Everyone I know loves Hamtramck’s Yemen Café, particularly since it moved from its hole in the wall to a big bright space some years ago. Especially when out-of-towners want to go out for Middle Eastern food, as they usually do, it’s fun to introduce them to a cuisine that’s off their beaten track. Yemeni is also good when you want a fix of lamb, since so many of the Lebanese restaurants around do beef instead.
Thus it’s a pleasure to recommend another Yemeni restaurant, this time in Dearborn, opened last spring.
I went to Aldaar, which means “house” or “home,” right before seeing a program of Yemeni film shorts at a packed house in the Arab American National Museum. My favorite of the nine, titled In the Long Run, by Yousef Assabahi, centered on young Ahmed’s quest to buy bread at his mother’s behest. Yemeni bread, rashush, is a huge flat round, less floury and more flavorful than pita. Throughout, Ahmed carries an outsize “bread towel.” “Why are you carrying that bread towel?” asks each person he meets on his adventures through the village — losing his money, witnessing fights, playing a marbles-type game. (No one didn’t know it was a bread towel.) “My father doesn’t agree with bread in a plastic bag,” Ahmed explains. “He says it gives you cancer.” One elder notes that if that were true, “every Yemeni would have cancer.”
The hollow rounds at Aldaar have never touched plastic; they’re a mix of crunch and soft, browned and puffy. Each is made to order in a very hot oven; they must be at least two feet across. They need to be big because traditionally, you use a torn-off piece of bread to scoop up your food from a communal platter, rather than a fork. (Plastic forks are offered, though.)
In fact, the Aldaar staff prides itself that every dish is made to order. “Fresh every customer. Meat separate, separate spoon and plate. Everything separate,” I was told.
Besides the rashush, one of the best parts of an Aldaar experience is the free cup of lamb broth that’s served before your mains are delivered, along with a salad and a couple of sauces, hot (green) and mild (red). It’s rich and golden and sets you up nicely for the rest of the meal. The salad has a good carrot-ginger dressing that rescues it from boredom.
You can get chicken and seafood at Aldaar, and a beef ghalaba, but I recommend taking advantage of the fact that there are multiple types of lamb. The best is fahsah, shredded and served bubbling hot (don’t get impatient) in a clay bowl. (“So Fahsah, So Good,” wrote one fan.) It’s made with onion, garlic, jalapeño, cilantro, tomato paste, and fenugreek, treated to lessen the bitterness. I guarantee no bitterness in the rich finished fahsah. Salatah is similar but with root vegetables instead of lamb. There’s fahsah tuna too.
For barmah, the lamb is plain, possibly boiled, but there’s enough to share and it’s served with a huge amount of two kinds of lovely spiced basmati rice. For haneeth, the lamb is roasted for hours at a low temperature, with all the traditional Yemeni spices, and it’s super-tender and moist.
One night I asked about five types of chicken on the menu: zarbian, madfoon, and madghoot were not available. Madfoon is buried underground and smoked, so you can see why this might be a special-occasion dish. Instead I asked for chicken mandi, which was exceptionally juicy with a soft, bright-red skin, and lemon slices to cut the richness. The distinctive ingredients in this one (at least in online recipes) seem to be ghee and dried limes.
You may find yourself getting a side dish of vegetables with your order, or you can ask for mushakal. This is okra, potatoes, carrots, and green pepper, sautéed soft. I liked it, but just don’t expect crispness; the potatoes are only shaped like French fries.
Aldaar does a full breakfast, too, with various combinations of fava beans, kidney beans, scrambled eggs, and tahini: foul, fassolia, kebdah, lahsah, or a beef dish called segher. The seafood is branzino, baked salmon, and kingfish. Dessert involves honey on bread, possibly with dates, cheese, or cream. Water is available only in bottles.
Prices sound on the high side, with most dishes in the upper 20s if you include rice (which you must), but most will feed two.
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