A stranger from the Middle East has moved into the north side, and if recent visits are any indication, Old West food is going to get a run for its money.
When Antoine Hedary brought his family from Lebanon to Fort Worth to escape the dangers of war, he started a restaurant tradition. Hedary’s on the west side is now run by son Marios, while son George opened, and recently closed, a Lebanese restaurant in Dallas.
Now son Joseph has opened Bybios on North Main Street, long the home of Tex-Mex and range offerings such as chicken-fried steak and calf fries. This Hedary edition is the freshest and spunkiest of the lot.
Joseph Hedary rehabilitated the building and the result is a long, open space sided with a soaring brick wall and bare floors. The feeling is young, modern and full of hope that the other abandoned buildings in the undeveloped strip will one day boast the bustling funkiness of Greenville Avenue in Dallas.
The atmosphere may be new but the food is traditional Lebanese fare. A must-have is the masa ($14.50), small offerings of many of the appetizers and salads that can make a full meal for two diners. Standouts are the room temperature summer squash, hummus (a spread of mashed chickpeas and sesame paste), a zingy tabbouleh fresh with lemon juice and moderate with the chopped parsley, and labni, a freshy yogurt cheese.
Every restaurant serves salads these days, but rarely have we sampled integrated combinations that stand out the way they do here. So often, greens are piled together with a few pieces of carrot, an appalling example of a tomato and slathered with goopy dressing. Here, the salads are a work of art and are, again, a meal in themselves.
Tops on our list is the cedar salad ($4), a pile of romaine combined with cucumber, mushrooms, avocado chunks and tomatoes and thoroughly dressed but not drenched in garlic and lemon juice.
Another winner is the fattoosh ($4), tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and onions mixed with toasted Lebanese bread croutons. Any salad is $2 with an entree.
Frarej, the garlicky chicken with roasted potatoes long a Hedary’s standout, is just as good here. We’ve often found the half-a-bird ($8.95) serving size overwhelming, so it’s nice to see it also offered in a quarter-chicken portion ($5.95). Another solid entree choice is fasolia bil lahm ($5.45), a beef and kidney bean combination served with rice.
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