Bakchich Liverpool
Christina McDermott
Bakchich, a colourful Lebanese restaurant that aims to bring the taste of Beirut to Liverpool with its its incredibly affordable menu.
Their wrap platter – your chosen wrap served with houmous, fattoush salad and pickles – is an immense haul for just £5.95. We’d suggest opting for the lamb kofta: a slab of bread stuffed to the hilt with minced lamb, houmous and pickles. While it’s not the absolute best kebab we’ve had recently, it certainly beats anything you’ll get from a typical takeaway emporium hands down. We particularly enjoyed the pickles; their salty-sweet tanginess is just the thing to cut through the fatty, sesame-heavy hit of the lamb.
As for their mains, we can’t think of many places in Liverpool where you can consume an entire baby chicken and still have change from a tenner – particularly when the meat in Bakchich’s Farrouj Meshwi (£8.95) is marinated in a delicious selection of spices, expertly grilled and comes with a hefty basketful of bread. This is not a dainty dish and probably not one you should consider ordering when in genteel company. You will be tearing hunks of meat apart with your bare hands.
Special mention should also go to the Sawda Djej (£3.95), a hot mezze starter of chicken liver with garlic and pomegranate molasses. Sure, offal isn’t to everyone’s taste – and this isn’t for the fainthearted – but it’s definitely one of the more unusual options on the menu, a gigantic plate of chopped liver pieces doused in a lip puckeringly tart sauce. Each bite is a mouthful of velvet; sweet, sour and almost overwhelmingly meaty.
It’s worth knowing that Bakchich’s Arabic authenticity stretches to not selling alcohol. However, we highly recommend you have a glass or two of their pomegranate and orange blossom lemonade, which is perfect for quenching a meat-fuelled thirst. The one thing that lets Bakchich down is its service, which veers from muddled to downright dysfunctional. On a recent visit, there were rather too many mistakes to pass off as teething problems. We had three different waitresses, our food was repeatedly sent to the wrong table and, unable to get the bill, we ended up paying at the counter. It should also be noted that Bakchich currently doesn’t accept cards for payment. Chaotic, cheap and colourful: Bakchich may not be the most organised Lebanese restaurant experience we’ve ever had, but it’s a welcome addition to an increasingly cosmopolitan area.
