| Habibi Restaurant | |
|---|---|
 | |
 The restaurant's front exterior in February 2021 | |
 | |
| Restaurant information | |
| Owner(s) | Mazen "Leo" Khoury |
| Food type | |
| Street address | 1012 Southwest Morrison Street |
| City | Portland |
| County | Multnomah |
| State | Oregon |
| Postal/ZIP Code | 97205 |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 45°31′12″N122°40′57″W / 45.5201°N 122.6826°W |
| Website | habibirestaurantpdx |
Habibi Restaurant is a Lebanese, Middle Eastern, and Syrian restaurant in Portland, Oregon.
Habibi Restaurant serves Lebanese, Middle Eastern, and Syrian cuisine including baba ghanoush, falafel, grape leaves stuffed with beef, hummus, meze, pita, shawarma, and tzatziki. [1] [2]
Habibi had two locations, as of 2011: 1012 Southwest Morrison Street and 221 Southwest Pine Street. [3] The Pine Street restaurant changed ownership in 2014. [4]
The restaurant enrolled in Prime Now in 2015. [5] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Habibi operated takeout service and via food delivery apps, as of May 2020. [6]
In October 2020, owner Mazen "Leo" [7] Khoury was stabbed by a customer who refused to pay. [8] [9]
In 2007, The Oregonian 's ethnic food guide said, "After one visit to this Lebanese diner, you're a friend; on the second, you're family. Straight-out-of-the-oven pita is perfect, the hummus contends for the city's best, and the Lebanese rice is amazing. Finish with a strong, tasty Turkish coffee or a rosewater juice." [10] DeAnn Welker wrote:
It's easy for a restaurant to get lost on Southwest Morrison's restaurant row between 10th and 11th avenues, where Italian, Indian, Mexican and Mediterranean flavors cheerfully coexist. The real standout is Habibi, a Lebanese diner every bit as good as well-known eastside joint Nicholas, with a few touches --the fresh-from-the-oven pita paired with a contender for the city's best hummus among them --that go beyond, ensuring it lives up to its name ("habibi" means "beloved" in Lebanese). And it will be even more beloved when it commits to a full-time Lebanese focus and drops the holdover Italian dishes. [11] [12]
In 2011, The Oregonian's Michael Russell wrote, "This family-run restaurant features Syrian and Lebanese recipes that will make you forgive the nightclub lighting. Stop in for friendly service, tasty falafel and shawarma sandwiches, creamy hummus, and tender marinated kebabs served over flavorful rice." [3] In her 2019 list of the city's ten best places to get hummus, Shannon Gormley of Willamette Week wrote, "If you like your hummus with a rougher texture that's still plenty creamy, Habibi is the place to go. The low-key glitzy Syrian Lebanese restaurant's blend is light and refreshing, the kind of dish that makes you feel healthier." [13]
Hummus, also spelled hommus or houmous, is a Middle Eastern dip, spread, or savory dish made from cooked, mashed chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon juice, and garlic. The standard garnish in the Middle East includes olive oil, a few whole chickpeas, parsley, and paprika.
Pita or pitta is a family of yeast-leavened round flatbreads baked from wheat flour, common in the Mediterranean, Levant, and neighboring areas. It includes the widely known version with an interior pocket, also known as Arabic bread. In the United Kingdom, Greek bread is used for pocket versions such as the Greek pita, and are used for barbecues as a souvlaki wrap. The Western name pita may sometimes be used to refer to various other types of flatbreads that have different names in their local languages, such as numerous styles of Arab khubz (bread).
Falafel is a deep-fried ball or patty-shaped fritter of Egyptian origin, featuring in Middle Eastern cuisine, particularly Levantine cuisines, and is made from broad beans, ground chickpeas, or both.
Levantine cuisine is the traditional cuisine of the Levant, in the sense of the rough area of former Ottoman Syria. The cuisine has similarities with Egyptian cuisine, North African cuisine and Ottoman cuisine. It is particularly known for its meze spreads of hot and cold dishes, most notably among them ful medames, hummus, tabbouleh and baba ghanoush, accompanied by bread.
Khubz, alternatively transliterated as khoubz, khobez, khubez, or khubooz, is the usual word for "bread" in Standard Arabic and in many of the vernaculars.
Israeli cuisine primarily comprises dishes brought from the Jewish diaspora, and has more recently been defined by the development of a notable fusion cuisine characterized by the mixing of Jewish cuisine and Arab cuisine. It also blends together the culinary traditions of the various diaspora groups, namely those of Middle Eastern Jews with roots in Southwest Asia and North Africa, Sephardi Jews from Iberia, and Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.
A snack is a small portion of food generally eaten between meals. A snack is often less than 200 calories, but this can vary. Snacks come in a variety of forms including packaged snack foods and other processed foods, as well as items made from fresh ingredients at home.
Israeli pita, also known as pitot, Israeli pitta, or simply pita, is the Israeli version of pita flatbread that is commonly served with hummus and other dips, or as a sandwich bread stuffed with sabich, falafel, chicken schnitzel, shawarma, or other fillings. Israeli pita is commonly found in Israel, as well as in the United States, and at restaurants offering Jewish and Israeli cuisine worldwide.
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The Southwest Pine Street location of Habibi, downtown's cosmopolitan Lebanese restaurant, changed hands this winter, though regulars could be forgiven for not having noticed. The cafe's Beirut nightclub atmosphere remains largely the same, as does the menu. But turn past the hummus, shawarma and baklava to the final page of Tangier's menu and you'll find a handful of excellent Moroccan dishes.
Media related to Habibi (Portland, Oregon) at Wikimedia Commons
