[title type="h5"]Wednesday, April 15, 2015.
Middle Eastern Addition.[/title]
The North Shore restaurant market has either too much of something or hardly any at all. It is too rife with Mexican restaurants, sushi bars, Thai cafes and breakfast specialists. Trey Yuen is so dominant of the Chinese category that none of the few other Chinese places amount to much. You can get a great steak, but only on LA 21. You can get a good poor boy, but only on or near LA 22. A great hamburger is difficult to find. New Orleans-style neighborhood restaurants are rare.
And for some reason, we have not often had much in the way of Middle Eastern restaurants. At the moment, there are two: the mediocre Albasha in Covington, and the new Rimal in Mandeville.
I have my second meal at Rimal today. Like the first time, it is not very busy, to the point that there seemed to be only one person on duty in the dining room. He took a long time to get around to me, but that was no problem. The Marys are out doing something on the South Shore. And they won't even try Lebanese food, so when I go for it it must be solo. I have an interesting article to read in the New Yorker. No hurry.
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Lula (or kafta?) kebab, with hummus and a salad at Rimal.[/caption]
I begin with spinach pie. It has that steamed mouthfeel that comes from an attempt to re-warm the pie. That's usually the way it's done. Hard to bake each spinach pie to order, although the best places do.
I am halfway through when I realize that I did not specify that I wanted the food in two courses. And here, indeed, comes the entree, with two-thirds of the spinach pie to get cold. Oh, well.
The plates at Rimal are about the size of pizza pans, and well filled. Today I am eating chicken shawarma, the roasted chicken sliced on the rotisserie into small crescents of meat. This looked grilled, but that is also common practice. It's nicely marinated and seasoning and served in a large pile for the money. Also here is a generous hill of good hummus, and a mixed green salad.
It all adds up to about fifteen dollars total, leaving me full and satisfied. It's not the equal of the best South Shore Lebanese cafes, but it's better than Albasha, which makes it the best over here.
Before the show, a break in the rain allows me to take my first exercise walk in many days. As it is, I need to stick to the roads. My trails through the woods are interrupted by water too deep for anything less waterproof than white rubber shrimp boots. Long ago I learned that your feet get just as wet from wearing rubber shrimp boots as they do with sandals, all of the wetness coming from one's own pores.
I recall a several-month time when Jude liked wearing rubber boots. I laugh aloud at that memory. The boots were his trademark at Scout campouts. But he had great mobility.
[title type="h5"]Rimal. Mandeville: 1703 N. Causeway Blvd. . 985-778-2667.[/title]
