Agreed, I worked in a Lebanese restaurant for a good amount of time and once I asked about red pepper hummus. I barely made it out alive. But I would kill for some baba ganoush (sp?) right now
When going out to a new restaurant fatoush is a safer bet - it's harder to mess up, have some crispy bread and debs remmen and you'll have an enjoyable salad.
Tabouleh on the other hand is easy to mess up, it has to be super fresh with high quality ingredients and the right proportion of olive oil, lemon juice and salt. Imagine tabouleh but the parsley is stale or the tomato is mushy or the olive oil is bad or they didn't put enough salt and lemon juice - you won't enjoy it. By my god when everything is done right it's simply the best! Nothing beats it.
I judge how good a restaurant is by their tabouleh, if the tabouleh is good then probably everything else on the menu is going to be good too.
I like tabboule but as a proper salad fattoush is the winner for me. Explosion of different flavors with greens, big juicy tomato chunks, onions, pomegranate molasses, olive oil and crunchy toasted bread.
Tabboule is more of a side for me especially with grills and the sourness is too overpowering quickly sometimes. Fattoush has a perfect balance of savory, sweet and sour.
Life hack : Taboole without tomatoes and extra berg8ol and 7amod - btnek e5t teme . Can't stand tomatoes I feel their flavorless and cause too much water so I always request " Taboole Kezebe "
Personally, I find taboulé pairs well with mashewe, while fatoush complements samak better in my opinion.