Abu Hani opened his first restaurant in 2000, when he was an ambitious 17-year-old student at Theodore Roosevelt High School.
His first kitchen was his mother’s. Growing up in Mayfair, he used to help her cook elaborate feasts to break the Ramadan fast. After marrying, he and his wife would take annual months-long trips back to Yemen, where he learned at his grandmother’s side in the city of Aden, just west of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which divides the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. That position made the port a necessary stop on the historic spice route, exposing the country’s cuisine to its two main influences: the Ottoman and Mughal Empires.
Among more common pan-Arabic mezes such as hummus and baba ghanoush, there’s the snacktastic finger food mutapq (sometimes spelled murtabak), griddled pouches of thin flatbread enveloping tomato-sauced meat or eggs dosed with a blend of mayo and melted cheese. At Sheeba the beef version conjures up a kind of proto cheesesteak. If you ask me, Hani could sell nothing but mutapq and the restaurant would still be a destination.
3456 W. Foster 773-654-3349 Sheeba Mandi House
