Today I found a middle east restaurant called Sanaa. It's located at NeoCyber in one of the endlots. It took a while to spot the place as the sign board of the shop was placed on the 2nd floor of the building.
From the outside it looks pretty normal just that I notice lots of middle eastern people sitting outside puffing shisha and play some kind of board game. The background was filled with some middle eastern song. Upon entering the glass door you see a row of seats with middle eastern looking motif sofas.
Apparently, this restaurant is a Yemeni restaurant and Sanaa is the largest city in the country of Yemen. There's another restaurant just nearby called Al Mukallah which is also named after a city in Yemen.
Their signature dishes looked pretty decent with mostly meat based meals consisting of lamb and chicken. They had a Shawarma on a plate which is essentially a Shawarma without the wrappings put on a plate. Their signature drink seem to be Aden milk tea (named after the port of Aden in Yemen).
As I had already taken heavy supper meal and was night time, I didn't manage to order their signature dishes. I opted for something light and ordered their Yemen flatbread (Mulawah), tabouleh and a fruit cocktail consisting of papaya, watermelon, mango blended together.
The Yemeni flatbread was kind of like an Indian Naan bread, only less puffy and spread out over a bigger surface. The bread seem dryer and less oily compared to Indian Naan but it is still quite tasty. The Yemeni flatbread can be considered to be like the pizza equivalent of thin crust. It was topped with black sesame seeds as garnish. The flatbread came served on top of a mini basket.
The tabouleh is basically some sort of Middle East salad. It consists of chopped onion, parsley, tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice. There was some other hint of some unknown spices (maybe is cloves) but I couldn't identify it. The 1st few bites were pretty average tasting but I could not finish it in the end because of the strong spices smell and also the tangy lemon juice. It's best taken as a side dish where you can share it around with more people.
The fruit cocktail seems to be a bunch of fruits blended into a shake sweetened with condensed milk.
Note : I just found out the heavy spice mix was called Baharat. It is basically something like the Indian garam masala and chinese 5 spices. It consists of 7 spices blended together (black pepper, paprika, cumin, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and coriander). I'm not a big fan of the taste probably due to the strong cloves flavor.
