...of diversity fawning:
Some restaurants are just a nice place to go for dinner. Yemen Heaven in York is obviously that. You will eat well there.
That's it, Jay, that's all that's needed, right? Recommendations for where to take the little ladie or genrtleman for a nice Valentines Day meal?
But the restaurant is more than that.
Oh. Clearly not.
Much like Arabic Flavour in Aberystwyth, which I visited last year, it is both the story of exile and an act of memory. It is the product of one woman’s determination to maintain her family’s traditions; to free the country of her birth from a single narrative of war and hardship, however overwhelming that narrative might seem right now.
*sigh* Anyone else just go to a restaurant to eat some great food and not have washing up afterwards? I do. History and current geopolitical affairs are for the telly afterwards.
Muna Al-Maflehi was born in Taiz, a brown stone city in the highlands of southwestern Yemen, known before the current civil war for its quality coffee production and for the abundant citrus fields with which it is surrounded. When she was seven, Muna moved with her family to Saudi Arabia, where her father taught her the dishes his father had cooked for him. It was a way of keeping alive a connection to the country and culture they had left behind. In 2013, looking for a better life, she moved with her five children to live near Salzburg. There she started her first food-delivery business before, in 2017, following close relatives to York.
So she’s moved around a lot. Why?
The plan was always to open a restaurant, but it’s never easy; harder still for those who are newly arrived. Eventually, they found an old pub, the Spread Eagle on Walmgate, in need of custodians and love. The wood-panelling and parquet is still there, and so is the bar, though beaten copper teapots now stand upon it. Otherwise, the space has been carefully papered and polished, and rubber plants strategically placed. According to the blackboard on the pavement by the front door, there is now a “secret Mediterranean garden” for smoking shisha out back.
Just what’s needed, I suppose. Say, why aren’t the usual suspects complaining about this? Why does she get a pass?
Shortly before they were due to open, at the end of 2021, the newly decorated restaurant was broken into and ripped apart by vandals who splattered the walls with paint. “It was like a bomb had just hit it,” Muna told the York Press at the time, despairingly. “It was like being in the war in Yemen. I couldn’t believe that this had happened in the UK.”
Obviously the war in Yemen was a fairly tame affair!
But the community wanted the restaurant. A crowdfunder was launched. More than £21,000 was raised. Yemen Heaven opened and it remains very much a family affair.
Well, if 'the community' wanted it, they got it. But which 'community' was it, I wonder?
