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Al Halabi Restaurant
1638 Bank St., 613-731-7171, alhalabi-restaurant.com
Open: Monday noon to 8 p.m., Wednesday to Sunday noon to 9 p.m., closed Tuesday
Prices: most main courses between $20 and $30, family meals from $77 to $135, buffet $35 a person
Access: slight ramp to front door

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the memo before chef Abdullah Alosman’s grandest culinary feat took place two months ago outside Al Halabi Restaurant, his year-and-a-half-old business on Bank Street just south of Heron Road.

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As shown on Al Halabi’s social media, Alosman and his team cooked what he calls Canada’s largest kebab, measuring about 65 metres long, in the restaurant’s parking lot. The epic ground-beef creation fed hundreds of people after its was divided into more than 1,000 sandwiches and given away, Alosman told me this week.

In Ottawa’s crowded field of Middle Eastern restaurants, perhaps a sense of spectacle is required to stand out. Having dined twice at Al Halabi this month, I can say that it indulges in spectacles night in, night out. Whereas some other businesses promise dinner and a show, at Al Halabi, dinner can be the show.

Last weekend, four of us had Al Halabi’s family barbecue meal ($89.99) that was just one metre long rather than 65. It consisted of 13 char-grilled, halal skewers (three each of beef chunks, ground beef, ground chicken and chicken cubes, and one of chicken wings), served on a bed of cardamom-studded rice, plus side orders of salad, hummus and garlic sauce.

In the centre of our platter was a sparkler awaiting its glorious destiny. Delivered to our table separate was a small pail that contained dry ice. Before we ate, a server lit the sparkler and poured water on the dry ice. Cue sparks, smoke and smiles all around.

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“We need a little bit of a show, so people come, try everything. People are all about social media,” said Alosman, who came to Ottawa as a refugee in 2017.

Fog and pyrotechnics aside, the rice and kebabs were pretty good. I would rank the juicier chicken skewers over the beefier ones, were you to order some kebabs just for yourself.

Alosman told me he had a restaurant in Aleppo that could serve 500 people, and you get a sense that he enjoys feeding larger parties or festivities, be they holiday celebrations or birthday parties, especially if a bit of theatricality can be added to the experience.

Videos continuously shown on the large-screen TVs in Al Halabi’s dining room show Alosman working at a cart that’s been wheeled into his restaurant’s dining room.

In one clip, Alosman frees a whole, rice-stuffed chicken from a thick casing of salt after the bird spent five hours in the oven. Of course, there is a ring of fire surrounding the chicken on the cart, and Alosman, wearing flame-resistant gloves, showers the chicken with flaming salt before he prepares it for serving.

In another clip, Alosman prepares a massive and long-baked beef dish, finishing it with honey and pistachios, drizzled or dropped from on high.

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We didn’t have the forethought to order either of these special dishes in advance. But rather than dine a la carte during my other visit to Al Halabi, we indulged in eating as much as we could from its buffet, which fills a long, much-decorated table on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

The buffet ($35) includes about 40-odd choices, from dips and salads to a multitude of stews to mandi, the Middle Eastern rice dish made with chicken or lamb, to “broasted” chicken, which is pressure-cooked fried chicken.

As with any buffet, some items likely degraded while they remained at the table over time. In some cases, those items might well have been better had they been served a la carte. But as a friend said when he contrasted visiting the buffet with choosing a main course plus a side bowl of rice: “Do you want 40, or do you want two?”

We opted to sample as much as possible, and we tried to time our trips to the buffet when trays were being replenished.

Broasted chicken fresh from the pressure fryer was fantastically crisp, juicy and tasty. Helpings of chicken and lamb mandi did not disappoint, thanks to their long-cooked, tender meats. Chicken also starred in a tray completed with heaps of savoury freekeh, a green and earthy ancient grain. I was especially keen on dishes that involved tangy yogurt sauces. One involved chunks of beef while another featured zucchini stuffed with ground beef. Well-seasoned eggplant dips were quickly dispatched with slices of pita bread that were already on our table, in plastic bags.

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The only dessert that I’ve tried from Al Halabi was a serving of kunefe, the sweet, cheesy pastry. It’s a taste I have yet to acquire, I confess.

It’s often said that we eat first with our eyes. But whoever said that likely didn’t have sparklers and dry-ice flourishes in mind. As fleeting as those demonstrations were, they underscored Al Halabi’s obvious desire to please and entertain, which along with some pretty good Syrian food is hard to resist.

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