Atmosphere: 16/20 Menu: 17/20 Food: 18/20 Service: 16/20 Value: 16/20 TOTAL: 83/100 We hadn’t planned on visiting Beiruti on Saturday night, but when we got there, it was a blast from the past for Mrs. Gourmet and me. It was Mrs.
G’s birthday, and I had decided to take her out for Mediterranean — one of her favorite cuisines. Our son and one of his best buddies came along for the celebration, and we headed to Salem to a new place that we had never heard of before. Unfortunately, when we arrived around 5 p.
m. without a reservation, the small restaurant was packed, and we were told that the earliest they’d be able to accommodate us would be some two hours later. So we trooped back out to the car and pulled out our phones to find a substitute.
Soon, we found the website for Beiruti — a classy looking place that didn’t show up on our long list of restaurants we’ve previously reviewed. A quick phone call got us a reservation for 6:30 p.m.
So off we went, winding through the back roads of Salem until we hit Broadway (aka Route 28). After a couple of stops to kill time along the way, our GPS devices had us driving through random neighborhoods and taking U-turns until we finally wound up at 355 South Broadway – in the parking lot of a place that looked very familiar. Turns out Beiruti used to be Jocelyn’s, and the reason it looked so familiar is that we’d been there twice before.
But Jocelyn’s closed in 2023 after a family split, and the owners’ plan was to co.