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Lamb bacon and yogurt cocktails at Ya Hala’s Lebanese brunch.
Bacon or sausage?
Before you answer, consider that neither of the two breakfast meats at Ya Hala’s new Lebanese brunch bears much resemblance to the familiar versions found down the street at Country Cat.
The bacon is made of lamb, smoked in-house. It lacks the tautness of regular ol’ pork bacon, but it does have a nice hint of gaminess. The plump little beef sausages, called soujouk, have a nice kick from red pepper and cumin and fall in the middle of the continuum between Italian salumi and Jimmy Dean. It’s a damned fine breakfast sausage, and one of the highlights of Ya Hala’s new half-traditional, half-fusion weekend brunch.
Ya Hala chef Mirna Attar is the daughter of Nicholas and Linda Dibe, who opened one of the city’s first Lebanese restaurants on Southeast Grand Avenue back in 1986. Attar also owns Barbur World Foods. Her sister, Hoda, has a place on Southeast Belmont Street. In my exhaustive survey of Lebanese food in Portland (“Eye of the Shawarm,” WW, Sept. 25, 2013), I found the offerings middle-of-the-pack, probably in part because Attar was so busy with her other projects.
It’s been a good year for brunch in Portland, highlighted by Smallwares and Boke Bowl rolling out fresh Asian-fusion menus. And a new brunch menu brings Attar’s focus back to Montavilla, where you can order the Lebanese country breakfast ($14) and get both lamb bacon and sausage, along with two gorgeously poppable sunnyside-up eggs, a few whole cherry tomatoes pan-fried with the sausages and a pile of diced potatoes fried with mint. Not everything on that plate is good—the mint potatoes are a little like oily toothpaste—but it’s different than anything else in town.
That’s the pattern here: While the drinks and baked goods are all very nice, most of the platters include at least one “aha!” and one “meh.”
Among the drinks, we were most impressed with the fairuz ($8), a cucumbery, minty blend of yogurt and vodka with the consistency of whole milk. If you want something stronger, go for the bloody miriam, with the customary cartoonishly large skewer topped with lombardi peppers and bright red pastrami-like meat called basturma.
Get a drink and a croissant filled with super-rich chocolate halva—it’s tasty but a little denser than most, with a gooey layer of half-cooked dough around the halva—and you’ll settle in comfortably.
When it comes to the entrees, I’m partial to the more traditional offerings. Houmous balila ($9)—finely ground house hummus topped with whole chickpeas and a forest of pine nuts—is a wonderful vegan breakfast. I also liked the shakshuka ($13). It’s a favorite across the Middle East, eggs cracked into tomato sauce and poached in a ceramic pan, topped with feta and served with pita bread suitable for scooping.
A small portion of unbreaded and mildly seasoned Moroccan fried chicken ($14) did nothing for anyone at our table. But, on the side comes a thick and creamy couscous gratin that conjured nostalgia of Sunday suppers long past, even though the dish was new to me. If it was available as a side, we’d have all ordered it.
And then there was the haloumi plate ($12), with two pan-fried squares of Cyprus’ famous salty cheese, two of those gorgeous eggs and a bunch of skinned whole carrots. The carrots were the flop: The sticky-sweet pomegranate demi-glace was nearly indistinguishable from ketchup.
One unqualified flop was a “parfait” of wheat berries served with two dollops of yogurt, finely chopped dates and figs, plus candied garbanzo beans that didn’t work at all. The proportions were all wrong and those Easter egg-colored candied garbanzos were hard little mothers that had me running my tongue over my fillings.
Chances are more people opt for the burger ($12), anyway. And it’s a good one: kofta patty, tahini-mustard sauce and fried eggplant on a brioche bun. It comes with a basket of delicate, bendable fries, and for $2 you can add that housemade lamb bacon. Sure, you’re curious about lamb bacon. So get it here—because if you’re ever asked to choose between it and the sausages, you want the latter.
Order this: The fairuz ($8), houmous balila ($9), shakshuka ($13).
Best deal: The burger ($12).
I’ll pass: Fried chicken, parfait.
Source: www.wweek.com