Eating Lebanese and
Syrian Lunches in Detroit, Michigan by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
The
following food memoir appeared in my “Side Dish” column in The Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) about eating in
Detroit’s (Michigan) Levantine Restaurants during frigid winters.
Cold Comfort
When
I was a child growing up in Detroit, my mother’s favorite thing to make for
lunch or dinner was reservations.
This
meant that at least once a month, we would eat at an Arab restaurant catering
to Detroit’s Arab population of 350,000.
The Lebanese, Syrians, and Iraqis in this population had ancestors who
had come to work in the auto factories in Detroit.
I
liked the lamb and chicken shish kebabs that retained the tangy lemon and
garlic flavor of their marinade as well as the shwarma (a sort of Levantine
gyro), but I preferred to order an “ethnic” appetizer plate.
When
the appetizer plate arrived, I would load up the pita pocket bread with the
roasted eggplant purée called baba ghanouj.
The baba ghanouj was seasoned with pantry items we did not have at home
like tahini (sesame seed paste), garlic, and lemon.
I
liked the garnishes on this dish, too – salty, black olives, tomato slices, and
chopped parsley. Next, I would heap on
some yellow chickpea purée, hummus, flavored with the same things as the baba
ghanouj.
I
would alternate between bites of the deep-fried falafel patties made with
ground chickpeas, garlic, onions, and cumin with the best thing on the
appetizer plate – tabbouleh.
Lebanese
and Syrian tabbouleh features loads of chopped parsley, mint, tomatoes, and
cucumbers with grains of burghal wheat that have soaked up lemony
dressing. You are supposed to eat
falafel with a tahini dressing, but I think it tastes better with tabbouleh.
As
my lunch entrée, I would order a bowl of shorbat ads soup made with puréed
cannellini beans, chicken stock, garlic, and lemon juice. The soup is presented to you with a swirl of
extra virgin olive oil on top and paprika.
With
this meal, I would drink lemonade flavored with orange blossom water.
For
dessert, I would further demonstrate my youthful connoisseurship of “Levantine”
food and skip the baklava to order a “bird’s nest” – a phyllo pastry with edges
turned up to hold pistachio nuts.
Waiters
would bring my mother her coffee brewed Levantine-style with cardamom pods in a
pot on a brass tray suspended from three chains.
After
a meal like this, you could almost feel the Mediterranean sun on your face in
the subzero temperatures of a Michigan winter.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click for Laurent Paget's Book
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click for Laurent Paget's Book
 |
| Ruth Paget Selfie |
