I caught up with a friend from Uni for a coffee lunchtime today … something which was unexpected and arrranged at short notice.
What I had been waiting for was dinner with Natalia, a former school-mate and hostel-mate from my days in Yemen. She took me to a Yemeni restaurant in Ascot Vale (Union St) for dinner, followed by dessert in a Lebanese sweet shop in Brunswick (Sydney Street).
The Yemeni meals (particulary the lamb mugalgal) were divine but a different from what I had been used to in Sana’a. The owners are from another part of the country, Taizz. The sweet shop was huge and the array of cakes there were as good as what you could get on Hadda Street (the posh street in Sana’a) or in Beirut’s Hamra district.
Both dinner and dessert were accompanied with our reminiscences of our times in Yemen … she was there for 5 months in one stretch while I for four instances of a month at a time. While we had different stories to share, the one common factor is that we’ve both been privileged enough to have spent so much time in a medieval city which is like a fairytale … like a scene from Xena or one of those cheap fantasy programmes on TV.
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- The Yemeni Restaurant in Ascot Vale. The cafe style seating area is in the front.
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- We opted for the mafraj (lounge) seating at the back.
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- The Balha sweet shop in Sydney Street is big.
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- The seating area upstairs is quite posh … it is not polite to show faces without consent.
