I like Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food so when I heard that Tarboosh had opened in downtown Clarksville I was looking forward to trying it out.  It’s actually called. This hookah bar thing is getting really popular. I don’t get it.  Anyway, Tarboosh is on Franklin St. so there isn’t any real parking to speak of so we had to pump some quarters into a meter, we figured an hour and twenty minutes would be enough for lunch, even for a leisurely lunch. We were wrong.    

From the outside it looks like a pretty cool place. The items on the menu looked promising. This would be the last of the good news for our lunch outing. I ordered the Combo Plate- Lamb Gyro, beef shish kabob and kafta .  My lunch partners were MMA fighter and Strikeforce vet Steven Durr and B.A. Wolfe Powersports finance manager Jesse Trout.  Both train at my gym SSF Submission Academy (www.MMAclarksville.com). Steven ordered the exact same thing as I did.  Jesse had the Shawarma Platter. All the meals came with humus which was good, but the pita they served was stale.  The rice that came with all three meals was fine.  Jesse said his Shawarma was good but couldn’t place what kind of meat it was, it looked like something my dog dropped in the back yard.  Yikes.  The Gyro was pretty good, not as good as you would find on a street corner in NY but for Clarksville I was happy with it.  But both Steven and I hated the beef shish kabob.  The meat was tough and stringy; they had to have bought the cheapest cut of meat available.  The meat had a mineral flavor like liver to it.  It just over powered my palette. I had to get rid of the taste in my mouth since the two glasses of soda I drank didn’t do the trick so I ordered the Tiramisu for dessert, I know it’s not a Middle Eastern dessert but I needed to kill this taste.  The flavor of the Tiramisu had a good flavor but the lady fingers were too soggy.  

The three of us waited for what seemed like an eternity for our check.  We finally gave up and went to see what the holdup was.  When we got up to the register we found the waitress/hostess on a personal call.  I was annoyed, to say the least.  To top off our less than stellar lunch, when we finally made it back to my car, what do I find?  Yep, you know it.  A parking ticket.  I wouldn’t recommend the Tarboosh to any of my friends, think I’ll stick to Sam’s at the mall for my Gyro fix from here on out.  Oh, and I think Tarboosh should pay my ticket.

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