Dessert Oasis

Restaurants specializing in Middle-Eastern food, like Iliki Café (see review) are scattered across the city. Among them is Nazeeh Hajeeh‘s Ali Baba Café (7630 Wornall Road), which used to be the Promiseland Café. After I wrote about the Ali Baba Café, I received a phone call from parks board member and former city councilman Bob Lewellen, who took umbrage at Hajeeh’s assertion that his restaurant was “the first Taco Bell in the city.” Lewellen knows better: He says he owned the city’s first Taco Bell.

“The first one was at 123 East Linwood,” Lewellen says. “And it’s still there, although it’s been remodeled over the years, because when it first opened, there was no interior seating. Customers either took their food home or sat out on the little patio, which had a gas-powered fire pit in the center. I think the building at 76th and Wornall was the fifth or sixth Taco Bell and opened in the early 1970s. I owned it too.”

Noting that the Ali Baba Café still has an enclosed patio — it’s one of the few restaurants sporting the original Taco Bell architecture — Lewellen says that the gas fire pits were considered potentially dangerous and were outlawed sometime in the 1970s. By then, fast food restaurants were luring more customers to sit and eat inside. But not for too long: Clever designers created interiors with hard benches and jarring colors (yellow, orange) that made lingering an unpleasant experience. As if the food didn’t do that on its own.

Bringing customers in — and keeping them there — has also been on the mind of executives at the Westin Crown Center, where the ground-level Brasserie Restaurant is getting a major menu overhaul next month. Last year they decided that instead of separate lunch and dinner menus, the Brasserie would have a single menu combining entrees, salads and sandwiches. Then, however, “we heard that our customers wanted more variety for both meals and felt the single menu wasn’t offering enough selections,” says executive chef Edward Adel.

So separate lunch and dinner menus will return, with lobster ravioli moving to the dinner menu only, and grilled panini sandwiches available only at lunch. Adel is also eliminating the “seafood trio” appetizer, although he plans to add more dishes to both menus than he’ll be subtracting. But he’ll haul out the dinner buffet only when the hotel “is at a certain occupancy level.”

Not surprisingly, most of the Brasserie’s breakfast and dinner business comes from hotel guests. But lunch draws from all over Midtown, which is why the $15.95 lunch buffet continues to be so popular. I sampled it last week and thought that the offerings — fresh fish, beef tenderloin, pasta, sautéed vegetables, soups and salads — were good but didn’t justify the price. That was until I got a gander at the dessert selection. After indulging in luscious pound cake, a lovely wedge of lemon curd cake, several cookies and petits fours, I’d had plenty of bang for my buck.

Nazeeh Hajeeh’s been thinking about dessert as well: He’s decided to move the Ali Baba Café’s new pasta offering — angel hair pasta sautéed in brown sugar, honey and nuts and served with a deep-fried banana — from the entrée side of the menu to the dessert list.

“My customers like it, but not for dinner,” says Hajeeh, who also bemoans the fact that despite the building’s new Merlot-red paint job, he still gets unwary Taco Bell customers. “Someone came in the other day and wanted a Supreme Burrito!”