Pages

Monday, August 04, 2008

Eat & Fit

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, one of the things I liked about Toronto was knowing that I had the world's cuisine at my fingertips. I could easily find a restaurant of almost any ethnicity and often within walking distance of where I lived.

Here in Halifax, it's not quite the same. There's not as much cultural representation, and what is available is definitely more expensive. But I'll grab any chance I can get to try a new restaurant, and sample new cuisine. The latest restaurant was Eat & Fit, an Iranian restaurant that's just opened on Quinpool Road. Quinpool Road seems to have become a Middle Eastern hub - with about 4 Greek restaurants, an Iranian restaurant now, and a Middle Eastern restaurant, called Aleppo, in place of the now-closed Ethiopia Restaurant.

To celebrate another pay-day, a small group of us at work went out for lunch. We chose Eat & Fit because it had an online menu, and because reading said menu initiated cravings for delicious food that lasted most of the morning.

Though there were mixed reviews of the food, I quite enjoyed it. It was what I had expected it to be, and definitely very tasty! We started with an appetizer: Kashk-o-Badenjan with pita and then followed it with Friday's Special, Ghormeh Sabzi. Each of us ordered the same, which wasn't perhaps the greatest idea, but the dish sounded truly delicious and none of us could resist (I'm assuming). Our server, who I assume was an Iranian and was very familiar with the dishes, introduced us a little to the food. With the Ghormeh Sabzi, he instructed us to puncture the cooked lemon in the stew to give the dish a tangy flavour. He warned us that some people (who aren't used to Iranian food) find the dish unappealing, but to look beyond it's appearance. The dish was excellent - very tangy (thanks to the entire cooked lemon you can see it covered in stew in the photo above), hearty, and fairly healthy I would expect.

We ended our meal with a date roll and an aromatic Iranian tea spiced with cardamom. We were instructed to put a sweeten the tea by putting a sugar cube in our mouths and drinking the tea through it....but this was difficult to do when you were also trying to eat a date roll.

Anyway, I would definitely visit this place again and recommend it to friends and family. Unfortunately while we were there Friday 12:30-1:30ish we were the only people in the restaurant. I just hope it gets enough business to keep it open.

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Hi Andrea. I found you through Andrew and Friedel. I am a Halifax native now living in London, UK. When I visit Halifax later this month I would like to visit Eat & Fit. It sounds lovely.

Obviously we have no shortage of interesting places to eat here in London (although they can be expensive). It's good to see that Halifax is becoming this way as well. Middle Eastern food is so tasty!

Andrea said...

Hi Sarah, I've been lurking on your blog, also found through Friedel and Andrew's website too.

Halifax has no shortage of Middle Eastern food, that's for sure. Lots of Lebanese and Greek, and a few Turkish and Iranian thrown into the mix now. I'm sorry to say we no longer have an Ethiopian restaurant (this makes me a little sad) but perhaps another one will come along some day.