Getting into the swing at Syriana

WENDYL MARTIN

“IT’S FUNNY. We are sitting here eating at a place called Syriana... while Syria is burning.”

My friend looks up from his ornately served Syrian coffee (R75) to make the remark. He then takes a puff from a tall shisha pipe next to our table, which was topped with cubes of coal heating flavoured tobacco.

It’s a late Monday morning and I’m rocking myself on a swinging bench, one of two in this Sea Point restaurant. Quiet bubbling murmurs come from the pipe as the fragrant smoke hovers over our seating area.

We are here for two reasons: I needed a place to review for this column and my friend likes his pipe.

Thanks to the magic of Zomato, I found this place in minutes; it’s one of two new shisha destinations that have opened in the city this year, the other being a place called Shego, further up the strip in Green Point.

We walked in while they were still setting up, it was around 10.30am.

A polite waitress explained that their oven was being serviced and thus many items on the menu were just not available.

I asked for a Syrian Breakfast and was granted my wish.

It is a lot of food, enough for arbout three people. Besides two fried eggs, you are served a platter with several pitas and an array of cheeses and dips like halloumi and hummus and of course olive oil.

It did feel like a Middle East breakfast, one I guiltily ate with the memory of the friend’s comment.

It’s a hand-held meal, breaking pita bread and stroking the dips, but it was enough food for me to have left-over breakfast the next morning.

My friend really enjoyed the pipe as well, rating it one the better ones he’s had in the city.

I do want to go back. The service was friendly, the seating is intimate and lends well to conversation and there are several oven-dishes I want to try, particularly the Mana’ aoshe, the traditional Syrian bread.