Hiske’s restaurant reviews are back: she ate luscious and invigorating Yemeni in The Hague

Arabia Felix or “happy Arabia” was the name geographers gave to the Middle Eastern country where Yemen is now located since ancient times. Its slightly elevated position relative to the rest of the Arabian Peninsula made it a rich, green area with a thriving culture, fertile farmland and civilizations dating back to more than 1200 BC. The very first coffee was produced there (Mocha is a Yemeni port city) and the oases on the Red and Arabian Seas ran numerous trade routes along which fragrant and luxurious things such as frankincense, spices, gold and pearls were traded with Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, India , Turkey and Europe.

But the days when Yemen was a happy country are long gone. Precisely because of its strategic position and fertile soil, a devastating civil war has been raging for nearly seven years that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and left countless displaced, destitute and hungry. In Yemen, for example, an estimated five million people, mostly women and children, are currently severely malnourished. 80 percent of the population depends on humanitarian aid from abroad, and the number of Yemeni immigrants in the Netherlands has increased fivefold since the start of the war to nearly three thousand.

trade routes

There is something sour that it is often the exiles, and the people who flee from hunger and violence, who introduce us to new flavors and cultures – especially when that interesting and delicious food is almost impossible to get in the largely devastated country itself. is. The Yemeni dishes that we are served at the pleasant Yemeni in The Hague clearly show the long history of trade routes and wealth: a Middle Eastern cuisine with clear Persian, Ottoman, Iraqi and Indian influences of luscious sweet spice mixtures and invigorating , spicy condiments, stews full of warm spices such as turmeric, cardamom and aniseed. There is grilled meat, bread from the tandoor oven (taboon in Arabic, see box), golden saffron rice, pulses and luxurious, heavy desserts.

The store is located on the passionately ugly Almeloplein in the Morgendicht district of The Hague, opposite a Lidl pimple and sandwiched between a darts shop and a pet store. The restaurant itself, owned by a Yemeni family, is spacious, bright and still clearly new, having moved here from Amsterdam-West last year. The place is tastefully decorated with well-dosed Arabic kitsch: a vaulted, red-furnished show staircase, a huge chandelier and bunches of red roses. Downstairs we can take a seat at tables and upstairs, as is common in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, we reserve semi-enclosed private suites where guests can sit on the floor, with comfortable cushions. All four are welcomed by exuberant Dutch-Arab families and groups of friends – headscarved ladies pass each other babies and bread cooing and laughing, a paterfamilias addresses his grandson, a toddler is playing on the stairs – all extremely festive. We are also fine downstairs, although every now and then we get a bit cold when the door opens, because there is no hall.

The young waiter, who does not speak Dutch but does speak good English, explains the menu to us with visible pleasure. Lunch is the most important dish in Yemen, but at Yemeni they serve everything all day long, and everything is for sharing. Lighter breakfast and dinner dishes include the egg dish shakshouka, bean dishes such as foul and fasoulia, and bread dishes such as fattah, fatoot (fattoush), and dishes with fried tuna and fried liver. Lunch dishes are the heartier meat and fish dishes with rice or bread. No alcohol is served, but there is tea, soft drinks, juice and excellent freshly made lemonade. We order a frog green of lemon and mint, with a lot of aromatic zest in it too.

The foul (broad bean stew with tomato, green pepper and coriander seed, €7) and the falsah (€12.50, normally an aromatic lamb stew, but here made from beef) are both served in a sweltering earthenware pot that madara is called. The meat in particular is bubbling and steaming that it has a nature. Both are very carefully seasoned and topped off with a generous dollop of ghee, clarified butter. Also on the falsah is a good portion of milky white hulba, a preparation of bitter-nutty fenugreek seeds and garlic that gets a wonderfully lobed, whipped cream-like texture by beating. It is accompanied by a moulawah bread the size of a bicycle wheel, freshly baked against the wall of the tandoor oven, and with all sorts of crunchy and chewy, wheat-like corners, again generously sprinkled with ghee and nigella seeds.

showpiece

The showpiece of the menu (‘This is the best we have’, says the waiter) is the meat dish mandi (€ 17.50) with both lamb and chicken and in the photo even with a whole lamb including head. It is a very old preparation in which the meat is first rubbed with the Yemeni spice mix called hawaij, of aniseed, fennel seed, ginger, cardamom, turmeric, dried lime and black pepper. Then it is put in the tandoor for several hours, where the inside becomes soft and the crust becomes crispy. Then the rice at the bottom of the tandoor is mixed with the stock, and it is allowed to simmer together with the meat for a few more hours. The word mandi comes from the Arabic word for dew, referring to its juicy and velvety texture. It is delicious, especially because of the incredibly tasty yellow rice. A welcome fresh and spicy contrast to the rich flavors is provided by the sawaheq (also known as zheg), a condiment of green chillies, tomato, garlic and spices – it’s spicy, fresh and distinctly cumin. There is also cooling yogurt with garlic and cucumber on the table.

On the dessert menu we see everything we want, such as the rich layered pastry Bint al-sahn and our Arab favorite kanefeh (delicious stringy cheese under a crust, with sugar syrup), but unfortunately none of these are available today. There are, however, masoub and areekah (€ 3), both dishes of ground bread with banana and dates respectively and served with cream cheese, honey and pistachios: it is tasty, but very heavy.

Yemeni is a nice business, and the prices are so reasonable (the two of us just lost 50 euros) that a donation to the world food program or a Others aid organization can also get rid of it. Because it also feels crooked to get to know this rich, sumptuous and interesting cuisine when so many Yemenis are in danger of starvation.