Anuja, Amy and I had been wanting to go to Nur (another hot Middle Eastern restaurant) but they were all full, so we decided to check out Cleo instead which is inside the Mondrian Hotel. If you've never been to a Mondrian Hotel, you're missing out - they've got a beautiful, funky, boutique vibe that I really appreciate.
I generally am not a huge fan of hotel restaurants but they are slowing getting to be much better and if I were traveling to NYC and staying at the Mondrian, having dinner at Cleo would not be a bad thing at all. As with most Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurants there was a bunch of dips, kebabs, octopus, lamb and they also had tagines which is more of a Moroccan dish but it fit well with the rest of the menu. We got the prerequisite dips of greek yogurt ($9) and babaganoush ($10), salt and pepper fries ($8) because I'm obsessed with fries, lamb sliders for me ($13), zucchini chips ($14) and shrimp kabab ($16). The dips were great and served with soft pita and we used the left over dips with the zucchini chips - which on their own, I wasn't a huge of fan of. It might have been an overkill to get zucchini chips and fries since they're both fried and easy vehicles to get to dip. Plus the fries were definitely much better so it made the zucchini chips feel inferior and unnecessary. Of the 3 of us, only I eat meat so I ate all 3 lamb slides myself which is definitely a meal on it's own. They were pretty juicy and served on soft challah bread with feta, harissa aioli, pickled shallots and peppers. The feta made it a bit hard to eat but overall, really solid sliders but a bit much for one person to eat on their own. Since I was so full, I didn't get to try the shrimp kababs but they looked like they were grilled nicely and seasoned well.
The service was friendly and nice but a bit confusing as there were multiple people helping us and it wasn't clear who we should be going to for things but it wasn't as annoying as it sounds. While I had a lovely meal there and it was nice to be in a restaurant that wasn't super crowded, I'm not sure I would exactly say it's a destination restaurant in NYC yet. The area is also not my favorite - it's kind of in their weird cross section of NoMad, Murray Hill and Kips Bay (in fact I don't even really have a tag for this area and kind of shoved it into Midtown which I know it isn't) but if you're in the area, check it out and definitely get the lamb sliders! Total bill: $60/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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