Some day I will go out to get lunch and come back dead or it least in a “critical but stable” condition. That’s because unlike the local lunch-reviewing icon who eats in the safety of Johnson County,I have to forage for food around the war zone a.k.a. Independence Ave. Its unpredictable mix of ethnicities, poverty and crime make every lunch trip an adventure.
I am not sure where I ate today. I can see the place on Google Street View (it’s the white storefront to the left of the barber shop).
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I think it was called “Yasmine Cafe” but I can’t find it in the Yellow Pages, Google and anywhere else. This trip started few days ago when I noticed a sign advertising shish-kebab while driving around looking for Mexican food. Today I came to work with a thought to try some middle-eastern cuisine. I drove to the place and walked in. Small clean room with a few tables and booths and no signs of food, decorated with a TV with some Arabic channel, few paintings and a sign that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Three guys hanging out in the dining room, watching TV. By the way, on Arabic TV the ticker at the bottom of the screen is moving in the opposite direction.
I started to feel like Jimmy Carter on his way to talk to Hamas, except that he is not Jewish. I asked one of the guys if there is any way I can get some food to go, so one of them went to the back of the building and retrieved a nice guy who could speak English. I asked about food again to which he smiled and said “Do you want to know the menu?” and proceeded to make up and recite the menu from the top of his head. I recognized some items and ordered shish-kabob, rice and salad, and he also offered to get me some soup just to try. I asked him how much this would cost and after minor hesitation he said that he will give all this food to me for 8 dollars. I watched Arab TV for about ten minutes, they were talking about NYSE, probably enjoying the oil prices. Then a group of men walked through the building and all greeted me with As-Salāmu `Alaykum, I actually knew the reply (wa `Alaykum As-Salām) but decided to limit myself to diplomatic shaking of hands. I got my food, paid and left.
The food was actually pretty good and there was so much that I split it in two decent size lunches. I also got a 16 inch flat bread to go with it. I didn’t really like the eggplant soup, it was to acidic for my taste. The rice had some vegetables in it and even a few raisins and was light and tasty. Kebabs were grilled and meaty. Salad had cucumbers and lettuce, nothing weird. If anything, I expected the food to be a little more spicy, but a co-worker who spent some time in the Middle East confirmed that it was pretty close to authentic.
I am not sure if I’d recommend this place with no menu and all, try it at your own risk. I am still alive so food quality is not substandard. So just like Jimmy Carter, I am not only eating lunch, I am also improving Jewish-Arab relations, one kebab at a time.
I thought that Miley would be someone that my girls who they could look up to, but I guess that I was wrong. Thanks a lot Miley!
Posted on Kansascity.com
Many comments left in response to the article about Miley Sirus’ Vanity Fair cover fiasco are way more entertaining than the story itself. These comments are from parents who are upset because their kids’ role model is now disgraced after posing for “inappropriate” pictures for the magazine. What’s inappropriate is their kids even having a role model such as Myley Sirus. What do people even know about her to encourage their kids to look up to her? Is she a future Nobel Prize winner? Maybe she will cure cancer? Is she a great artist, composer, writer? Winner of American Idol? Up-and-coming porn star? (that may be). For all these people know, she could be torturing kittens, be a bully on a rare day when she shows up at school, she could have eating disorders, she could be a pathological liar and steal her neighbor’s paper.How can you possibly present her or any celebrity as a role model for your kids based on her 30 minute show on Disney Channel and an occasional concert is beyond me. No wonder these children have problems when they grow up.
Of course when I was growing up there were no shortage of role models offered to me and they weren’t some creepy child-actors who could sing and jump on stage. They were bona fide heroes: Pavlik Morozov – a 13-year old boy who denounced his father to the authorities and was in turn killed by his family, Yuri Gagarin – the first man in space, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya – a 17-year old who was caught trying to sabotage Germans during the war and was tortured and killed, or Alexei Maresiev – a war pilot who was shot down, lost both legs trying to get back to the hospital, then trained himself to fly with prosthetic legs and returned back to being a pilot. There were hundreds and thousands of others. There were books about them, songs, movies, poems, their portraits hung in our classrooms. Years later we found out that some of their stories were nothing but well produced propaganda. Others were true heroes who are still honored many years later. Despite the abundance of supplied role models, I never wanted to be like them or look up to them. I admired their actions, cried when their lives tragically ended but I could always separate the action from the actor. This may not be the case with the false role models of today.
The only people who I knew in real life were my parents and relatives. They were my real role models. My Father was a doctor with a gift and a selfless dedication to his patients and profession; a writer, a poet, with great sense of humor; a true intellectual. From his childhood in the Jewish ghetto under German occupation, his father never returned from WWII, he went on through discrimination and poverty to become a beloved and respected physician. Many people whose lives he saved or touched came to remember him at his funeral. He was a hero to them. He is a hero to me.
I hope that if anything my daughter gets from me (besides liking strange-for-Americans Russian foods) it’s enough common sense to tell the difference between someone like Miley Sirus or whoever else Disney Channel thinks she should look up to, and real everyday role models who are around her and not on TV. Miley Sirus’s come and go, sometimes forgotten, sometimes disgraced, their likenesses scattered amidst garage sales and donations to the Salvation Army. That’s not the road you want your child to follow. Or maybe you do. Then reread the title of this post.
For thousands of years alcoholic beverages drastically improved countless holiday parties on every continent in every political and social system. Here is an appropriate illustration from the Life Magazine Archives taken in Leningrad in 1956.
Caption reads:A party at the home of a so-called “typical Soviet worker”, the Dmitriev family. The father, a skilled metal worker, is actually a member of the Communist Party & does much side work for it, so they live far above working class average. (the line about side work for the Communist Party doesn’t make any sense to me, not sure what it means).
Small clean room with a few tables and booths and no signs of food, decorated with a TV with some Arabic channel, few paintings and a sign that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Three guys hanging out in the dining room, watching TV. By the way, on Arabic TV the ticker at the bottom of the screen is moving in the opposite direction.
For thousands of years alcoholic beverages drastically improved countless holiday parties on every continent in every political and social system. Here is an appropriate illustration from the Life Magazine Archives taken in Leningrad in 1956.