Following a recent visit to the Bronx Zoo, I ventured into the wilds of Van Nest, a small, diverse neighborhood just outside the southeast gate. The western fringe of this area, dominated by the Cross Bronx Expressway and the city’s last remaining stretch of NYW&B tracks, seems to firmly prove Jane Jacobs’ theory of border vacuums, a depressed stretch of boundary wasteland marring the appearance of a place better known as the childhood home of Regis Philbin and Stokely Carmichel, and which boasts what may be the most ornate station in the subway system, or at least the one most resembling the property of a Spanish landowner. Things get a bit livelier once you hit Rhinelander Avenue, which hosts a burgeoning Middle Eastern sector of hookah bars, restaurants and Halal meat markets. Among these is Arth Aljanatain (Land of Two Gardens), which hints at its customer base by having its name displayed solely in Arabic. The restaurant is Yemeni, and had a distinct clubhouse vibe on a warm Saturday evening, with the loud burble of Al Jazeera news emitting from a wall-mounted TV, and several groups of young men draped comfortably over small tables. In short, probably not the best setting for an already out of place couple to start inconspicuously snapping food photos (already one of my least favorite activities), and so I settled for a mostly undocumented meal of hummus, tandoor-blasted khobz bread, piquant lamb broth and roasted chicken. During this dinner I came across two items of note, the first of which I discovered by bravely picking an unfamiliar word off the menu. This (in an approximate picture I have cravenly stolen from this recipe blog) is melokeya, a strange soup which resembles a mixture of snot and grass clippings, with a mysterious mucilaginous texture that I could not immediately identify. It tastes delicious - full-bodied and resolutely leafy - but the slippery consistency was certainly a bit puzzling; my first guess was some kind of cheese simmered down into the broth, but a Google search for the term links only to this Serious Eats article, which makes offhand mention of the dish but offers no description. As it turns out, melokeya is the name of the vegetable which has been pulsed down into this green concoction. Also known as jute, Spanish okra, Egyptian spinach and Jew’s Mallow, its lack of search results can be blamed on an Arabic name which, thanks to the horrors of transliteration, gets rendered in English about 50 different ways. This seems like the most common version; name-checked in the book of Job, in Egypt it’s one of three national dishes, and apparently enjoys a broad presence all over the Middle East, with a history dating back to the time of the pharaohs. The other item was less perplexing and more easily enjoyable. Kazouza 1941 is a Lebanese ‘sparkling fruit drink’ with a strangely time-specific name; the lemon mint variety was lightly sweet, more reminiscent of Italian soda than a straightforward soft drink, with a nice herbal kick. I assumed the year 1941 had some historical significance in Lebanon, considering the general pandemonium of global history around that time, but this seems to not be the case. According to some research done by this Lebanese blog, it’s the year the Kazouza product was initially introduced, sold by a different company, and it’s now been rebranded under a name that incorporates that history as part of the package. American sodas often lean hard on the nostalgia factor in terms of labeling - fitting for a decadent sugar water that’s best suited for the palettes of children - but as far as I know none have gone so far as to rename themselves after their year of inception. Aside from bottled goods, Arth also had some fantastic Yemeni black tea, bracingly sweet but backed up with spices, served communally and at no cost from a large samovar, further enforcing the casual, modest feel of the place. Natives of this small Arabian country have a definite presence in New York, but it’s often in a veiled capacity - running delis, fried chicken joints and at least one famous brisket house - and so it’s refreshing to taste this food in its own relaxed, low-key environment.
1 Comment
David Shamon
7/23/2022 08:07:54 am
Hi. Do you deliver kazouza to Sweden?
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