I’ve come close to ordering take out from Wild Thyme a few times over the last couple years but when perusing the menu I did not find myself all that excited about what I saw.
Don’t get me wrong. I really like middle eastern food. It is full of bold and aromatic flavours and is as varied as the people that make it. But whenever I considered it it I had some other ethnic cuisine on my mind.
But as we were returning from a Costco run in Bellingham Sunday Merilynn mentioned she wanted to try it this weekend as she had heard good things. And as it happened they are open for lunch so we decided today was the day.
Unfortunately I did not realize she had no idea this was Lebanese food.
The restaurant has an interesting atmosphere. Spread over three units in an older building, the interior is terraced over three levels. Its larger than it looks, according more privacy than if it were one big room.
As neither of us are huge eaters, we often share an appetizer and a meal and that does us nicely.
Well whoops. We ordered way too much food.
Merilymn ordered Kaaek and dips.
The top 4 dishes on the left, hummus, baba ghanouj, house made yogurt and garlic.
The hummus was very good. The baba ghanouj I didn’t care for, but thats my dislike of eggplant, nothing to do with the quality I’m sure. The homemade yogurt was a bit funny, but had great flavour. The garlic was my favourite. Great garlic flavour with lots of wonderful EVOO.
The Kaaek, or Lebanese purse bread, is a common street food that is crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. This version has sumac and sesame seeds on the exterior and is hollow on the inside. That’s why it looks so big. It was the perfect vessel to scoop up those delicious dips with.
The other condiments you see on the table were to compliment my Lebanese style fried eggs with Sujuk sausage.
The sausage is made in house and is very fragrant. There’s a lot going on here, the flavours were complex. They were delicious. I did inquire as to what spices make up the flavors in this beef sausage and the answer I got was there’s too many to list. The eggs were done really well, soft,fried in olive oil for even more flavour. My breakfast also included a Kaaek, so we had three total.
I decided to give Lebanese coffee a try. It’s similar to Turkish, but infused with Cardamom.
The coffee was very strong, with the Cardamom flavour very present. Thus was the first time I’ve tried a coffee like this and I loved it.
As for the service, it did seem a bit slow. Other patrons who sat down after us were getting there food before us. I might have to chalk that up to them having to make the bread fresh for us though. The servers were certainly pleasant and attentive enough. They even moved us from our original two person table to a four-person table to accommodate all the dishes we were getting.
So yes, that’s way too much food for us.
And while I certainly enjoyed it, once was enough for Merilynn.
8/10