A PIECE OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Middle East, 645 E. Main St., Alhambra, (818) 576-1048. Open Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. No alcohol. Small parking lot. No credit cards. Dinner for two (food only), $15-$20.

Alhambra, a San Gabriel Valley suburb known for its outstanding Chinese restaurants, is named for a legendary Moorish castle. That’s why it’s so fitting that the Middle East, a Lebanese restaurant housed in a converted teriyaki shack, has found a permanent home here. It may just be the city’s best restaurant.

The dining room is tiny, with a mere six tables and a five-stool counter facing the cooking area. At lunch, you’re not likely to find an immediate seat. Dinner is less hectic.

That’s partly because of the extraordinary lunch specials, but also because the restaurant has become such a success with local workers. On any given weekday, the customer demographics here are simply mind-boggling. Chinese love it here, and to accommodate them there is a Chinese wall menu. Ditto Latinos, and ditto a Spanish menu. Naturally there are endless banners in Arabic, the language of owners Wahib Wahby and Yasser Shehayeb, two guys from Alay, Lebanon, who opened the place five years back. The printed menu is in English. When I asked why, one of the waiters just shrugged and said, “English is the official language of Alhambra.”

Wahby and Shehayeb have their own history behind the range, incidentally, and that more than anything else may account for the crowds. Both men are Druz, reputed by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike to be wonderful cooks, and both men have been in the restaurant business virtually their entire lives. Food at the Middle East is subtle and delicate in a way that almost contradicts the cooking philosophy of the Mediterranean. Sauces are light, flavors mingle gently.

Main dishes are served with little accompaniments that are themselves remarkable: home-pickled and lightly roasted peppers; pungently sour turnip slices, pink from the beet juice in which they are marinated; baby green olives and platters of steaming pita bread. Appetizers vary from humus , a garbanzo bean puree with tahina , mashed sesame seeds, to imtabbal , an eggplant dip glistening with extra virgin olive oil. There is also heavier fare like kubbeh , cracked bulghur wheat stuffed with ground meat and then deep-fried, or the fragrant, satisfying lentil soup, rich with fresh garlic.

Not all dishes here are strictly Lebanese but all are native to the region, such as lahmajune , an Armenian meat pie, and spanakopita , a Greek pastry using filo leaves and a spinach filling. Both, incidentally, are well under a dollar.

Main dishes are uniformly superb; this is stove-top home cooking all the way. Mondays bring a piquant eggplant stew, served on a bed of pine-nut rice with onions marinated in somak . Tuesdays bring a white bean stew with lamb and beef, a hearty mixture that puts any cassoulet for miles around to shame. Friday you can try my favorite, a whole stuffed chicken. While the stuffing of almonds, rice, cinnamon, clove and minced lamb may never catch on for Thanksgiving, in my book it sure beats sage and bread crumbs.

More outstanding specials are couscous with chicken, mansaf , lamb with yogurt, and incredible stuffed squash and grape leaves, served with salad and homemade dressing with sesame and parsley. Should specials exhaust you, the daily menu is geared for more simple eating. You could come just after they open at 11 and try a bowl of fool mudammas , the Middle Eastern version of frijoles . (Many Arab nations consider this the standard breakfast.) Wash it down with little cups of muddy Turkish coffee. If that’s still too strange, then try a grilled sandwich such as lamb or chicken kebab. The region’s signature sandwich is felafel , deep-fried balls made from spiced garbanzo bean flour and spices, stuffed into pita bread and doused with salad, pickles and tahina . It’s huge here, and under $2. Whatever sandwich you order, don’t forget to ask for Lebanese salsa, fiery stewed tomatoes that burn all the way down.

You can douse the flames by eating some of the homemade desserts, like mamoul , a crusty envelope filled with either smashed dates or chopped nuts, or one of the more traditional offerings like baklava . Some days they have warm cream stuffed baklava or squares of their delicious honey cake, which tastes like something from a church bazaar.

If you are loose with your purse strings, the whole affair might run to $10 a person, something that definitely appeals to all nations.