Restaurant Le Petit Alep

I'd been to this restaurant before about 10 years ago. I hadn't gone with hubby yet because after his disappointment with many Lebanese places around Montreal, I figured this might not appeal to him either. Besides it had been years and sometimes things change.

Le Petit Alep is a Syrian restaurant on Jean-Talon, near St Laurent in the Villeray area of Montreal. I had gone just once, and I remember that the hummus there was the best I ever had. I don't think I've had better hummus in Lebanon, Syria or Jordan for that matter.  But not being from a culture where hummus is a staple, I figured it was just an opinion.

Recently a Facebook friend mentioned it was among his favorite places to eat "Lebanese/Syrian" in Montreal so I decided to take hubby there. Well I drove him there, he treated me to dinner.  The only mistake we made is arriving at 7pm. There was at least 10 people waiting in line and people were not leaving in droves.  After waiting for maybe 10 minutes a waitress asks us if it's OK to sit us at the bar. I was tired and starving and figured why not. We weren't particularly comfortable, but the food was as good as I remembered Hubby said the hummus was quite good. I have become a hummus connoisseur.

Hubby has decided that this is his favorite restaurant to eat food from back home. He likes the food, the atmosphere. The service was quite good given the crowd. I was surprised at how quickly the food arrived, no screw ups either. We got exactly what we asked for, and quickly. The staff was quite friendly. Hubby adds that the bill was quite reasonable for all the food we had.

We both left completely stuffed.  I had their mezza plate - which is all veggie other then the cheese. Everything was fresh and delicious. We had the shanglish. It was really good. Different then the other really good shanglish I had in Lebanon, but still definitely worth eating.  The waiter told us in passing that another of their dishes is well loved so much so that people come from New York city to bring some back home.  Hubby had the lamb dish and the way he vacuumed it, I concluded it was quite eatable too.

What I didn't like about the evening - the waiting in line in the doorway and how crowded it was. This is easily avoided, as normally hubby wants to have dinner at 4pm, I'm sure it's far more quiet between 4-5pms on Saturdays instead of 7pm. It seems the place is now quite trendy! The other thing I didn't like is how hard it is to park in that area.  That's a given though. I used to go shopping on St Hubert street and park in that area.  It was always painful to find non-resident parking. Admittedly if you live near a metro, it's walking distance from Jean-Talon Metro station.