My husband and I recently had the opportunity to join Jason and Rachel Perlow at Tabboule in Ridgewood. Tabboule offers fine Lebanese cuisine in a casual, comfortable setting. Parking for the restaurant is easy and plentiful, as the restaurant is located in the Kings Shopping Center on N. Maple Ave.
We began our mid-day marathon eating session with traditional Lebanese Za’atar Chips. Rich with spices of thyme, sesame and sumac, very savory, very addicitive! Red Lentil soup accompanied the chips, and Rachel had the fabulous idea to sprinkle some crumbled Za’atar chips on the soup. It was perfect; like Saltines in chicken noodle soup - only much better!
Next the cold appetizers arrived tabbouleh, hummus, babaghanoush, stuffed grape leaves, and muhamara.
I love a good Irish Pub as much as I love conch shacks and cured pork. St. James Gate Publick House, 167 Maplewood Avenue, is everything an Irish Pub should be and a wee bit more.
St. James exudes the quintessence of an Irish Pub; it s warm, inviting, convivial, comfortable, and just a little bit dark.
The story behind the restaurant is just as authentic as the floor boards, which were sourced from Guinness vats in Dublin, Ireland.
The tale goes something like this: Irishman, John Meade, spent thirty years as a beer salesman. He did well, but yearned to become a Publickan. In 2003, he did just that and transformed the location on Maplewood Avenue from a men s clothing store into St. James Gate Publick House, taking the very name from the bottle of Guinness. To make his pub as authentic as possible, Mr. Meade imported furniture from Ireland, and even integrated wood from the Guinness vats into the wooden bar floor.
