The Girl Who Ate Everything

Update (9/13/13): Bab Al Yemen closed last month! :C :C :C :C WHY, WORLD WHY??? Sigh. This post shall live on as an archive of Bab Al Yemen's greatness.

Happy new year, everyone! All tens of you! I hope everyone was busy over the last few weeks doing fun holiday things. And that no one noticed that I only posted once last month. I blame it on Kåre, who insisted on fulfilling his boyfriendly duties by visiting me over Christmas and New Year's, thus killing my productivity but also giving me all the happiness. I guess that's a fair trade-off. He went back to Norway on Saturday though, which means I'm back to the single life of sitting in front of my computer for 12-hour stretches, only moving for food, water, or elimination of the two. Although I do plan on writing a "best bites of 2012" post at some point, first I'll share a post I started writing in November and then uhhh didn't finish until now.

Bab al Yemen forever.

Charred rounds of soft-crisp, pizza-sized flat bread. Tender chunks of spiced lamb cradled in a mound of hummus. Bubbling mini-cauldrons of spiced tomato, meat, and vegetable "omelettes" with deeply crusted edges. These are the top three reasons I love Bab al Yemen so very much and why I've eaten there five times since my first visit last September, easily making it my favorite restaurant of 2012.

I don't know anything about Yemeni cuisine besides what I've eaten at Bab al Yemen, so I can't comment on its authenticity. But if all Yemeni food tastes like what I've eaten so far—only a tiny bit of what constitutes Yemeni cuisine—then I've been missing out big time for the last 27 years.

Before you read the rest of my post, I recommend checking out Max's excellent review on Serious Eats first. I mean, that's what I'm doing to give myself a better idea of what to write.

Colin and Noah, TEAR INTO THE KHUBZ!

First off, that hearty fresh-from-the-oven bread of my dreams. Bab al Yemen's menu just calls it "clay oven bread." My friends and I call it "BREAD I COULD EAT FOREVER, OH GOD YES." Wikipedia and Max tell me it's called khubz. The beautifully charred bread is mostly soft and a bit chewy, thicker in some parts than others, cracker-like where the crust bubbles up and forms air pockets. These generously large rounds come with many of the dishes, such as...

This post originally took place on August 18 of last year, which was when I started writing it. But I didn't finish it until now. For no good reason.

This does not end well, but that's ok! Photos of submerged kite taken by Melissa.

Me: Melissa...MELISSA [points out to the Hudson River], THE KITE THE KITE¹

Me: AHHH UHH UUGH BLUUUHHGGHRHR

Some annotations to clear things up:

1) Response to seeing my kite flying dangerously low to the Hudson River.

2) Response to seeing my kite flying dangerously lower to the Hudson River.

3) Response to seeing my kite gracefully touching the water's surface, then getting swallowed by the water.

You think flying a kite is all whimsical and fun, until your kite lands into a massive, swiftly moving body of water, and then it makes you realize, "So this is the pure horror a mother feels when she turns away from her only toddler for just a second, then turns back to see her toddler has disappeared. ...Maybe not into a river. That would be much worse. But yeah. It's just like that."

The site of the kite drowning: Pier I off of West 70th Street. I had made Melissa in charge of keeping my kite aloft while I called Diana to coordinate meeting up on the pier. Elsewhere on the pier, Diana had already given her brand new kite a go, but after something like 30 seconds of exhilarating kite flying action it too experienced death-by-river.

"Come over and join us; we've got a kite you can fly!" I assured Diana, turning right to give a nod of acknowledgement to Melissa—at which point I noticed the kite not majestically flying as much as lifelessly falling toward the river's surface, over a hundred feet away.

And then the frantic yelling commenced. Refer to the dialogue above.

But the kite wasn't dead yet. The string was taut; the kite was still attached to it. "We can reel it in!" Melissa suggested ever so optimistically. I like that about her—her beaming optimism in the face of probable doom.

"It'll probably break," I deadpanned.

Melissa helped me reel in the kite, gently pulling as I wrapped the string around the spool. The string held on despite the immense force of the water. Impressive. Maybe Melissa was on to something with that optimism of hers.

We managed to pull the kite all the way back to the pier. Looking over the pier's barrier, we could see the kite "flying" just under the surface of the water, intact and full of potential to ride the skies once more.

"I bet this is where it's going to break," I said. I'll admit that I felt a smidge of a smidge of hope, but I didn't want to show it.

"No, no, this will work! We just have to pull it up slowly."

"I don't know..."

Pulled slowly, we did. We pulled and pulled; the kite felt heavier with each tug.