Dime a Dozen Lebanese Fare at Chateau Beirut

Wine

Once again, we bought a Groupon to check out a place that we had seen in our neighbourhood but never ventured to try. Chateau Beirut is a restaurant situated on 107 Street just off 102 Ave, just beside Khazana, an Indian restaurant we had visited previously using  a Groupon. From the outside Chateau Beirut looked quite spacious from the outside, which is even more evident once inside. With high ceilings, exposed brick and wood floors, the space itself has a lot of character, and is big and airy without seeming cavernous.

Hummus

The Groupon we had was for two people, and was good for two glasses of wine, an appetizer to share, two entrees and two desserts. Since the male human is unable to drink alcohol, they substituted his wine for fruit juice, which turned out to be a good thing as their wine had an undesirable acidic aroma to it and was just barely drinkable. After perusing their sizeable menu, we decided to start with hummus as an appetizer, as it was a dish we were familiar with and had a good frame of reference to compare to other Lebanese restaurants we’d been too. Their hummus was over salted for our liking but thankfully not to the point where it was inedible, however some other seasoning like pepper or garlic might have helped to balance the saltiness out.

Schwarma Combo

For the entrées, I order the schwarma combo with salad, chicken, feeb and rice. The humans found the feeb to be dry, while the chicken lacked flavor, the rice plain with no discernible seasoning, and the salad too heavily coated in a dressing that was highly salty. The only redeeming thing about the schwarma combo was the garlic butter, which was very garlicky in an enjoyable way and could be combined with the rice to flavor it. We also found the size of the entrées were quite small compared to other Lebanese restaurants we’d dined at, such as Parkallen Restaurant and La Shish Taouk.

Baklava

The server had left us the menu when we ordered so that we could peruse the dessert section of the menu after we were done with our entrees. In hindsight though, I’m not sure why he had bothered to leave them as when we ordered dessert, he informed us that the only dessert they had available was baklava, leaving us no choice but to try it. The baklava had a nice crispy exterior and was mildly sweet, definitely a solid tasting baklava but not as good as the one I’d had Parkallen Restaurant and the portion left me wanting more.

We found the service to be slow, which came as no surprise since the restaurant itself was large with only one server that we could see. Overall, the food ranged from mediocre at best to bland, overcooked, and over salted at worst. Considering the plethora of options that exist in Edmonton for Lebanese food, including but not limited to La Shish Taouk and Parkallen Restaurant to name a few, the small portions and inconsistent quality of Chateau Beirut’s food, it is not a place that I plan on returning to since I can get much better elsewhere.

Chateau Beirut
10185 107 St
Edmonton, AB  T5J 1J5
780-756-7676