Out of Iraq

By Paul Reidinger

WHILE A SMALL and inglorious part of me believes that every violent death in Iraq represents another link in the chain George W. Bush will spend eternity dragging through hell – and the heavier that chain the better – another, and greater (and maybe better) part of me opens the paper every morning in hopes of reading that the troubles in that broken land have ebbed and that peace is returning. So far, no luck. We won't leave until the fighting against us stops, and the fighting against us won't stop until we leave: a conundrum.

For Americans, the word Iraq now horribly speaks of needless war, torture prisons, and atrocities and will do so forevermore, to our collective shame, but Iraqis have a way out of at least one of history's cruel traps. For there is an ancient name for their ancient land – Mesopotamia – and it is both a more euphonious and less encumbered name than ashen Iraq. Mesopotamia is the land not of Saddam and Rumsfeld but of Gilgamesh, the epic hero, and Hammurabi, the ancient lawgiver, and adopting Mesopotamia as the new, and original, name of the country between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers would mark a fresh start toward hope in a way a US-rigged election in the wake of an unprovoked US invasion never could and never will.

At Yahya Salih's new restaurant, Yaya, which opened in March in a space previously occupied by a Greek taverna, the cuisine is "Mesopotamian," with a California accent. Doubtless there is an impulse of caution in steering clear of "Iraq" or "Iraqi" as one pitches one's restaurant toward bourgeois San Franciscans, but there is an instinct, too, for the richness of the old country, its immeasurable past, its ways and customs. Although Yaya looks like many a California bistro, with its halogen spot lighting, its paint scheme of aqua and gold, and its sleek modern furniture of burnished wood, its food is startlingly unlike that of any other place in town I'm aware of, even the rash of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean restaurants of various stripes that have proliferated in recent years.

The basic drill is simple enough: a balancing of sweet, sour, and salty notes. Anyone who's enjoyed prosciutto with melon and a dash of balsamic vinegar, or a Thai-style coconut-milk soup seasoned with fish sauce and Kaffir lime leaves, will recognize the method. What makes Yaya's cooking memorable is the panoply of unusual ingredients that produce these familiar pleasures in the mouth, including sun-dried limes, pomegranate molasses, and mint syrup.

A nice introduction to the Yaya style is a plate of the ravioli ($6), little pasta pillows adrift in a well-mannered, slightly chunky sauce of yogurt and chopped walnuts. You might well think you are in the company of the ordinary until you bite into one of the pillows and find candy-ripe date paste scented with cinnamon and cardamom; the ravioli are almost sweet enough to be a dessert but have enough savory presence to keep expectations from jumping too far ahead. Comparably exotic is the grilled eggplant ($6), whose lavender-edged strips (of the Asian variety of the vegetable) are drizzled with a honeylike sauce of pomegranate molasses and plated with salata, a bitter-tart combination of chopped cucumber, Italian parsley, and tomato. Even a fairly routine-sounding mezza platter ($7.50) has its little surprises, from the browned shallots mashed into the lentil paste to the colorful pickled radishes and peppers that encircle the main actors.

And then there are the dishes that sound ordinary and are ordinary, among them lamb tikka kebab ($14), cubes of marinated meat grilled on skewers and served with a hodgepodge of vegetables (cauliflower, carrots, red bell pepper, yellow summer squash), and sambosak ($14.50), a troika of phyllo pockets stuffed with spinach, feta cheese, and mushrooms. Ordinary does not mean bad, of course, and there is nothing wrong with either of these choices; they are carefully prepared with quality ingredients, but you could get them at any number of places.

Fesenjoon ($14.50), on the other hand – a stew of shredded chicken and walnuts sweetened with pomegranate molasses – I had never come across before, though the menu calls it "a classic dish." One of my companions found it a little too sweet, but those of us who found its balance of sugar and salt ideal and luxurious gobbled it up with her permission. And when we'd finished with that we moved on to the remains of the kuzi ($14.50), a brioche-shaped vessel of phyllo filled with minced leg of lamb, rice, almonds, and golden raisins and perfumed with allspice, cinnamon, and ginger. The thing, when served, sat there for a moment like a giant walnut that had fallen from its tree onto a plate, but once we dared crack it open, its tasty wealth streamed forth as if from a piñata.

If some of the savory courses have a sweetness hinting at dessert, some of the desserts have a savoriness worthy of some earlier part of a meal. The kenafa ($5), in particular – a kind of pinkish tart made of shredded phyllo dough, stuffed with cheese, and topped with pistachios and date syrup – defied the American expectation of sugariness. But then, we are a shallow and jejeune people, addicted to sweet endings in all of life's endeavors. The Mesopotamian way is an older way, chastened by experience, less eager to please but pleasing nonetheless.

Yaya. 2424 Van Ness (at Green), SF. (415) 440-0455. Tues.-Sat., 5-10 p.m.; Sun., 5-9 p.m. Beer and wine. MasterCard, Visa. Moderately noisy. Wheelchair accessible.