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Julia's is known for it’s good burgers, delicious pain perdu and tasty pasta... Although its location is not one of the best Julia's, located in Le Mall Horsh Tabet, has some seriously good food to offer.
In this review, I would like to ask you to forget about the location. Try not to look at the decor, forget about the feel of the place and accept the rudimentary service and enjoy the food.
The place:
- Up to on the first floor is a square space separated from Le Mall by Chinese-style curtains.
- Inside is a space covered with a parquet floor and decorated with a wood structure in the middle of the restaurant.
- Fake flowers delineate one area from another.
- Dark wooden tables fill in the space, they’re surrounded by brown leather chairs.
- A salad bar occupies the space next to the bar, a bar with dozens of whisky bottles.
- Sofas here and there make you feel like you’re sitting in a saloon.
The menu:
- Starters and salads
- Salty crepes
- The paninis
- The pasta
- Homemade specialities
- The grill
- Fish and shrimps
- Desserts
- Waffles and crepes
- Ice cream
As we sat a cup containing two sticks of bread landed on our table with olive, chickpeas and soy sauce dip. Two single warm and fluffy bread fingers covered with sesame and black sesame seeds. Yes, only two!
A gentle waiter approached us to help with the order. He knows his menu by heart and proposes some specialties subtly without it looking like he's up-selling.
Lunch is served:
- Feuilleté au fromage fêta: Served with fresh tomatoes, mango and balsamic vinegar. I loved it! A bed of puff pastry topped with a load of feta cream topped in turn with a hollow tomato and a handful of diced fresh mangos. You can't imagine how nice this combination is. The flaky puff pastry below, the acidic cheese cream, the sweet mangos and cold, firm tomato, it doesn't look too appetizing but it tastes like heaven.
- Churchill panini: Smoked salmon, cream cheese, tomato and fries with chives. A generous plate, lots of ingredients, good salmon, a nice lemon touch, but with a bread that spoils all the experience. A tiny sandwich that's toasted to the extreme, breaking hard, cold and not even chewable. I imagined something fresh, fluffy, tender, not bread turned into a kaaka. Simply order the bread less toasted and the rest is very good.
- Spaghetti al limone y pollo: Citrus lemon cream, fresh mint, grilled chicken and confit tomatoes. Generously filled, a round plate comes covered with spaghetti floating in a white sauce with four chunks of chicken and two slices of grilled tomatoes. To start with, I like the size of pasta used, followed by the richness and intensity of this unique sauce before even reaching the juicy gender chicken and their premium marinade. A nice citrusy flavor takes over your taste buds at once and it rocks. I'd change the plate it’s served on though.
- Julia's Shrimps: Grilled tempura shrimp, caramelized sauce, sesame seeds, sautéed vegetables, basmati rice. Four shrimp, jumbo prawns grilled to perfection, juicy, it doesn’t even need a sauce to be enjoyed and comes served with a portion of rice with the sauce on the side. With this is a bag of puff pastry filled with sautéed vegetables, crunchy buttery vegetables.
Desserts:
- The famous pain perdu, surely one of the best this country, cannot and should not be missed. A square bread, a simple unsophisticated bread soaked to perfection, moist and adequately sweet, not bready and not chewy, not smelling of eggs or tasting of milk, a pain perdu I recommend. A lightly crunchy border, a passionately fluffy heart and some guaranteed enjoyment to make you drool. The pain perdu floats in a caramel sauce to add the sweetness you expect from a dessert.
- Chocolate biscuit with vanilla ice cream and chocolate decorations. The biscuit au chocolat at Julias's is made of Nutella and they have a way of making the Nutella flavor come forward without overpowering the biscuits. Crunchy biscuits, firm chocolate without being too buttery, and a hint of Nutella at the end. It's a good one.
The pluses:
- I really like the food at Julia's.
The minuses:
- We were two, but the other two plates were not removed from the table.
- Our plates were not changed and the table was left as it was during lunchtime. We even finished dessert while having dirty plates on the table.
- Service needs a fix urgently!
- The management policy is "no pictures allowed"? If that's true and I'm sure it's not, they’d better avoid this subject with customers next time, it pushes people away.
With a location that’s not great for a restaurant, lost on the first floor of a calm mall, Julia’s food is still as popular as the Diplomat Lounge, down on Monot Street.
