Check out the kitchen and dining room at Skewers in our slideshow.
3991 Richmond
Houston, TX 77027
Category: Restaurant > Greek
Region: Greenway Plaza
|
0 user reviews
|
Write A Review |
|
|
11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays through Saturdays, noon to 10 p.m. Sundays.
• Grape leaves: $3.99
• Hummus: $4.99
• Baba ghanoush: $4.99
• Baked chicken lunch special: $8.99
• Gyro lunch special: $8.99
• Skewers salad: $9.99
• Kafta kebab: $11.99
• Lamb chops: $17.99
• Hookah: $12.99
Read More:
• Slideshow: A Lebanese Lunch at Skewers
• Blog post: Low-cost lunch at Skewers.
Skewers
3991 Richmond, 713-599-1444.
I spent a leisurely evening last week at Skewers sitting on the breezy patio with some crisp Lebanese wine and my friend Jessica, who is shortly moving to Turkey. In retrospect, for our last meal together, perhaps I shouldn't have taken her to a place with food so similar to the food she'll soon be eating in Istanbul. But we were there with a purpose: re-teaching her to smoke shisha.
Toward the end of the meal, I ordered our hookah. The food had been rather dull and sluggish — a rare event at Skewers, to be sure — and I was hoping the hookah would perk us up as well as be a valuable learning experience.
"Can we get a hookah with apple?" I asked our young waiter, who had the clumsy charm of a puppy trying to please its owners.
"Oh, apple will be too strong," he said. After all the shy smiles and deference, I was surprised to see him taking a stand on something. "You need to cut it with mint."
"Fair enough!" I replied. "Bring us some apple-mint!" He did, and it was splendid, both subtly fruity and refreshing at once. Perhaps I should have taken his other quiet recommendation earlier in the evening and chosen the caramel-sauced bread pudding he encouraged us to get over the chocolate baklava.
That baklava was a low point in the meal. Normally, the baklava at Skewers is quite good, heavier on the phyllo dough and pistachios than on honey or cinnamon, a nice change of pace from baklava that's soaked through and sugary.
In this incarnation, Hershey's chocolate syrup was awkwardly and inadvisedly added to a regular triangle of the flaky pastry, but I'd been eager to try one of the many twists that Skewers tries out on its standard Lebanese fare. Ditto the Skewers salad, which had a strikingly bland honey-mustard sauce coating salty flecks of halloum, downtrodden avocado slices and what my mother has always called "crab with a 'k.'" Jessica's garlic-laced lamb chops were far better, but cooked to a disappointing medium-well and served with a cucumber salad that couldn't have been marinated for more than two minutes.
Oddly, it was our appetizer tray that saved the meal, with perky spinach pies and blissfully sour stuffed grape leaves that reminded me strongly of the warak enab my best friend always brings home from her Lebanese mother's home in Dearborn, Michigan. Those, and the silky-smooth bowl of hummus I'd ordered on the side, brightened with sweet paprika and a glossy slick of olive oil on top.
It turns out that the rule here, settled on after many wonderful meals, is to stick to the classic, un-Americanized Lebanese food. That's what Skewers does best.
_____________________
Curiously, for as much as I prefer the unadulterated Lebanese cuisine at Skewers, the other thing that keeps me coming back to the restaurant anchoring a stone-sided strip center at Richmond and Weslayan is how broadly appealing the rest of the place is. Unlike at other favorites like Cafe Mawal or Abdallah's, I can actually get a glass of wine at Skewers, Lebanese wine like you'd be able to order at a cafe in Beirut. Or Turkish beer. Or a baklava-flavored cappuccino (not that I'd want that last one, but it's nice to know the option is there).
In the dining room, modern black walls contrast with sculptural red lights that jut from the ceiling and floors like massive pillars of carnelian-colored quartz. It's all a part of the brand-new aesthetic that new owners Hadi and Sophie Elhage introduced when Skewers reopened earlier this year after an electrical fire took them out last October. (If you're keeping count, Houston, that's three restaurants that have reopened after devastating fires this year.)
When it first opened ten years ago, Skewers had a generous BYOB policy, but that's now been replaced by a smartly curated wine list featuring a small selection of "standards" like Chateau Ste. Michelle and La Crema mixed in with more exotic offerings, like the Chateau Ksara Rose I enjoyed on the patio that evening, or a kosher Barkan Merlot from Israel. And for coming summer days, a $28 bottle of Chateau Ksara Blancs de Blancs — made with a blend of Sauvignon, Sémillon and Chardonnay grapes — would be a sweet selection, although the markup is a bit on the high side.
Much like Fadi's or Arpi's Phoenicia Deli, Skewers used to be entirely self-serve — you and your little tray trundled past a steam table and then sat down with your food. These days, Skewers has a semi-self-serve routine at lunch and full table service in the evenings. It's much more fitting with the sleek look, the wine list and the $18 filet mignon that's served at night. It was a smart move.
At lunch, however, the semi-self-serve situation tends to rear its less attractive head. The steam table and self-serve drinks are still there, but now you place your entire order with the cashier at the end of the line; the steam table is only there for you to preview your sides before you order them. I'm not the only one who's been confused by this new set-up, as nearly every person in line with me each time I've eaten lunch at Skewers is initially baffled about where to order and from whom.
Skewers was by far the worst lunch I've had in *any* Houston restaurant, ever. Crappy, dry pita, school-paste hummus, dessicated, lifeless chicken, grease abounding. Makes me shudder to remember it.
Just out of curiosity, how long ago was this? Because I've gotten the hummus four times in a row now and have never been disappointed with it. Ditto the pita bread.
Ive been here a few times and on each occasion the service has been unsatisfactory. For starters, ive found other customers wandering around unsure of the ordering process, please do something to make that clear. My issue is that both times I've been, the waitstaff has been slow, uninformed, and they've been out of things at 5 pm (make more then?). Also management, condescending. Veiled, but condescending. On a lunch break, I had been waiting for change for 10 minutes from the server. So, I proceed to go to the register up front to pay. I am then POINTED back to my seat, (seriously??) by the gentleman at the front, with a very fake smile (not cool). That's not the way to treat people that are giving you money. My prediction: won't be here long.
Same question as above - when were your visits? I ask because new owners took over late last year and there have been quite a few changes since then.
The apple and mint shisha was such a good call. I wonder if I can get the combo in Istanbul? I'm still thinking about those spinach and cheese pies. Delicious.
While you are completely entitled to your opinion about the taste of the chocolate baklava, I must point out that Skewers does NOT use Hershey's syrup or Hershey's chocolate in their chocolate baklava recipe. The chocolate syrup is actually Ghirardelli and the chocolate interior is a specialty dark chocolate. As a frequent customer, I actually asked for the ingredients before I tried the concoction (which I actually find to be delicious). I would advise you to ask before you print an assumption about the recipe.
You're correct. I shouldn't have assumed it was Hershey's syrup, no matter how similar the taste. I'm still quite a fan of the regular baklava, however.
So I have a slightly off-topic question: what is the fascination with hookah smoking, especially among the anti-cigarette crowd?
~EdT.
