As you can probably guess from the name, Fayruz is a Lebanese restaurant, and it is also the pride and joy of the InterContinental Hotel CityStars. The architecture is defined by its arches and high ceilings. Fayruz is a spacious dining area with a stage for oriental live music and belly dancing which starts as of 9 p.m.The music is to the point: Fairuz sings in the background and her voice fills the space with Lebanese heritage.
Stay inside or opt for open air seating on their spacious terrace at the side of the restaurant. However, if you are one of us “anti-shisha people, we strongly recommend you avoid sitting outside on the terrace, as the unfriendly smoke of the shisha can throw off your appetite.
The service is prompt, with waiters and managers hovering around the tables at the beck and call of customers – and you never feel that irritating, unwelcome over attentiveness. No sooner had we been seated and the orders taken than a complementary plate of haloomy cheese with green salad and Lebanese bread were served hot from the oven.
Following the complementary haloomy cheese and Lebanese bread,we cooled our engines with a fragrant traditional Lebanese drink, jallab. Now, this is a costly excursion but one well worth the money. Next we moved headlong into the hot Shourbet Fawaket, which is a typical Lebanese seafood soup with vegetables that keep you busy munching.The soup is also chock full of a variety of fish.
We also could not resist choosing from a wide variety of Mezza and chose tumeya, a paste with a deep tangy garlic taste, hummus, a lemony homogeneous chickpea paste, metabal, an eggplant paste mixed with sesame paste, both meat and cheese samboosek, and what turned out to be the great finale: moist chicken liver pieces cooked to perfection in a rich brown sauce.
As a seafood lover,my husband opted for the grilled Jumbo Shrimps with steamed rice and grilled peppers as his main course, and I chose the famous farouj, grilled chicken wrapped in Lebanese bread and pan fried onions.To my disappointment, the chicken was slightly burnt. I heard no complaints, however, from the other end of the table.
For our dessert,my husband did not hesitate before choosing the ossmanleya, a rich konnafa dessert filled with cheese and fresh cream. His only quibble was that it came cold and he thought it would have been much better if it had come straight from the oven.As for my eshtaleya, a classical Lebanese milk pudding with syrup – well, it failed my expectations so badly that I wound up sharing in the ossmanleya.
For the two of us, including two gellab , one Seafood soup, one Meza combo including six varieties of Mezza dishes, one grilled Jumbo Shrimps, one farouj, grilled chicken, one ossmanleya, one eshtaleya and one bottle of water, the bill came to a satisfactory LE 352, including service and sales taxes.
And while I would strongly advise the hotel management to secure a smoke free zone in the open air to allow non smokers to enjoy eating outside without the slow suffocation from shisha, and believe the desserts section need improvements, Fayruz is on our return list.
Ratings: 9 – interior decoration and atmosphere, 10 – service, 8 – food, 8 – value for money.
