photograph by michael donahue
The “All-Day Arabic Breakfast.”
I wanted to try something exotic at Aldar Café, since it was my first visit, so I ordered “Yemen Honey Bread.” The quilted loaf of dough drenched with honey was fabulous.
The “Matcha Bar” listing on the menu by the cash register sounded intriguing: matcha latte, lavender latte, white chocolate matcha, and strawberry matcha. Google told me “matcha” is a tea, which “contains an abundance of antioxidants” that “may have some positive effects on our health.”
photograph by michael donahue
The regular tea menu includes red, Adani, milk and honey, ginger, Zatar, Karak, and Moroccan green tea. The Yemeni coffee options are also interesting: black, light roast, Yemen latte, Cascara, Arabic, and Turkish.
I began my lunch with black coffee, a strong Yemen blend, and a mango banana smoothie. I chose the pizza topped with chicken, tomato, peppers, onions, black olives, jalapeños, and mushrooms.
Everything was delicious, but I felt I hadn’t fully enjoyed the exotic experience here, so I ordered the “All-Day Arabic Breakfast.” When it came to the table, I was taken aback by the six bowls on a slender holder with pita bread on the side. I recognized the olives, but wasn’t sure what the other bowls contained or how to eat any of it. Did I need a fork or a spoon?
Then Mohamad Alshuga, the son of one of the owners, showed up. I asked him if I was eating genuine Yemen food. “It’s more Mediterranean food,” he said. “It’s a mix from different cultures. Lebanese, Syrian, Yemen. Most of the Arab countries.”
He explained that the bowls contained black olives, halva, feta cream cheese, olive oil, honey, and za’atar, which, Alshuga told me, was dried thyme with sesame. The pita bread was “freshly made,” Alshuga said, so I asked, “Do I make a sandwich out of it?”
photograph by michael donahue
“Everything Made Fresh” pizza
“It’s more of a dip,” he explained. “The main course is the feta cheese. It can be dipped with everything. You can dip feta cheese with olive oil, and it’s very delicious. Feta cheese with halva is sweet. The cheese kind of balances it out. If you eat the halva by itself, it’s going to be too sweet. But if you mix it with cheese it’s very good.”
I began by dipping the pita bread into the cream cheese. “Get some more,” Alshuga said. “You’re not used to Mediterranean style.”
So I dipped the pita bread into various ingredients. After I dunked the cream cheese into the honey and then dipped the whole thing into the halva, Alshuga hesitated and said, “I don’t know if honey and za’atar goes well, but you can try that.”
It tasted great to me. But I love sweet and savory.
Alshuga, who is from Yemen, described another breakfast they’d have back home. “In Yemen, we have fava beans, red kidney beans, white beans, eggs, and lambs liver,” he said. “And some days we’d have something like this.”
photograph by michael donahue
Yemen honey bread
Red tea came with the breakfast I ordered. “Red tea is just a red leaf tea with water,” Alshuga said, “but we add flavors such as cardamom and cloves.”
I told him the honey bread was fabulous. “It’s fluffy,” he said. “We stuff it with cream cheese, and we usually top it with black seed, sesame seed, and honey.”
We talked about their pizza. “What makes it special is we make the dough here in-house, and the sauce also in-house.” And there are no preservatives in it, he said. “Everything is made fresh.”
“Manakeesh” pizzas are flatbread topped with za’atar, cheese, meat, or mubarak, a “spicy tomato paste and black seed,” Alshuga told me. I’ll try that on my next visit.
I asked what was the most popular item at Aldar Cafe. “Yemeni latte,” Alshuga said without skipping a beat. It contains Yemeni coffee beans, nutmeg, cardamom, and other spices. “If you want to, we add sugar to it, but it has its own chocolaty flavor. That’s what makes it different from any other coffees.”
Finally, I asked Alshuga about “Origins of Mocha” on Aldar Café’s outside sign. That refers to a major port in Yemen, he said.
After I left Aldar Café, everything tasted so good, I felt like I’d already been to his country. And I plan to go back.
Aldar Café, 4514 Summer Avenue, No. 1
