What's cooking at Carla's?

AT Carla's Lebanese Bistro, diners get to choose from some of Lebanon's favourite home-made recipes.

The bistro situated on the main Budaiya highway at Cypress Gardens, provides a cozy setting with traditional Lebanese cultural paraphernalia and comfortable wooden furnishings.

Managing partner, Carla Abouhamad, 34, from Saar, said: "When we opened the restaurant, we wanted to offer the kingdom's diners a healthy option in a comfortable and homely atmosphere with freshly cooked home-made food... and it's a very Lebanese way of cooking, our way of cooking."

The recipes featured in Carla's menu are dishes specially crafted through the generations of her family back in Lebanon including her grandmother's secret recipes.

Aside from the typical appetisers such as cold and hot mezza and grills, the menu offers a range of dishes from the roots of authentic Lebanese cuisine. She said: "The food we cook here is very healthy - we have the grills, the green leaves and the vegetables alongside the meat. Unlike in some restaurants, we don't use too much grease on our food such as ghee or butter, it's just like cooking at home."

Carla and her husband, an advertising professional, moved to Bahrain 10 years ago and launched the outlet in November 2005 with a series of interesting advertisements asking 'what is Carla cooking today?'.

She said: "I used to get calls from people asking me 'so what IS cooking today?'. It was really funny."

Carla's offers a range of scrumptious dishes including kebbeh bil saniya - baked ground meat with onion, burghul and spices in layers, shish barak - dumplings filled with kabab meat with yoghurt sauce and served with white rice, sheikh al mehchi - stuffed eggplants in tomato, kafta b sinayeh - baked kafta with tomato sauce served with saffron rice, ouzeh - oriental style lamb with rice and nuts, poulet a l'orientale - chicken with oriental rice, warak enab and koussa w castaletta - stuffed grape leaves with baby marrow and lamb cutlets and moghrabieh bil dajaj - Lebanese couscous with chicken.

The bistro also caters extensively for vegetarian diners with different types of kibbeh including pumpkin and spinach and sun dried tomato stuffing. Beverages include fresh juices alongside Lebanese favourites such as fresco sharab, amar el dive or jellab.

Desserts on offer include basboussa, katayef bil ashta, mhallabiya, aasmmaliyeh and biscuit au chocolate. The outlet also offers buffet lunches every Friday.

Carla shared one of the restaurant's favourite recipes with GufWeekly readers: Chicken with molokhiya leaves.

She said: "Molokhiya is cooked all over the Middle East. However, I like to think that the Lebanese version makes the most of the leaves through the delicate preparation required. They are similar to large mint leaves, but are thicker and tougher."

In Bahrain fresh molokhiya leaves are available in the summer months. However the dried leaves are a good alternative.