What a Yummy Mezze Platter at Ya Ya Mesopotamian Cuisine

The Great Plotnik apologizes to his loyal readers, many of whom expect their Plotnik when they want their Plotnik and that's all there is to it. This morning, however, there were minor computer glitches compounded by, shall we say, certain impossible-to-ignore gastrointestinal glitches, which brings us to last night's dinner.

Mmmm, boy, Ya Ya tastes good going down. The lamb shank in the top picture and the...well, whatever it was in the bottom picture (it had a lot of yogurt for sure) were delicious but paled before the best mezze (appetizer) platter Plot and Duck have ever tasted. Silent Bill was not silent in his praise for this dish, and neither was The Great Mush-nik, though all four barely paused to breathe while inhaling the tabboule, humus, smoked turnip paste, eggplant and curried cauliflower, mopping, sopping and slopping up every morsel with baskets full of pita breads and the occasional index finger.

"Dang, that's good!" said Plotnik.
"Dang, that's good!" said Ducknik.
"Dang, that's good!" said Mushnik.
"Dang, that's good!" said Silent Bill.

This morning, The Great Plotnik adds:

"It would have made a lot of sense just to stop after the mezze platter." But he didn't stop. Ya Ya specializes in ancient Mesopotamian dishes (yup, Iraq), and apparently the ancient Mesopotamians really knew how to eat. Three main courses arrived after the mezze platter (one of them had been created in 612 BC, by the way, for the Festival of Nineveh, so the menu and the waiter both pointed out, which made it the oldest known dish in the world. Plotnik must report that it tasted like it).

If dinner had stopped after the salad and the mezze platter, Ya Ya would be four stars. But it didn't, and so, oi, the stomach, the stress, the burbles, oi.

Plotnik must figure out how they curried that cauliflower. Dang.