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia