As the weather gets cooler, you may be craving hearty meat dishes with warm spices. Well, that is one of the specialties of Yemeni Cuisine, a culture that dates back thousands of years.
From bubbling stewed lamb that is perfectly seasoned, to crisp bread that is cooked fresh in a tandoori oven, Sheeba is dishing up traditional Yemeni food in Dearborn.
“It’s the kind of food you can eat every day and never get sick of,” says owner Ismael Aljahmi.
The Aljahmi family has been in the restaurant industry for a long time. Ismael’s father first opened a Yemeni restaurant in New York in 1972, and Ismael remembers spending a lot of time there, saying instead of going to the playground, he would go into the kitchen.
The family moved to Michigan in the early 2000s and it wasn’t long before they opened up Sheeba.
“Our culture goes back like 5000 years, and people don’t know about it,” explains Aljahmi. “We felt like we had a responsibility to show who we really are.”
The way they like to show their culture is through their food. They dish up many Yemeni meals including their signature Lamb Haneeth. The lamb is marinated with a heavily seasoned savory sauce and braised for hours until it is fall-off-the-bone tender. It is served over rice with mixed veggies, a salad on the side, and bread. You can also try the Yemeni version of Gallabah which features the meat of your choice (chicken, lamb, or beef) cooked with lots of vegetables and spices. A must-try is their lamb Fahsah, a stewed lamb dish that is served bubbling in a stone bowl to your table. You can eat the stew with their bead, which they bake in a tandoori oven, and their tomato sauce.
After dinner, you can enjoy some coffee or tea at their in-house coffee shop, Moka. They serve Yemeni coffee there, which is brewed with spices like ginger, cardamom, and cinnamon. At Moka, they also like to serve their coffee in a very traditional way, according to the owner. The coffee is served in a big clay jug which is heated over embers in a pot that the jug sits in. After the coffee is poured, they put oud incense into the ember, creating a fragrant smoke that is supposed to be smelled while sipping on the coffee.
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Sheeba has three locations in Dearborn, the one Michelle went to was at 13919 Michigan Avenue.