I try Alo Beirut Lebanese Kitchen in Leicester and it burns my throat

I’m no authority on Lebanese cuisine, but the chicken shawarma bowl I ordered from Alo Beirut was massively overloaded with sour flavors. The food was covered in colorful but strong pickles – bell pepper, chilli and some purple – and eating my way through it I struggled to achieve a nice balance of flavors as the back of my throat began to burn.

Deeper, under a cooling layer of herbs, I came across some chunks of cucumber that looked exactly what I needed, but were either pickled or covered in a nice tart dressing. He got a bit much.

Alo Beirut is a little place on Narborough Road in Leicester and according to one guy on Google – where it has an impressive 4.9 out of 5 based on 145 reviews – it’s the best Lebanese place in the Midlands.

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It may be true, but it didn’t suit my taste buds. There was plenty of chicken in the bowl, alongside saffron rice, fattoush salad and hummus, but for £12.99 I wasn’t all that impressed.

Yes, there were a lot of ingredients and a lot of beautiful colors. But it was just a fiery onslaught of vinegar – to which you could add a squeeze of a lemon wedge if it wasn’t already sharp enough for you.

The last shawarma I had was just across the road at the Istanbul restaurant on Narborourgh Road, and it was a simple, brilliant dish that had raised my expectations for Alo Beirut. But the Lebanese version just didn’t do it for me.

Maybe I can’t handle acid? As a hot side dish, I ordered some hara battered fries with coriander, garlic and spicy sauce.

It was a reasonably generous amount of food for £6.99 and enjoyed nothing like the shawarma bowl, although it did come with a wedge of lemon in case it all tasted a bit too alkaline for pickle lovers.

For dessert I ordered a £4.99 basbousa, which is a semolina, coconut cake topped with a cherry and drizzled with syrup. You don’t hear much about semolina these days, and I was only keen to try it for nostalgic reasons – and by the time I got around to eating it, I was just hoping to find something nice to say.

Was well. A bit heavy.

Verdict

The food at Alo Beirut looks absolutely stunning – a rainbow of hues, a wide variety of textures and shapes. But most mouthfuls left me feeling like I’d splashed clean vinaigrette down my throat.

Score: 2/5

Hygiene rating: 5/5

Hello Beirut dLittle did we know we would be reviewing it and we paid for our meal.