Average food with below average service
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Cafe Baklava offers a pretty good menu with various Mediterranean dishes and Turkish kebabs made out of chicken, lamb, beef and pork. They also have a pretty good variety of meats and fish prepared in various Greek and Turkish sauces.
However, when you go beyond the house specialties, the food selection is pretty boring and you get the impression they're just repackaging the desserts they bought in bulk at Costco and selling to you at marked-up prices. Few of the desserts that I've tried on my visits there were a bit watery and did not make me a fun of the restaurant.
On arrival the customers are greeted with a serving of pita bread and hummus. The hummus is pretty good, although if you closed your eyes, the taste definitely reminds of guacamole sauce at a Mexican place. The quality of the entrees is ok, but nothing spectacular. Eggplant seems to be ever-present in all their menu offerings, with several entrees including eggplant as the main dish. The service is inevitably slow, and the waiters have taken a solemn oath to read the daily specials even if you already know what you want, and you explicitly tell the waiter you're ready to order.
The place does not have enough ambiance to justify for average food, and generally doesn't become one of those places that you dream of coming back to. If you want to avoid the slow and dull service at Cafe Baklava, but would still like to enjoy a good kebab, drive up Castro past El Camino to Rose's Market (across from Washington Mutual building), where they make all sorts of kebabs on open fire. They will make it faster than Cafe Baklava, too.