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Sunday 2007-04-08 - Sey’un, Yemen
Tea at the neighbor’s
In the evening we go into town with a small group in search of dinner. Just before the Sey’un market square we find a small restaurant; it looks clean, several people sit and eat there, so we decide to try it. The friendly black-bearded owner requests two customers to move to another table (which they do willingly and with a smile), so we can all sit together. He has a problem though: he doesn’t speak a word of English, and our Arabic isn’t up to scratch yet.
Presently, a young man appears, and offers to help us order our food. His English is excellent and he explains he isn’t an employee here but the owner of the restaurant next door (apparently he owner had gone to fetch help!). We ask for several dishes; some are not available — he does have them in his own restaurant, he says, but since we have already chosen to sit here… We can’t honestly say that next time we’ll go to him: we’re leaving tomorrow, but he has a brilliant idea: Maybe, he suggests, we can come for tea at his restaurant after our meal. We have a delicious dinner with rice, chicken, bread, vegetable stew, and extra (free) side dishes appear with chopped red onions, a spicy tomato sauce, and a plate with green peppers (spicy, but not terribly hot). We simply drink mineral water with it.
The owner asks us where we come from, and beams. The whole meal costs us less than 350 YR per person with change to spare (no tip accepted).
Then we go to the neighbor’s restaurant for tea. Henk asks, carefully, if maybe he has some sweets with it? No, the owner says, but he can get some for us, no problem. He disappears and presently returns with three plastic bags, and starts to unload them onto plates. First, a plate with four (big) croissants. Next, a plate with a pile of small cakes. The third bag contains something like egg cakes, but we convince him this is already more than enough. No problem, he says, we’ll only pay for what we eat. All of us eat from the little cakes, so fresh they’re still warm, with a crispy crust on the outside, soft on the inside — they’re delicious. I’m not a cake person, but even I have one of them, they’re so good! And all of this can still be paid from the change we got back from our dinner.
