Restaurant Ararat - Armenian in Mundelein

After a very long walk in Volo Bog, we were famished, and my brother thought he had seen a shish-kebob restaurant in a shopping mall on our route back to the city, so we headed there and found Restaurant Ararat, "Fine Mediterranean & Armenian Cuisine."

There is an effort at decor that raises this above mere storefront: curtains draped just so, and light fixtures on the walls, and perhaps more that I was too exhausted from the walk to notice. An air of inexpensive authenticity, is how I would categorize it. The proprietress had a thick accent and a real interest in having us enjoy a good meal.

It was midafternoon, so we settled on each ordering soup from an extensive list (but only three available each day as it turned out) and several appetizers to share. With the bread, this made an excellent lunch.

Each of the soups we ordered (kharcho, khashlama, and lagman) was hot and delicious. The broth was rich and meaty, large chunks of tender lamb, peppery (whole peppercorns). Lagman noodles were thin, al dente, the texture made me wonder if they were maybe homemade. (We were sad that the green borsch was not in rotation today. I have never heard of it. The menu says: sorrel soup with beef, onions, spinach, greens, potatoes and spices. Anyone ever had this?)

The stuffed pepper salad consisted of a three-quarters inch high ring of orange bell pepper stuffed with mild and creamy feta with little bits of tomato and lots of dill mixed in, and I think a little bit of vinaigrette type dressing. The Armenian style grilled eggplant salad was excellent, smoky and delicious, with onion and tomato and not sure what else. The chebureki was perhaps the one disappointment -- Mr. H said it was like deep fried potato salad, and that pretty much captured it: a circle of dough stuffed with potato salad (?), folded over and sealed, and deep fried -- though not greasy at all, and the crust nicely crunchy. (We thought of the Minnesota State Fair.) Not necessarily bad, but we had mistakenly thought it would be burek-like, which it was not.

There was bread which I suspect was homemade, which was quite good, a dense white bread with a nice crust, served warm, and replenished when we wolfed it down.

There were four desserts, which were brought out for inspection, and we were assured they were all house made-- a Napoleon, something like cannoli, a meringue, and baklava. We chose to split a piece of baklava, and ordered Armenian coffee. The coffee was excellent. The baklava was Armenian style, not so flaky, not oozing honey, more solid and less sweet. I believe I like other baklava better, but this did hit the spot.

We did not even look at the dinner menu, so there is a lot left to explore. During the week, there are lunch specials for $6.99. Mains are about $9, a few higher. In the window, there was a card announcing pelmeni, which is one of the things that drew us in; on the menu are also manti (lamb) and khinkali (beef dumplings).

Has anyone else eaten here? It is well worth a visit, and I would love to hear what others think, as I believe this may be the first time I have eaten Armenian food. This is way off my beaten path, and I don't anticipate getting back any time soon.

Restaurant Ararat
364 Town Line Road
Mundelein, IL
847-566-9755
http://restaurantararat.com/

Yes, it's definitely worth a visit if you're in the neighborhood. The menu isn't strictly Armenian but extends to foods of Russia and elsewhere in the Caucasus. Their specialty is kebabs, cooked over charcoal.

Daily Herald review

A few weeks ago we stopped for a snack at Ararat in Mundelein, Chicagoland's third Armenian restaurant (in addition to Sayat Nova and Siunik). It was sort of a mixed experience but promising enough to make me want to return.

As soon as we sat down our server asked if we were going to order kebobs, so they could get the charcoal fire going. Good sign, but we didn't want a full meal. Instead we ordered an appetizer plate, a couple soups and khachapuri.

Overall I enjoyed these appetizers but some had clearly been made far in advance.



Clockwise from top: marinated pumpkin and mushrooms, eggplant in nut sauce, red beans with walnuts, pickled vegetables, carrot salad and hummus.

Soups were the highlight. I think this could be kharcho . . .



. . . and this might be khashlama.



Regardless of the names both were very good and had very different spicing despite their somewhat similar appearance.

We also ordered khachapuri adjarskie which was pleasant enough but not terribly exciting.



I suspect it was a frozen pastry with a fresh egg added (they ran out to buy eggs!) and baked to order.

This could be a good destination for a kebob-eating group. I think choosing a small menu and ordering ahead might be a good strategy so they could have everything freshly prepared. They definitely have an interesting menu.

Ararat
364 Townline Rd
Mundelein IL
847-566-9755
http://www.restaurantararat.com/

Nice to see some folks have had a good time at this place. My experience was a bit disappointing.

It was a little weird that the menu I was handed had prices stuck on top of the old prices for the appetizers, while other menus didn't. But we were told that, for the appetizers, my menu was the only one that had the correct prices. Quirky, but not really a red flag.

I will say that I agree completely that the soups are great. We had shorba and kashlama. The fried pastry with cheese was nice, too. And the tea was good. But the main courses made us a little crazy.

First, after spending a lot of time carefully reading the menu and deciding what we wanted to order, it turned out that our first choices for main course were unavailable. So were our second choices. After a few minutes of, "no, we don't have that," the waitress recommended two or three dishes, but then we had to ask for every other dish, "What about this? Do you have this?" -- which, after our initial choices were eliminated, were generally available.

We ordered the ground beef shish kebab and chicken thighs stuffed with mushrooms. Both were nice -- good quality and good flavor. However, we thought they were a little skimpy for the listed price.

Then we got the bill and found out that the listed prices were not in effect, either. The soup was billed at the price in the menu, but our main courses were all a couple of bucks more than what was shown in the menu. I asked why we were charged more, and the waitress said they were changing their prices. (I didn't bother asking why, if they could tape new prices over the appetizers, they couldn't do it on the main courses, too.) Plus the computer bill was a mess, and the waitress tried to fix it by hand, but they ended getting another $1 or so out of the error (double billed for main courses, then amount of duplicate main courses deducted by hand, but not the amount of sales tax charged on the dishes). All in all, only out about an extra $5, but the Alice in Wonderland "nothing is as it appears" effect was unsettling. (Also, to be perfectly honest, looking at the two, skinny little skewers of ground beef that constituted the shish kebab, it was hard not to think about how much more we could have gotten for the $15 charged for this dish had we just gone to Pita Inn.)

I really wanted to love this place. It was clearly a family affair, with grandmother in the kitchen, mom waiting tables, little boy watching cartoons on a laptop in the front of the restaurant -- and I love those kinds of places. I'd definitely go back for the soup, if I were in the area, but I wouldn't go out of my way.

That said -- a couple of doors west of Ararat is Alef Sausage and Deli, which is awesome -- Continental and Russian -- most deli items made on site (a grandmotherly figure in the deli section, who bustled about, describing all the offerings and giving us samples, related that they have a large kitchen and six cooks). So who knows. I may make it back into Ararat for a bowl of soup -- but my destination will be Alef Sausage and Deli.

I will second that Alef Sausage & Deli is definitely a destination for those out far northwest, two doors to the west of Ararat.

I wandered into the deli section one afternoon while waiting for my daughter to show up to dine at Kim's Korean Restaurant next door (darn good place in its own right), and picked up some already-cooked Russian breaded pork cutlets and some concoction made of sauerkraut, shredded carrots, mushrooms and smoked pork chunks to go. Brought it home that night, baked it all together, and it was out of this world delicious. It could've very well been bigos, the Ukrainian hunter's stew, but all labels were in Russian (I think), so I couldn't rightly tell.

Pastries looked phenomenal and I was served by that grandmotherly-type woman described above. Warm & homey place, enjoyed it immensely.