Garden Kebab House Does Chicken Right
Can yet another Halal offering near Penn Station survive all the competition? If you order carefully, Garden Kebab House just might turn you into a regular. Many items are beyond the ML budget, but the smaller platters and sandwiches still fit the bill and the stomach. Well, almost.
Nope, it’s not a street cart, but an actual brick-and-mortar just across the street from Penn Station on the south side. However, their tiny hectic space is hardly set up for lingering, especially with the constant foot traffic letting in a wintry draft. The waitress is frazzled by all the requests and maneuvering around the people waiting for their takeout. Your real reason to eat in would be getting your food fresh off the grill and request more warm bread. But if your office is close enough, do yourself a favor and grab your lunch to-go.
Most platters come with a bed of rice or bulgur. The meat to filler ratio on the smaller platters is just a bit too small to make me happy, though you can get an extra skewer for a few more bucks. Then again, if you’re not going for a brick in your stomach for the entire afternoon, their servings make sense.
What they lack in portions, they make up with quality meat and veggies. No need to challenge your stomach’s strength here. And even better are their grilled masters. I like nothing better than a good bit of char on my meat, with plenty of juiciness to bite into. Their doner and chicken adana satisfy, but the chicken kebab stands out. Maybe I’m just not a big fan of ground meat, but their cubes of whole chicken meat hit the spot for me. Too many midtown places grill the life outta chicken, but Garden Kebab’s grill masters manage to keep it tender.
I don’t dare say whether a place is Greek, Lebanese, Turkish, Israeli…especially if the place labels some menu choices as both gyro (Greek) and doner (Turkish). Instead, I drag my Turkish coworker with me to clear things up. He’s excited by “Brick Oven Pizza” written on the awning. It must be lahmacun (one of my favorite things in the world, awesome thin pies spread with spiced ground lamb), but it’s nowhere on the menu. When he asks the guys behind the grill in Turkish if there’s any lahmacun, they shake their heads. Not the answer we wanted to hear, but at least we know the place is Turkish!
Taking someone to eat their native cuisine rarely ends well, and unfortunately this attempt was no different. He ordered the Iskender Kebab, which looked promising, but after one bite with the yogurt sauce, and he was immediately put off by a sweetness in the yogurt. At $16, there’s little room for error. However, my Chicken Shish Kebab rings up at $9. All but one of the small platters are under $10, and sandwiches hover around $8.
Best part about a brick-and-mortar? A wood burning oven, and someone making fresh Turkish pide/bread! One time I ordered a platter to go after 2pm and got some sad packaged pita bread. Okay, the Brooklyn institution Damascus Bakeries is far from horrible, but packaged stale pita bread will never compare to bread fresh out of an oven. Do NOT go off-hours if you want your fresh pide.
Garden Kebab House, 252 West 31st Street (btw. 7+8th) 212-868-0080
Posted by KarenL at 11:30 am, December 19th, 2014 under Garden Kebab House, Turkish.
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Hey Fred… looks like there’s been another bit of a cock-up on the content front this week