Restaurants

With its charming (if occasionally absent-minded) Israeli waitresses, Samis feels like a family-run affair. Dark wood tables contrast with bright walls of windows or mirrors. The menu offers several types of cuisine: simple grills, spicy Indian dishes (tandoori chicken and lamb tikka) and, most appealingly, Iraqi home cooking. Start with chicken soup, or a plate of houmous and shwarma thats big enough for a main course. Sticking to the Iraqi specialities, theres sambousek (pastry with meat filling), cracked wheat kubbeh or cigars of filo pastry with beef or chicken. Dishes such as kubah shwandar (rice and semolina dough enclosing minced meat) with sweet and sour beetroot sauce; meuleh (stuffed pepper or cabbage); and tbit (dark chicken slow-cooked with red rice and tender white beans) were distinctive and richly flavoursome. This is the kind of food youd find in an Iraqi home on a Friday evening. Many customers stick to the shwarma in pitta. Given the size of the portions, few will have room for a dessert of lockshen pudding, strudel or cinnamony baklava.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2008