Phoenician Palace looks to expand its Middle Eastern menu

Warwick - Maybe it was the guy insisting on ordering a hamburger who finally brought about the change. Or maybe it was the woman who said she never eats Middle Eastern cuisine - even after her adult daughter assured her that Shish Taouk is no more mysterious than its basic ingredient. That would be grilled marinated chicken. Then again, it might be the people who fear that all Middle Eastern food is painfully spicy, which it is not. In any case, after 18 months in business on Main Street in Warwick, the owners of the Phoenician Palace have decided to augment their Lebanese dishes with some American favorites to attract a wider patronage. Hungry customers still will be able to order such traditional Lebanese fare as labne, sujuk, kabobs and hummus but they’ll also have a choice of some domestic standbys such as mozzarella sticks, coconut shrimp, steaks, a couple of pasta dishes and, yes, burgers. Some of the new dishes are available now. The revised menus will be on the Palace’s tables by the end of the month. “Ever since we opened, we’ve had some people come in and say they’d never tried our cuisine and weren’t about to start,” said Barbara Albaroudy who opened the place with her husband Mansour in the fall of 2006. The Albaroudys also discovered while chatting with their customers that an unusually high percentage of them seem to travel fairly long distances to reach the Phoenician Palace at 18 Main St. “We have people coming from Goshen, Vernon, Monroe and even from Milford, Pa.,” Barbara Albaroudy said, adding that when the 25 cadets of the Arabic Club at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point looked for a place to have a night out, they, too, traveled a distance to the Phoenician Palace. “But we don’t get as many as we’d like from the Warwick area itself,” she said. The Albaroudys are at a loss to explain this, but they anticipate that the new menu will lure more local diners. The willingness of patrons to venture beyond their hometowns for a Middle Eastern meal seems to bear out findings by the National Restaurant Association. On one hand, Middle Eastern restaurants have been gaining in popularity for about 20 years, the association has determined. Yet at the same time, the Phoenician Palace may be the only Middle Eastern place in the geographic area that encompasses Goshen, Vernon, Milford and Monroe. Barbara Albaroudy knows of no others. In a survey conducted several years ago, the National Restaurant Association, which is based in Washington, noted that Middle Eastern was one of four ethnic cuisines showing the most significant growth in popularity since 1994, the others being Thai, Japanese and Caribbean. And when the restaurant organization surveyed 1,282 professional chefs last fall, it found 58 percent agreeing that Middle Eastern cuisine is currently very popular or a perennial favorite. Even with the addition of more familiar entrees, most of Mansour Albaroudy’s specialties will remain on the menu. These include the aforementioned labne (a tart yogurt cheese prepared with mint, garlic and olive oil), kibbeh (lamb served with crushed wheat, pine nuts and onion), and hummus (ground chickpeas mixed with lemon juice, sesame paste and garlic).