mashdownbabylon

Carniceria Halal

The biggest surprise of living in San Francisco this past decade has been the number of excellent Arab restaurants that have opened in the area. Starting out with the first Truly Mediterranean falafel parlor on 16th and Valencia, to the Old Jerusalem on Mission and 26th, my greater neighborhood now boasts some of the best Middle Eastern food in the United States. As good as anything I've had in Brooklyn or LA.

So, it was with great pleasure that I discovered the other great local Arab restaurant: San Bruno's Mideast Market, on El Camino Real. Run by a guy from Bethlehem, together with an exhaustively stocked store carrying everything from cans of Ahmad Ceylon tea and fresh pita, to Marcel Khalife CDs and Elite Turkish coffee, once a week, my entire office will head over at lunch and imbibe the best falafel I've ever had in the US.



Call it a sign of feeling old. Or perhaps surprise that, after feeling so dislocated for so many years, those aspects of Middle Eastern life that I miss the absolute most would somehow find me here, in the middle of a war. Speaking in Hebrew with the owner as I paid for my food, giggling, my coworkers stood outside the entrance, marveling at the fact that the awning above included the Spanish word for "butcher."

Granted, if you want something like shakshouka, you still have to drive down to Los Angeles to get it. But, if what you want are the basics - falafel, hummus, shashlik, baklava and, as this establishment serves up, ezme (along with a few other curiously Turkish side dishes) - you can't find any better than what local places like this make available. There's so many surpluses to it all, in context, it feels positively utopian.

Family Album

My mother encouraged me to appreciate coffee

My father taught me to drink tea

My wife is responsible for the cookies

The Day Before Annapolis

Two blocks away, an Israeli-American couple sat down to a late lunch in a local cafe. Ten minutes later, a young woman and her middle aged mother took the table next to them, and in Hebrew, began discussing the differences between San Francisco and Tel Aviv real estate prices.

Walking back to our car afterwards, we talked about how much more familiar this city is starting to feel. The prevalence of pita and hummus on restaurant menus, how often we run into Israelis. And, the increase in signs like this, which we caught as we got into our Toyota. 

Two Weeks After the War

The waiters placed each course on the table without touching it, almost as though they feared coming into contact with the surface. Every time I would thank them for bringing us new dishes, or order an additional beverage for my English-speaking wife, their eyes would glance down at me without any trace of emotion, like they wanted our interactions to be as impersonal as possible.

Clearly, something was amiss. I could sense it in the stops and starts in my conversation with our friend, who, having heard that I was journalist, asked me about my work, only to be greeted by my father quietly signaling as though he’d prefer it if I wouldn’t. Obliging, I’d shift gears by pretending to have been surprised by a particularly tasty piece of food.

“In all my years of coming here,” I said, “I’ve never had such good parsley salad.”

- Excerpted from Israel vs Utopia, Chapter 8

California Orientalist

The mental health ploy had worked. She'd just gotten excused from her army service, and had come to the United States to go to art school. Standing in the kitchen of my old Richmond district apartment, K. [her pseudonym]  sampled two versions of hummus: one from Trader Joe's, the other from a local Armenian deli. "Oy, they're horrible," she exclaimed. "However hard they try, Americans cannot make hummus."

Thus, the perennial refrain of most Israelis living in the Bay Area. And its true. In nearly every instance, American hummus is consistently terrible. Either there's not enough tahina (or any), or for some reason, ingredients such as mayonnaise, cream and salt are present. Even the so-called 'organic' versions are offensive, oftentimes sporting vegetable flavorings. Imagine an exotic wheat paste sprinkled with paprika. That's what it tastes like.

Though my Israeli house guest is long gone from San Francisco (she now lives in NYC), we finally have a restaurant where the hummus is competitive with the best that the Middle East has to offer. As good as anything I've had at Yafo's Abu Hassan, or Akko's Hummus Said, this hole in the wall, run by several wonderful guys from Jerusalem, has made the Bay Area a better place to live.

Located in the heart of SF's Mission district, the unsurprisingly titled Old Jerusalem, serves another dish of equal significance: Salat Turki. A standard at most Israeli fast food places, try and find it in the US, and you'll be totally disappointed. Though its not listed on the menu, it is indeed available, and it absolutely kills. A fifteen minute walk from our house, Jennifer and I eat at OJ at least once a week.

"Never trust an Israeli's judgement of Arab food," a Kuwaiti graduate student friend once joked to me as we inhaled Turkish coffee together in Toronto. "They're all one-dimensional orientalists." I thought about these hilarious, stinging words as a Lebanese colleague of mine worked his way through the hummus the other night during an editorial meeting we held at the restaurant.

"Bloody hell," he blustered as he dipped a thick piece of pita into the hummus. "This stuff is so good, you'd think they started this place just for us."

Dinner

Cooking Digital: DJ/Rupture: Special Gunpowder (Tigerbeat 6)

Breakfast

Over the Top: Omar Souleyman: Highway to Hassake (Sublime Frequencies)

Instant Lamb Couscous

Ingredients below different from above image:

1 pound of ground lamb, grilled
2 diced zucchinis, sauteed in olive oil and pickled shallots
1 box of couscous, with garlic mix
1 jar of Pelopenese brand sweet red pepper sauce*

*Apply the pepper sauce to the finished dish.

Shwarma with Sharon

It was late in the afternoon at Tel Aviv's Olympia restaurant. Barely a soul was present, with the exception of an overweight middle aged man sitting at the center of a large table, surrounded by several IDF officers sporting berets neatly folded inside their epaulets. Some were sipping cups of  Turkish coffee. Others were smoking cigarettes and talking, while the gentleman at the center of the proceedings sat there in silence.

Eventually a large plate of shwarma arrived, and when it did, all of the soldiers present allowed him to help himself first. Digging his hands into the steaming hot dish, he ended his silence. "Nu, Elie," he yelled out across the room to my father. "Manishma?" ("how are you?" ) he asked. My father got up from our table and politely made his way over to him. "Beseder," ("Fine") he said politely, explaining that he had arrived for a late lunch with his son, whom he'd just brought over from the United States.

"Who is that man you just said hi to?" I asked my father after he returned to our table. "That's Ariel Sharon," my father said. "He's a retired general, who'se now working in politics." I recognized Sharon's name. I'd seen it in the newspaper. It corresponded with a picture book I was reading about the 1973 war. "Isn't he a hero?" I asked.  "Well, yes," my father replied, sounding a little conflicted. "He lead the charge against the Egyptians two years ago in the Sinai."

Over dinner at a friend's apartment in Tel Aviv in 2005, I asked what had become of the Olympia. "It closed many years ago," the hostess said. "When did you last go there?" "When I was eight," I replied. "In 1975." Telling them the story of running into Sharon, they both laughed. "I once worked on Sharon's ranch when I was a kid," the host  said. "Watching him eat was an amazing - and a somewhat unpleasant experience. He would attack food like it was the enemy."