Yalla Yalla, London W1, restaurant review My friend E had fatayer spinach (£4.75), a rubbery pastry, incomprehensibly sweet, round a spinach, sumac, pine-nut and spring-onion filling. Mmm, maybe you're thinking, sweet pastry I can live with, for that interior. However, the ingredient they don't mention, even though it was by far the most powerful, was vinegar. We couldn't taste the pine nuts or sumac, the spinach was very dry, and if you'd told me the whole thing had first been served a week ago at a wedding buffet, I wouldn't have been at all surprised. My soujoc (Lebanese sausages, £5) came in a tomato sauce that was also almost entirely vinegary. The sausages contained slightly too much of every spice, notably chilli and cinnamon, and the effect was weird. But the vinegar remains the greatest crime by far, and I can't account for it. E's makale samak (£6.75), deep-fried calamari, white bait and tiger prawns, with crispy aubergines, was all a bit Harvester - the prawns bore as much resemblance to the tiger variety as a domestic cat does to a tiger. The batter was crunchy and indelicate, everything was overcooked and tasted as though it had been sitting around. It was sprinkled with pomegranate seeds, as were the livers and the chicken shawarma (£10.95). 'I'm all for pomegranate, but not the indiscriminate use of pomegranate,' E said mildly. Then she said she didn't mind the crispiness of the squid, because she'd been in a restaurant once where some slippery, fresh calamari rings had wrapped themselves round her companion's tonsils, and she had to tug them out with her bare hands. That's an image that won't leave me, or you, for a while. That chicken, by the way, was the driest, most tasteless plate of meat I've had since I visited Poland in 1996. 'Grilled thin slices of marinated chicken', it promised. Actually, it was baked thick chunks, and I cannot imagine what they marinated it in, unless it was a moisture-sucking agent. I had the moussakaa (sic, £9.75), in which the main ingredient was plum tomato that tasted of so little it brought to the dish only its colour. 'I can think of so many things that could go wrong,' remarked E of the Osmalliah (£5), a dessert of vermicelli, Ashta cream (a Lebanese milk product), rosewater syrup and pistachio. So we ordered it, and it was disgusting, like tiny splinters on sweetish curds that tasted of breastmilk. The Soho branch is even more popular. All I can say is: the world is mad. Beirut 24 Nicolson Square, Edinburgh (0131 667 9919) Tipped for generous portions and reasonable prices (many of the main courses are around £10), this busy restaurant impresses with its range of sharing-friendly dishes, from the lamb and pine-nut meatballs (£4.95) to the baklava with rosewater syrup (£4) Aqua 12-14 Jury Street, Warwick (01926 495491) Beneath a colourful canopy of clashing fabrics, Lebanese classics are served to a lively dining-room. Think citrussy baba ghanoush (£4.35), refreshing labneh (£3.40) and laham bil bamia, a subtly spiced lamb and okra tagine (£12.75) Meejana 49 Church Street, Weybridge, Surrey (01932 830444) So popular is this traditional Lebanese restaurant, which wows locals with its mezze (try deep-fried squid with thyme, £7.75) and aromatic roasts (including the delicious 12-spice chicken, £16.75), that an expansion is on the horizon. Watch this space.