We had a truly marvelous meal at Sarma tonight. We ordered 5 items, and didn’t elect to buy any of the “walk around” dishes. Our first plate was the fava pate which was totally different than I expected. It was a firm pate with an herb salad of fresh dill, parsley, mint and arugula on top. On the side were four endive leaves with blanched fave beans and there were exactly 5 capers for acidity. I was surprised by this dish; not at all what I expected, but by the third bite I was hooked. The dish did need a bit more acidity. I think just a bit of lemon would have done the trick. We took portions of the pate, nestled them into the endive leaf and munched away.
Next came the Shrimp. The menu calls it “moroccan fried shrimp charred cabbage slaw, pickled carrots, pistachio.” I am allergic to shrimp so this was all about Mr. smt. But, he insisted that I had to have some of the slaw. OMG!!! This was like crack it was so good. Never found a pickled carrot in the dish, but the slaw had an amazing dressing of [perhaps] harissa, tahini or maybe sesame oil, and something else that I couldn’t identify. The shrimp were, I am told, cooked perfectly and the coating was crispy and delicious. The serving was huge compared to our many previous visits. The first miscalculation of our ordering.
Next, the “cauliflower fatte black garlic tahini, green chickpea stew, pine nuts” arrived, and at this point, I was in heaven. Roasted and fresh stewed chickpeas, the most amazing flavors from the black garlic tahini and these lovely cauliflower florets that had been blanched and then grilled. Again, the serving size was larger than usual.
While we were enjoying the cauliflower the lamb tantuni with ramps, horseradish, bibb lettuce and hot pepper pickles arrived. Again, it was a veggie wrap. The horseradish was in a labneh, instead of ramps there were pickled something. The lamb was delicious and the hot peppers, both yellow and red were delicious if used sparingly. Again, we piled the fillings onto a vegetable and munched away.
The last item to arrive was the "broccoli cherry tomato + garlic confit, lentils, spicy peanut dukkah " and to be honest, neither of us liked this even a little bit. The broccoli was charred but not cooked. The lentils were whole black dal that just weren’t cooked either. The tomatoes with garlic confit was lovely, but we just didn’t eat this.
Our waiter was very good tonight, timing our plates so that they were not all on the table at the same time. Water was refreshed regularly. And, when he saw that we didn’t eat the broccoli, nor did we want to take it home, he took it off of the bill. He got that amount as an addition to the standard tip. We are going to this restaurant enough these days that the wait staff is recognizing us. We want them to remember us fondly. Made our next reservation as we left and then walked up that hill to our home.
