Fairuz Restaurant

Fairuz is a restaurant specialising in Lebanese cuisine and is situated right in the heart of Madrid.

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Fairuz is a famous Lebanese singer and actress who is extremely well-known in the Arabic world, as well as some other countries in the Far East, whose career has spanned decades from the 1950s to the present day. So, in recognition of her work, this Lebanese restaurant was named after her.

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In all honesty, it seemed like a good call to me because Fairuz is one of my favourite singers and, besides, I love Lebanese cuisine.

I came to know the Fairuz (the restaurant, not the singer) because I had had the intention of inviting all of my family to have dinner at a Lebanese place on the day of my university graduation. Given that Lebanese food is my favourite international cuisine, I searched for a decent restaurant online and read several positive comments about this restaurant in particular, so I decided to make a reservation.

Fairuz Restaurant has absolutely nothing to do with - and cannot be compared to - Al Mounia Restaurant because the former is a delight for all of your senses, whereas the latter is a complete disappointment.

You can find my opinion and review of Al Mounia Restaurant here, which I visited not too long ago and was the let-down of the century after spending an absolute fortune on really mediocre food.

Anyway, Fairuz, on the other hand, is an absolute gem and, without a shadow of a doubt, I am thinking about going back there very soon.

The interior of Fairuz is not as ostentatious as that of Al Mounia, but it is quite cute, to say the least. Next to the window, there is a circular table that looks rather big, like it would be used when large groups come to dine at the restaurant, which unfortunately meant that we couldn't sit there. However, the table that we were seated at was also nice, so I cannot complain really!

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The price-quality ratio is spectacularly good.

By stating that, I am not at all trying to say that it is a cheap restaurant, because it isn't. This kind of Arabic restaurant is the typical one that you would more likely go to celebrate something or for an important business or family dinner.

So, if you decide to go to Fairuz, I will warn you now that you will end up paying quite a bit to dine there.

But, I will assure you that you will definitely not spend as much money at Fairuz as you would by dining at Al Mounia, and, besides, the food you eat at the former is honestly worth spending the money on.

Look, I don't want you to think that the food costs an absolute fortune, but let's just say that it's a restaurant that is average to above average on the cost scale.

But, anyway, Fairuz is a great option if you want to eat dinner in the centre of Madrid.

The quality of the food is incredible. Everything that we ate was yummy (even the bread! ) and is all homemade, although they sadly charged us for each piece that they gave us.

One thing that they did that I wasn't particularly a fan of was that whenever they saw that we had no more bread left, they gave us another basket of it without asking whether we even wanted it, so we unsuspectingly thought that it was being served alongside our meals. But, after seeing the bill, we realised that that was quite the opposite.

The bread ended up costing us around 3€ or 4€ if I remember correctly. I know, it's a fortune for just bread, but I have to admit that I was quite tasty, so we turned a bit of a blind eye to the situation.

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Another thing that I didn't particularly like was to do with the drinks: after seeing how much everything cost on the menu, we decided to order a jug of tap water to save money and the waiter told us that he could bring us one without any problems.

But, instead of doing this, he brought us a glass bottle of water with the lid already removed, which I originally thought could have been a bottle of tap water, given that they serve it in nice glass bottles in other restaurants that I have been to. However, after ordering a second bottle and seeing the manager tell the waiter how many bottles to note down on the bill, we realised too late that it wasn't actually tap water and we were indeed paying for it.

This was something that really annoyed me because the restaurant doesn't lose anything by serving people tap water, and charging me for a bottle of mineral water without having even ordered one doesn't amuse me in the slightest.

Besides, each bottle of water that we didn't even want cost us a little over 4€. Ridiculous.

But, whatever, we will go back to turning a blind eye to the situation because the food was really good.

Fairuz Restaurant has quite a broad menu with both set menus and varied and affordable dishes.

First, we ordered some starters that came with some hummus (of course), tabulé, labneh (which is a kind of sour cream yogurt served with olive oil) and moutabbal (aubergine and tahini puree, which is a sesame paste).

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The portions were fairly generous in size, so it's for this reason that I say that, although it is a little bit expensive (I think this dish cost us around 12€ or 13€, the quantity of food that they give you is decent and we could easily share the four portions between the five of us.

After, three of us ordered a main course each.

I ordered the meat kibbeh, which were delicious. This is my preferred Lebanese dish and it honestly did not disappoint me at all.

If I remember correctly, the portion size was around 4 to 5 kibbeh, which were accompanied by a salad and some really good Arabic sauces.

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I honestly loved it. A 10 out of 10 from me.

My father ordered a dish that consisted of a mix of lamb, veal and chicken, which wasn't bad at all.

I really liked the chicken because it was quite salty and reminded me a little bit of kebab meat. However, I didn't like the veal as much because it had a sweet kind of taste and this contrast between the sweet and the salty didn't have me very convinced.

Normally, I like contrasts in flavour, especially the combination of sweet and salty, but not so much this time round.

I think it was because they put cinnamon in the flavouring and, unfortunately, I hate hate hate cinnamon! There is just no way that I can voluntarily eat it.

My father liked it though, so he finished his meal with no problems.

My friend, on the other hand, ordered 'warak al anib', which were extremely good.

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I am honestly just in love with Lebanese food. Aside from the fact that it is so varied and original, it is also really healthy.

I had tried the warak al anib beforehand, I have to admit that the ones in Fairuz were not the best, but they were still quite good, and the price was incredible given the quality and quantity of them.

The best thing of all is that we could share each dish between everyone and we ended up being really full, so much so that it was difficult for us to finish all of the food.

The other two people that we were with didn't order anything else after the starter.

So, in total, we ordered a starter and four main courses that we shared between five people, and, as I told you all before, we were completely stuffed after finishing our meal.

But, this is not where the story ends.

We didn't want to leave the restaurant without having tried one of the desserts, so we ended up ordering not one, but two.

We didn't order the typical Kunefe, which is like a cheesecake with a very strange syrup, not did we order the famous baklawas; instead, we went for something a little bit different that I had personally never tried before.

One of the desserts that we did choose was the halawet el jibn: it's really tasty, and is made with semolina, cream cheese (very creamy and sweet) and water. This dessert is also known as "sweet cheese rolls".

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The taste is something special: I cannot put it into words because it isn't something that I had tried before, but one of the ingredients used to make this dish is orange blossom water.

In some ways, I did recognise the flavour because orange blossom water is usually used in the other typical Arabic desserts that I have tried before, and it is even used in the Spanish 'Roscón de reyes'.

The other dessert that we ordered was othmaliyeh, which was equally as good as the other one. In terms of taste, it was somewhat similar because the same filling was used, as well as orange blossom being part of the recipe, but the texture, on the other hand, is totally different (as you can see in the photo).

This dessert is served as if it was a little cake, so it can be shared quite happily between two people.

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Once we had finished eating, they gave us the bill. For all of the (delicious) food and drinks, we had ended up spending around 80€ if I remember correctly, and they gave us a complimentary mint tea, which I admittedly didn't particularly enjoy.

I am really used to drinking mint tea, or any kind of tea for that matter, because we have the tradition of drinking one as a snack or while we watch the television before eating dinner at my house.

And, besides, every time I travel to Morocco to visit my family, I drink an absolute minimum of three cups of tea every single day because they have the tradition of drinking tea all year round there.

I usually drink lots of tea, but my tea-drinking behaviours are heightened whenever I visit my grandmother's house. It doesn't matter what we are doing, be it watching the television, chatting with one another or having a nap, she is always making tea for us. So, there are days where I can easily end up drinking more than 10 cups of tea.

As far as I know, mint tea is supposed to be a little bit strong and bitter, but I personally don't like it like that at all. I think that, on the whole, Western people are not very used to drinking this type of tea - it should be much sweeter.

So, they served us this tea, and after taking a sip and realising that it was very bitter (even after putting several teaspoons of sugar in it), I left it to one side and didn't drink it. But, my father chose to drink it in the end to avoid wasting it.

Anyway, everyone likes different things, so, at best, one of you guys likes mint tea and knows how to truly appreciate it for what it is.

Both my father and my friend quite liked it, so they very much appreciated the gesture of the waiter in offering us the complimentary drink.

Personally, it seemed like a really nice gesture to me, but it was something that I kind of expected because it is not every day that someone spends almost 100€ on a meal out... to me, I saw it as something quite normal and fitting that they offered the tea to us.

But, regardless of this, it was very friendly of them to do that and, without a doubt, I am thinking about going back there again because we finished our meals feeling really satisfied, both in terms of the food that we had eaten as well as the service that we had received, and we were left wanting even more (irrespective of the fact that we were really full).

With regards to the service given by the waiting staff, it was (again) a 10 out of 10.

All of the waiters were really friendly and warm with us, willing to help us at any time and always attending to us with a smile.

They didn't address us formally because we addressed them informally from the outset and it's equally not something that particularly bothers me, especially as they seemed to be really friendly, which didn't make me feel at all uncomfortable. Although, this level of comfort could probably be attributed to the fact that I am a young person and I'm still not used to addressing others in a formal way.

Summary of the experience: absolutely magnificent.

The entire experience was really good: the portion sizes were generous, the prices were reasonable, and the atmosphere was very cosy.

I would advise you to come to this restaurant and to try the food on offer here because you will not be at all disappointed and will leave with a very pleasant taste in your mouth.