Everyone has dreams and, up until a month ago, this was mine: that Java Zone would be bought out by an enigmatic and fabulously wealthy restaurateur for a tidy sum, and that it would be replaced by a 24-hour sandwich shop. Sandwiches, of all creeds and colors, under the same roof and available at all hours of the night: a banh mi next to a meatball sub, a croque monsieur next to a pastrami on rye, a cheese steak sharing the spotlight of a heat lamp with a po’ boy. And in this dream, the sandwiches would be cheap, and the waiters would all wear hand puppets, and every night at 8 and 10 p.m. the hand puppets would reenact the fight scenes from Road House.

Although I eventually came to terms with the fact that there were a few practical concerns preventing my dream from becoming a reality (purchasing the rights to Road House, for instance), I did hold out hope for a new restaurant in Oberlin that would meet, if not surpass, my culinary expectations. So when I heard that a small Lebanese restaurant had quietly replaced Java Zone over Winter Term, I took comfort in the fact that my dream had, at least in part, come to fruition.

Aladdin’s Eatery, however, is not exactly a small, locally owned Lebanese restaurant; It is one of 28 franchises of a rapidly growing chain of restaurants, with locations in the Midwest and the Southeast. Yet unlike most franchises, Aladdin’s website touts itself as a health-conscious, vegan- and vegetarian-friendly establishment, with a menu that showcases “unique natural foods of the Middle East.”

In a town where the most exotic dish within a two-mile radius is the $9.99 fried perch special at Presti’s, the options for decent, wallet-friendly Middle Eastern food are few and far between. So this Tuesday, I put my dreams of a Road House-themed sandwich shop aside and ventured to Aladdin’s for a meal that I hoped would, at the very least, be more authentic a depiction of the Middle East than anything in Sex and the City 2.

Upon arrival, our extremely friendly and knowledgeable waitress filled us in on every detail of the menu (limited until the restaurant’s grand opening next week). On her recommendation, we ordered a vegetarian combo (a sampling of various appetizers for $9.95), a chicken shawarma and an Aladdin’s Chicken Pitza (diced chicken, scallions, and peppers with honey mustard sauce on a flat pita).

As a Lebanese franchise in northeastern Ohio, Aladdin’s cultural schizophrenia was immediately evident from the decor, with vaguely Middle Eastern art on the walls competing with a flat-screen playing ESPN SportsCenter. As a result, I was concerned that the food would consist of watered-down versions of Middle Eastern dishes that catered exclusively to American tastes. These concerns were not alleviated by the menu itself, which lists the ingredients of each dish in painstaking detail (even if you think that baba ganoush is the name of an Egyptian president, you can probably still figure out that there’s chicken salad in the goddamn chicken salad).

My suspicions, however, disappeared immediately after the arrival of our vegetarian combo, a heaping array of hummus, tabouli, baba, falafel and dawali that could easily feed the starting lineup of a basketball team (or, alternatively, the current lineup of the English metal band Judas Priest). When paired with a dollop of Aladdin’s “hot sauce,” the baba ganoush was creamy, tangy and delicious, offsetting the dry and less flavorful falafel. Tabouli and the dawali (grape leaves stuffed with rice, chickpeas and tomatoes) were also excellent, while a thin and watery hummus left something to be desired.

Having appointed myself Expert on All Things Shawarma after a boozy 10-day Birthright trip, I was pleased to discover that Aladdin’s chicken shawarma (grilled chicken, tomatoes, onions and tahini yogurt in a pita) retained the greasy satisfaction of the shawarma on the side streets of Jerusalem (not to mention the greasy satisfaction of a boozy, 10-day Birthright trip).

Such praise could not be applied, however, to the chicken Pitza ($6.75), an appalling concoction of stale pita, mealy peppers and buttloads of honey mustard sauce that was ostensibly on the menu to accommodate customers who had lost their taste buds in an accident. As a “unique natural food of the Middle East,” the chicken Pitza was a catastrophe of Sex and the City 2 proportions, resulting in a dish that was about as authentic as the SportsCenter anchor’s toupee.

While an assortment of buttery and flaky baklava more than compensated for the Pitza atrocity, I ended up leaving Aladdin’s a little disappointed — not by the prices (which are, for the most part, reasonable) or by the food (which is, for the most part, quite tasty) or even by the loss of Java Zone (which was, for the most part, a giant gaping cavern of Suck). What disappointed me was the fact that such a great concept for a franchise — a healthy, budget– and vegetarian-friendly chain of Middle Eastern restaurants — needed to be altered or diluted at all.

It’s great that Aladdin’s Eatery has come to Oberlin, but it would be even greater if Aladdin’s Eatery recognized that most of its customers are willing — eager, even — to eat something new and different and delicious without dousing it in honey mustard sauce or pointing out that there’s chicken salad in the chicken salad. And if Aladdin’s Eatery could possibly incorporate a Road House puppet show into its budget, that would be pretty great too.