Feast Your Eyes

Middle East Feast

By Lori Midson, 5280 Denver's Mile-High Magazine
Oct/Nov, 2001

Rubey Drive, between Washington Street and Sixth Avenue in "new" Golden, is the last place on earth you'd expect to find some of the area's best Middle Eastern food. Located in a brand spanking new strip mall, and wedged between a Subway Sandwich shop and The Spot Bar and Grill, Ali Baba Grill is the kind of place you'd likely stumble upon venturing down Colorado Boulevard's Middle Eastern restaurant row.

Perhaps this is why Hassam Essmail, who owned, and then sold LaZeez on Colorado Boulevard, decided to part ways with his competition, venturing further west to Golden, where foodstuffs such as tabbouleh, sumac, and shawarma are a novelty. The sign on the door boasts, "we bring the best alternative food to Golden -- where every meal is a treasure."

Truer words were never spoken. Of the dozens of Middle Eastern restaurants dotting the metro area, few offer the combination of spruced up surroundings, complete with white tablecloths and little beaded chandeliers, and meticulously prepared food, so stimulating and lively, it beckons you back.

Such is the nightly ritual at Ali Baba, where first-time diners vow never to eat Middle Eastern anywhere else, and regulars go back two or three times in the same week. On y four visits here, I've seen only one server, and at times, he can be harried, forgetting to refill water glasses or take away empty plates, but he desperately aims to please. For food this good, I won't complain.

Hummus ($3.95) is spotted on every Middle Eastern menu in town, but here the dish is "asli," which means "the real thing" in Turkish. It's a wonderfully creamy, delicious mash of garbanzo beans, tahini, lemony tang, and garlic zip, glistening with drizzled olive oil. Its side kick, baba ghanoush ($3.95), is fabulously smoky, no doubt the result of expert broiling and charring of eggplant. My favorite appetizer is the fava beans ($3.95), a dish Hannibal Lector would have undoubtedly savored. Just take one earthy spoonful and the flavors -- lemon, cumin, garlic, and olive oil -- dance on your tongue. All these dips are made for pita scooping, and while I wish the pita bread was homemade, it's nonetheless soft and warm, with plenty of grill marks.

The tabbouleh ($3.95) is extremely fresh, but lemony to a fault, and its confetti of parsley is overpowering. The fettoush ($3.95) is a disappointment, relying inexplicably on iceberg lettuce as its primary ingredient. The other elements are there -- cucumbers, tomatoes, sumac, mint, toasted pita bread crumbles, and parsley -- but the lettuce has to go.

Not so, though with Ali Baba's main course. Take a braised lamb shanks ($10.95), meltingly sweet and tender, and the bathed in an aromatic, cinnamon-tinged sauces with fresh vegetables. These are flavors that make life worth living. True, it's an eye-popping amount of food, but it's so good you'll clean your plate.

The chicken kabobs ($9.95) and beef kabobs ($9.95) are both perfectly grilled -- the meats are charred on the outside, but moist on the inside - and served with steaming mounds of rice as well as a serviceable salad, pita bread, and hummus.

What may be the city's best chicken shawarma ($8.95) is Ali Baba's gift to Golden. Marinated in apple cider vinegar, cardamom, cinnamon, and much more, the juggling of spices is right on the money.

ALI BABA GRILL

109 Rubey Dr., Golden

303-279-2228
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THE DRAW
Gloriously good Middle Eastern food.