- Hey, everybody.
We are standing here in Brooklyn on 5th avenue in the
beautiful Bay Ridge neighborhood.
On this stretch of 5th avenue,
it's sort of like a mini little Middle East.
A lot of Arabic writing every where.
A lot of stores and businesses are from Middle Eastern
countries and the place we're going to right now
is the Yemen Cafe.
Now, Yemen of course,
the second largest country in the Arabian peninsula.
It is just south of Saudi Arabia.
Country of about 27 million people.
It's a country that's had a lot of political strife,
a lot of upheaval in the last several years.
However, the Yemeni cultural contributions to the world
should not be understated.
Namely, the food.
There's gonna be a lot of wonderful lamb dishes,
bean dishes, a lot of tomato, onion, cumin, coriander,
fenugreek, a lot of wonderful things happening in the
Yemen Cafe right over here.
We're gonna head over there right now.
We're gonna try some of the food.
Talk to a couple people.
Let's go.
(happy music)
- Every single one of us,
my brothers and sisters and also my uncle's kids,
we were trained from early age how to cook the dishes.
Teenagers, they'll tell us go make me something yourself.
(laughs)
Before he opened up the restaurant,
my father was a sous-chef at a restaurant called,
I don't know if you, Windows on the World?
- Oh, sure!
(laughs)
That's amazing.
For those of you who don't Windows on the World was the
restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center.
And I mean, it was amazing.
- My father was there,
he also worked on Tavern on the Green.
- Oh, sure, of course, very famous.
So your dad's like a pro.
- Yeah.
- Oh, okay.
- He's the man when it comes to food.
Anybody who usually came from Yemen,
the first thing they did was come to the restaurant.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah, and my father would help them out, get them a job.
Because there wasn't this big of a community
back in the 80s.
- And is your dad still around?
- Yeah, my father is still around.
- Oh, okay.
- He's a very old man but he's still around, still working.
He's like, 94.
- 94?
That's amazing.
And he still comes in here and tells you what to do?
- He's more like the health inspector.
(laughs)
He'll show up and when he shows up--
- Everybody scrambles.
- Everybody's like, oh my God, that's him.
It's fun.
- Man, thanks for having me here.
- Thanks for having me.
- Love being here and I'm looking forward to trying
some of this food.
(happy music)
- Hi.
- Oh, hi.
- Welcome to Yemen Cafe.
My name is Jeff, can I take your order?
- Thank you very much.
I think I would like,
I think the lamb salta is very good, yes?
- Yes.
- Okay, so let's have an order of that.
Can I try the Foul?
This fasolia and then maybe we'll do a dessert.
This is the dessert, yeah?
- Yeah, it's bread with honey and cream.
- We'll try that.
Excellent, thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
(cheerful music)
- We're gonna start with dessert first just because
I don't want it to die while I'm eating the main course.
This is the fatah with honey.
Chopped up Yemeni flatbread that's sautéed with butter and
honey covered in this white cream
and dotted with black sesame seeds.
This is so good.
So you get that nice caramelization.
The flatbread has been sort of chopped up and macerated and
cooked until it almost resembles a crispy or crunchy rice.
And then it's just cooked in butter which gives it a
wonderful, rich, caramelized flavor.
Drenched in this pool of honey and white cream.
This is extremely good.
I don't have to say that and I don't always say that on
episodes of Dining on a Dime,
but this is probably my favorite dessert
I've had on the show.
Fatah, F-A-T-A-H, good as hell.
Lesson here is when you eat dessert first,
good things happen.
Look at this beautiful flatbread.
This flatbread is similar to what you would find in a
Indian tandoori oven.
It's in many Yemeni households.
And what we can do with this,
we can scoop up a nice bit of this Foul.
We tried the fava beans .
Tomato, onion, all sorts of good spices in this still
very hot, black stone bowl.
And when this came out, it was positively bubbling over.
It's still very hot.
These beans are creamy.
What's nice is that, because this bowl is so hot,
it's gotten nice and burned, nice and crunchy.
You can see that.
Everybody knows that the edge,
like the corner of a brownie pan is the best part.
It's the same principle that's operating here.
It's just a little bit more caramelized,
a little bit crunchier.
This is also served of course,
with a hardy portion of Haneeth Lamb.
H-A-N-E-E-T-H lamb that has been stewed and braised.
I could probably just like,
shake this and it would fall off the bone.
Just wanting to come off.
Good meat should not totally fall of the bone.
It should have a little bit of tensile strength.
Which, this does.
But that pulled off very easily.
It's nice and tender.
Very fatty.
You can see my fingers are just like, glistening.
How you know it's been done right.
It doesn't have that overwhelming gamey flavor.
This is extremely good.
If I've had a better piece of lamb in recent memory,
I can't remember it.
You guys, that's Yemen.
That's the cafe.
The flavors are incredibly rich and delicious.
I love this food.
It was great to talk with Sid and get his honest perspective
in what's going on with the Yemeni people
in the United States.
I don't think it really matters where you fall on the
political spectrum to acknowledge the current course of
American politics is going to affect
people like Sid's family,
a lot of people in this restaurant,
in very profound ways and in very, in many cases,
very unfair ways.
Food is politics.
It's all intertwined.
At the end of the day,
this is a food show and so I will say this,
Yemeni food is awesome.
It's really good.
And I don't know a lot of Yemeni people but the ones
that I met today are incredibly kind.
And so that is what I can offer today in this show.
I love the food.
I will definitely be coming back and giving them my money.
I really hope you enjoyed this episode of Dining on a Dime
from Yemen Cafe.
If you'd like to watch more, please click here.
Click, click, click.
I'm a youth.
I'm not a youth, sorry.
I already told you, I'm 73 years old.