Recently a friend and I dined at the Chickpea Café for lunch. She was very keen having been there before, and I just love Middle Eastern/Mediterranean cuisine since having a college housemate named Ahmed who taught me how to whip up a respectable hummus. Chickpea Café is located one block north of Main Street at 25 Willson Avenue, right across from the public parking lot next to the old Armory, making parking extremely convenient.

We mounted a couple of steps and opened the door. Delicious aromas immediately greeted me — steaming fragrant basmati rice, garlic and spiced meats. The small decorative café tables invited intimacy, while the displays counter on the left promised quick service. The inside is well lit by spot lighting and by virtue of the windows that face Willson Avenue and Mendenhall Street so the neutral floor, dark chairs and eclectic tables look especially chic. The inner walls are painted in warm sunny colors providing a nice contrast to the brick wall on the Mendenhall side. There is local artwork hanging for enjoyment and purchase.

The glassed-in cases held a tempting array of pastries, especially assorted baklava. For the uninitiated, baklava is leaves of phyllo dough basted one at a time with softened butter and layered with a spiced nut filling, cut through the layers into diamond shapes, studded with whole cloves and baked. Upon removal from the oven, a honey-based syrup is poured over all to be absorbed by the phyllo layers. Heavenly doesn’t even begin to describe this pastry, which goes for $2 or $2.50 depending on the flavor.

My friend grabbed menus while we waited briefly in line while I studied the chalk board for the daily specials. The range of menu items is extensive and varied and clearly designates vegetarian, dairy free, and gluten free features of the items. Important to note are the Halal items that are offered as well.

Appetizers (mezze) include hummus, baba ganoosh, falafel, dolma, tabouli and a new item “Greek nachos”.   Prices range from $4 to $12, with the garden platter (menu declared “2 can share”) at $15.95. The garden platter has hummus, tabouli, dolma, falafel, and loubia (green beans braised in a special tomato sauce) served with a pickled vegetable and pita wedges. Since each of those items are favorites of mine, I ordered that for my lunch. My friend opted for the gyro and after getting our drinks at the fountain we sat.

Chickpea Café offers red lentil soup for $4.50 (you can add Feta for .75 cents or chicken for $1.50). Then there’s the salads — Shawarma Salad (shawarma is rotisserie cooked angus beef), Falafel Salad, Fatoosh, Greek, and chopped, ranging in price from $4.50 to $8.95. I saw a couple of salads being delivered to adjoining tables and marveled at the beautiful presentation created by the chefs. There are sandwiches to be had on samoon bread or in a pita, and rolled sandwiches served in a rolled toasted pita. Sandwiches include shawarma, falafel, gyro, kofta kebob, baba garden rolled, falafel rolled, and dolma rolled, and range in price from $7.50 to $9.50.

My friend’s gyro came warm and fragrant in a foil wrapper on a pottery plate brought over by a lady wearing a shirt proclaiming her a member of “Team Baba Ganoosh.” My friend enthused that the gyro was fresh and more subtle in flavor than one would expect and she loved the fact that it wasn’t dripping with either sauce or oil. In all, she found the generously stuffed toasted pita a very satisfying lunch.

My garden platter came presented on a large black plate and had hummus surrounded by cucumber slices, a fragrant mound of tabouli, three long dolma, three crispy falafel balls, and a generous serving of loubia.   The hummus was creamy and had an almost buttery undertone I found delightful. The dolma were fresh and I too was pleased to find them not oily or overly seasoned. The tabouli was amazing: light due to the small ratio of cracked wheat to freshly chopped parsley and the perfect touch of lemon, onion and chopped tomato. The falafel were crispy on the outside and the insides had a tenderness I’ve not encountered elsewhere (including in my own). My half-Italian side enjoyed the loubia immensely — green beans stewed in a delicious tomato sauce – and it balanced the plate perfectly. I confess to a weakness for strong coffee and so ordered a Turkish coffee to go with my meal. Served in a magnificent gold leafed thick cup it spoke of the region from where it came — dark as night, hot as the desert, and sweet as a stolen kiss.

The menu goes on, and some of the house specialties are the Shawarma plate with rice and salad, the kofta kabob plate, murget dijaj (chicken stew), the meat medley plate and the veggie plate. Prices for the house specialties range from $9.95 to $12.95, with the $26.95 meat medley plate meant for two to share. There are meat and veggie pies (fatayer) with chicken, beef, samosa and feta and spinach from $3.50 to $4.

Bring the kids for either Adam’s Plate (basmati rice topped with lentil soup), Summer’s Plate (basmati rice with Greek yogurt) or a small hummus and pita wedges, ranging in price from $2.95 to $4.50, certainly reasonable and much, much healthier than a greasy bag containing a nutritiously dubious meal with a plastic toy for the same price or even more. Frankly, I can’t wait to return with my husband to try more of the menu for dinner, sometime soon I hope.

Chickpea Café also offers catering for 10 people or more, with nearly everything on the regular menu available for your gathering. For more information, remember to go to www.chickpeabozeman.com to see the full menus and photos.
Five spokes and a throttle twist.

When not knitting or watching Dr. Who reruns, Stacey Alzheimer can be found helping people heal at Theraputika Massage.