When someone visits our restaurant and tries the food, one knows immediately the difference between a Restaurant Commercially set up and a Restaurant that happens to Feel like a home; a Home feel with it’s Cleanliness, Cleanliness, Cleanliness, Cleanliness. Our customers walk in and leave wanting to make an impression on us instead of the other way around. Just as if the visit was to relative’s house, and the attempt is to leave a good impression after their visit, to leave with their clean table and or give up their table to other guests or introduce themselves and talk to others totally strangers to them, just as everyone does when they find themselves […]
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Mediterranean Restaurants
Why is Mediterranean Cuisine so Popular? one asks. It is first and foremost as simple a cuisine as it gets; this cuisine uses basic, simple and earthly ingredients found all around the eastern and Northern edges of the Mediterranean Sea. The focus in the cuisine is on Hearty vegetables, leafy greens, olive oils and fresh and simple mixes of spices that the western world had long moved away from, but slowly getting back to. No complications here and no secrets to their mix either, it is as simple as the Trio as we always called in our house fresh Garlic, Fresh Lemon juice and the ever […]
Continue readingAaysh Essaraya at ALFORON aka’ “The Love Dessert”
In a late summer eve, the Pasha in one of his Saray’s (Palaces) in Lebanon, one of Turkey’s most admired colonies, screamed at his guards to bring him the best Pastry Chefs in the Saray. The Pashas at the time was the most feared dictators of their times, ruled without mercy, compassion or respect for human lives. The Story goes that the Pasha had his eyes on a beautiful woman and he wanted to make a big impression. His idea was to make her a dessert original enough to be unlike anything he has ever tasted, something that had never been done before. Summoning that […]
Continue readingLebanese restaurants, San Diego, California
There are many Restaurants you can go try and eat Lebanese food in, but none will be anywhere similar to ALFORON’s. It’s table service fine Lebanese Cuisine in a small and quaint setting. Built and decorated as an old house somewhere in the High Mountains of Lebanon, Alforon is not your typical high line Restaurant, it is your typical down to earth Fine Dining that resembles a Lunch or Dinner visit to an old friend’s home. Try it and you leave with that kind of impression and once you try the food you will be craving it all the time. Do you remember a dinner visit to […]
Continue readingA Lebanese Breakfast
Lebanese Breakfast by Fouad. I remember breakfasts of Labneh, Zaatar, mint, tomato and cucumber with fresh, paper thin markouk bread. On weekends, when time was a luxury we could afford, it would be kishk and qawarma hiding full cloves of garlic in creamy whiteness speckled with shallow fried pine nuts. We burnt our tongues in impatience and never learned to wait. Eggs with sumac were fluffy and crunchy, slowly fried with olive oil in pottery and devoured within seconds with farm fresh home made goat’s milk yoghurt. Every once in a while, mom would send dad down to the baker’s with a variety of containers […]
Continue readingHistory Of Humous
Humous, The word comes from Arabic: حمّصḥummuṣ[ ‘chickpeas’. Like many other Arabic loanwords and names, romanized spellings of the word in English can be inconsistent. The earliest use of the word hummus in English as noted by the Oxford English Among the common spellings for this word as transliterated into English are hummus, hommos and hoummos. The spelling humus is generally avoided in English as it is a homonym of humus (organic matter in soil), though this is the usual Turkish spelling and the OED indicates the word entered the English language from Turkish. The full Arabic name of the prepared spread is حُمُّص بطحينة […]
Continue readingLebanese Mediterranean Cuisine (A One of a Kind)
Lebanese cuisine includes an abundance of starches, fruits, vegetables, fresh fish and seafood; animal fats are consumed sparingly. Poultry is eaten more often than red meat, and when red meat is eaten it is usually lamb on the coast and goat meat in the mountain regions. It also includes copious amounts of garlic and olive oil, often seasoned by lemon juice. Rarely does a meal goes by in Lebanon which does not include these ingredients. Most often foods are either grilled, baked or sautéed in olive oil; butter or cream is rarely used other than in a few desserts. Vegetables are often eaten raw or pickled as […]
Continue readingFresh and Healthy Manakeesh / Flat Bread sandwiches Lebanese Style
Alforon uses the freshest of ingredients, no microwave, no forced heating of anykind.Fresh and Healthy Flat Bread sandwiches Lebanese / Arabic Style Imported Zaatar and Summac, Imported Olive Oil along with an imported idea to bake like old times, the soft flat bread sandwishes you use to roll when you were a kid, the toppings your Mom, Grand Ma and Aunts made for you growing up. It is all done the old fashion way, from dough preparation and handling to baking and storing. Our hand made state of the art oven insures even cooking and heat distribution with two long flames on either side of the plate and a controlled thermal heat underneath. Do you remember […]
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Manakeesh or Manaeesh… A little fact.
Manakeesh, Manaeesh, Manaqish or in singular form manousheh (Arabic: مناقيش manāqīsh; sometimes called معجنات mu‘ajjanāt ‘pastry’) is a popular food consisting of dough topped with wild thyme, cheese, or ground meat. Similar to a pizza, it can be sliced or folded, and it can either be served for breakfast or lunch. The word manaqish is the plural of the Arabic word manqūshah (from the root verb naqasha ‘to sculpt, carve out’), meaning that after the dough has been rolled flat, it is pressed by the fingertips to create little dips for the topping to lie in. Traditionally, Arab women would bake dough in a communal […]
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