The makings of a terrible night: watching the Joey leave in front of you; trudging to Davis through that torrential rain last Friday night ("I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?"), finding out you didn't do your homework and your first choice restaurant starting to card patrons after 5 p.m.
It's still raining; finding that, six blocks away, your second choice restaurant has also taken up this "21 and over" policy is just about the only thing that could make matters worse.
But the coup de gr??ce is ending up at Café Jaffa, under the impression that it might be a Middle Eastern "café" retreat from the overpriced Back Bay, only to find it is actually "Middle Eastern & American Food." Not that adding in American cuisine is inherently a bad sign, it's just a little jarring to see hamburgers so many times on the same menu as baba ghanoush (and Schnitzel, too?). So overall, yes, both the location and some nice lantern light gave this place some serious potential.
So fine, we'll try Café Jaffa.
This is not a "thrifty, good eats, good price" place. Mostly, it's just plain, although one dish, the stuffed peppers, had a surprisingly bland beef and spices mix for the filling, and a side of rice pilaf that seemed more out-of-the-box than out-of-North-Africa. All such options are unreasonably priced over $15, more than twice the price of most of the sandwich combos. And while these sandwiches are more your standard Middle Eastern rollup, you're almost too thrown by the odd pickles and a side of waffle chips to properly enjoy it.
We're not against a totally slash review of this place, but Winston insists on making a plug: His chicken schwarma was decent-to-good and was pretty big, and he liked that they toast the pita that came with our hummus plate. Also, we hear that they have a cool selection of Israeli beer, not that we'd know (we just read it online). But we do know, from actual first-hand experience, that they sell Israeli newspapers at the counter.
Along with the beer post, we found a lot of Internet foodies who loved Café Jaffa. In one of those posts, some guy professes his deep appreciation for the pickles that Jaffa thought to put into his sandwich. So, if small slices of bizarrely flavorless pickles in your sandwich floats your boat, neat. We felt they were a bit more thrust upon us than anything else. Perhaps it was just in the wake of the pickles all over a garden side salad that the barrage of pickle in the grape leaf sandwich seemed so uncalled for, but maybe that's just us. But don't let us be the ones to dissuade you if pickles are your thing. Worry not, you can get an extra side of pickles. The question is, exactly how many pickles come for $3.50 an order?
Well, having learned our lesson, we're not going Back to the Bay for our Middle East cravings. Had it not been for monsoon season last week, we would have trucked ourselves out to Watertown for some great Lebanese, or any of the other viable options in the greater Boston. This week, our plans were thwarted, and dark clouds shrouded us all the way to Jaffa.
Café Jaffa is at 48 Gloucester St. It is open 11 to 10:30 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 11p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; and noon to 10 p.m. Sundays.
Winston Berkman is a sophomore majoring in international relations; Charlotte Bourdillon is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. They can be reached at Winston.Berkman@tufts.edu and Charlotte.Bourdillon@tufts.edu, respectively.
