Al Wadi Brings Traditional Lebanese Recipes to West Roxbury

Walid Massad sees no reason to mess with classic Lebanese recipes when the originals continue to please the palate so well.

"Lebanese food has a lot of flavor, from ingredients like garlic, lemon juice and fresh mint," said Massad, the head chef at Al Wadi, a new Lebanese restaurant that opened in mid-August on the VFW Parkway, in the former home of Chinese restaurant Spring Blossom.

Massad, who cooked for years in his native Beirut, said he's visited some Middle Eastern restaurants in the U.S. that try to reinvent classic mezze plates such as hummos or baba ganoush.

"But we keep the old, traditional recipes," Massad said. "We do it liked they used to do in the old country – dishes that have been around for thousands of years."

That means hummos that relies on chickpeas, garlic, tahini sauce, extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, falafel ground from fava beans and chickpeas blended with custom spices, baba ganoush made with roasted eggplant puree, tahini sauce, lemon juice and olive oil, and vegetarian grape leaves encasing a mixture of parsley, onions, tomatoes and rice with a hint of lemon.

And those are just the vegetarian dishes: Meat lovers will gravitate toward Al Wadi's beef, chicken or lamb kabobs, seasoned and grilled on skewers until they're smoky, with vegetables interlaced with the meat.

Seafood lovers aren't left out, either: There's sea bass, rainbow trout, or cumin-dusted whitefish topped with caramelized onions over rice, drizzled with tahini sauce and sprinkled with mixed nuts.

"Most people think that Lebanese food is spicy, but it's not," Massad said. "We use a lot of herbs."

Al Wadi enters the West Roxbury dining scene at a time when debuting a new restaurant remains a precarious venture. Some diners are hesitant to try new establishments, not wanting to waste their precious dining-out dollars on what might be a subpar meal.

But judging from Al Wadi's already sparkling online reviews, a dining room that fills up quickly in the evenings and a kitchen that is already doing significant takeout business, it seems diners have met a restaurant experience they like.

While Al Wadi's curb appeal, on the VFW Parkway, isn't the prettiest, the restaurant's owners didn't skimp in transforming the interior space. The open dining room was refurbished with hardwood floors throughout, an impressive wine rack at the entryway, a gleaming backlit bar, and curvaceous mirrored wall portals that look straight out of an Arabic temple, illuminated by ever-changing colored lights.

Lunch and dinner prices are reasonable, with appetizers starting at $5 and entrees starting at $10.

But success all comes back to the restaurants well-executed take on Lebanese classics. The kitchen's secret weapon is that everything it serves is extremely fresh, with an eye toward its presentation.

Massad and his staff refuse to prepare tabouleh early in the morning, because even if the salad – a mix of bulgur, finely chopped parsley and mint, tomato and onion, seasoned with lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil -- might still taste OK later in the day, the vibrant green parsley would turn darker and appear less appetizing.

"If the customers are happy, I'm happy," Massad said.