Trip Report: Kurdish chow

[Skoob]

Mrs. Skoob and I checked out a Kurdish joint in St. Paul called Babani’s. They claim to be the 1st Kurdish restaurant in the US. The place isn’t brand new. They have been there for years. We just had never been there before tonight.

Kurdish food is a lot like most Medeterrainian food, lots of cucumbers and tomatos, tabouli, etc. with some subtle differences.

We started off with “Niskena” soup, which is pureed lentil soup. Very tasty…

We then had the tabouli salad and the “Silopi” salad. It’s diced cucumbers, tomatos, and onion with lemon, salt, pepper, and parsley, also very good.

For the main dishes we had the Sheik Babani, which is cored eggplant stuffed with spicy beef and vegetables, yum yum yummy. And we had “Biryani,” which is a traditional rice dish baked with peas, vegetables, wheat noodles, and spices (add chicken or beef for a few extra bucks, we had chicken with it).

I enjoyed the eggplant dish especially. The biryani was curried and had some spice to it. Really, all the dishes were spiced, just some more than others. The biryani had some heat.

We split one soup, two salads, and two entrees and were totally stuffed with extra food to take home. Atmosphere was good, the place was clean… mom and pop shop. If you’re ever in the MSP metro and want to try something different, I definitely recommend it.