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Jerusalem's Restaurant
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| The Middle East on a Budget | Jerusalem in Minneapolis’ Green and Pleasant Land | |
| Our significant others
have been telling us that our lunches have become too pricey—to the
point of irrelevance. Tabs of $50 or more for two aren’t what most
people think of as reasonable outlays for a "let’s go grab a bite
to eat and get back to work" mentality. We listened … and decided
to head to Loring Café, not exactly the cheapest eat in town! We
weren’t deliberately ignoring the advice (really, dear!) but
expressing solidarity with the Loring, which is in imminent
danger of losing its lease. The Loring may not have the best food
in town, nor the best service, but it is the most Bohemian and we often
wish we were Bohemians too.
It turned out, however, that the Loring was closed—apparently Bohemians don’t do lunch. We hope to go there for dinner soon, and encourage readers to support the establishment as well. We ended up at Jerusalem’s on Nicollet, the nearby Middle Eastern restaurant. So we finally opted for an easy-on-the-wallet lunch, if only by default. I had forgotten, given our recent spendthrift ways, that it was possible to get a reasonably ample lunch outside of a fast food joint in the $5 to $10 range. At Jerusalem’s you can get a cup of soup and a sandwich for about $6. At that price any quibbles may seem unwarranted! Jerusalem’s fare is standard Middle Eastern—shawirma, kebobs, dolmas (stuffed grape leaves), kibbe, baba ghanouj, falafel, etc. The place is outfitted like a tent in the Arabian Desert, with billowing cloth covering the ceiling and various adornments from the region displayed. And if you lose yourself in the ambiance, the occasional fire truck or police car siren will remind you of where you really are. We both went with soup and sandwich, and also split an order of hummus. This was acceptable, but heavy on the tahini and light on the chick peas, and the accompanying pita was ordinary. For soup, I had the split pea with vegetables. The split peas had been puréed and the soup was thin but rescued somewhat by a cumin and curry note. My falafel sandwich was served in a pita half with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and a tahini dressing. I was pleasantly surprised by the falafels, crispy on the outside, moist and green on the inside. In all cases I certainly got my money’s worth. In its liberal interpretation of where the Middle East ends, Jerusalem’s also serves Greek wines. I had a glass of a red, an Achaia Clauss Nemea. It had an initial hint of the wrong kind of aromatics (i.e., the petroleum variety) and I was worried, but this dissipated and it even grew on me after a while. I ended my meal with a Turkish coffee. This must not be a popular item on the menu because the waitress, an American Scheherazade, seemed unsure of how to make it or serve it out. She brought the long-handled pot (what’s that utensil called anyway?) to the table and suggested I pour it out myself. I had ordered it medium sweet and she came by soon to check if she’d done that right. In a place like this, it suffices for the service to be well-meaning and friendly—although ultimately I felt almost jilted when she was more attentive to another table, occupied by regulars, and kept us waiting for the check. If you’re on a tight budget and need a falafel fix, Jerusalem’s is the place to go. A |
"And did the
Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark satanic mills?" To find Blake’s dark satanic mills we would have to venture east, towards the great Mississippi River and even there the likelihood of finding anything as satanic as the mills of old Albion is remote. This Jerusalem sits in the comparative tranquility of Nicollet Street, centuries removed from Blakian visions and thousands of miles apart from its namesake city – the surrounding areas of which have seen much savagery of late. What a difference a week can make! Last Sunday the temperatures hovered in the eighties and Loring Park was full of tattooed walkers, scantily dressed, enjoying glorious sunshine. Today a combination of sleet and snow is falling with depressing regularity. This contrast is also to be found between the restaurant reviewed this week, Jerusalem’s, a firmly egalitarian, inner city place and the brash Redstone of last week. There are two reasons why we have gone down market (so to speak) this week. Firstly the Loring Café was not open for lunch (we should have checked this beforehand but didn’t). Secondly we have taken a bit of stick for going to expensive lunches and ignoring the "lunch on a budget theme". In our defense it could be said that we want to capture the mood of a restaurant and try as many different dishes (the sacrifices we make for our readers!) as we can, obviously cheaper lunches can also be had at the same venues. Jerusalem’s is a tiny square of a restaurant, located at the start of "Eat Street". It has a small patio area for outdoor sitting but I think the sound of traffic on Nicollet might be daunting. We sat inside – under a fake roof that is a sort of cloth-canopy, simulating the inside of a Bedouin tent. This hanging roof is a little low as attested to by the food stains left on it by a legion of tall tray-bearing Nordic waitresses, or perhaps the stains result from food flung up in some Levantine ritual unknown to us! The walls have hand woven rugs depicting various Arab themes; the one that caught my eye was a (willing) woman being abducted on horseback by casbah raiders. She clings to her abductor (could it be a rescuer?) riding sidesaddle under a bright desert moon. The restaurant, like most with a Middle Eastern motif, advertises belly dancing on the weekend. The menu has all the items one might expect: hummus, baba ghanouj, kibbe (vegetarian and non-vegetarian), falafel, kebabs, etc. We shared an order of hummus as a starter, which came with plenty of pita bread; this alone could have been a meal! I ordered a cup of the lemon soup that was quite flavorful with small chunks of chicken in it. For my entrée I had the mixed vegetable sandwich, which consisted of things varying from falafel to cauliflower rolled in pita bread with liberal helpings of the tahini sauce. The sandwich was tasty and just about the right size and I washed it down with a glass of Tsantalis cabernet merlot blend, which I didn’t initially care for but it grew on me as the meal went on – speaking well for its anesthetic qualities! Jerusalem’s is not a place for even the moderate wine connoisseur, nor does it pretend to be. A few years ago, upon the insistence of some visiting French colleagues who wanted to go to a Middle Eastern restaurant, we dined at Jerusalem’s; discovering that our bottle of wine had gone off, we told the waitress that the wine was cooked – her solution was to get a bucket of ice and put the bottle of cabernet in it! Jerusalem’s is good value for money. Our bill came to around $28.00 and we could have had a decent meal for about half that much. B
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