Mideastern Magic
It was the “$3.99 Breakfast” banner that hooked me.
Old Jerusalem is a modest Canoga Park storefront cafe with a strict kosher menu of Israeli, Moroccan and other Middle Eastern specialties. That $3.99 breakfast served every day is hot laffa (“wrap” bread, basically pita), two hearty potato latkes, two eggs any style, some stewed tomatoes and red bell peppers and a cup of coffee. All in all, quite a deal.
On Sundays, there is an even heartier special, hamim, the Sephardic equivalent of the Ashkenazi cholent (the restaurant’s owners are from Morocco by way of Israel). Picture a pile of stewed chickpeas served casserole style with braised brisket, potatoes and a hard-boiled egg, all on a giant fragrant cornmeal cake. The corn deliciously absorbs the gravy from the other ingredients.
There are good specials on other days as well. On Wednesdays, there’s fish, usually snapper, in a rich Moroccan tomato sauce spiked with cumin. On Mondays, there’s cabbage with a sweet stuffing of beef, rice and raisins. The beef goulash served on Tuesdays is tender and piquant.
The core of Old Jerusalem’s menu, however, consists of salads. Hot madbucha is tomatoes, onions and bell peppers cooked down almost to a cumin-like paste. This is terrific on hot laffa. There is a serviceable tabbouleh salad as well as a nice eggplant salad that is rather like a dip. I also liked the red cabbage salad, laced with cumin and vinegar.
One of the best snacks is Moroccan cigars--five crisp, fried pastry cylinders, each the size of a Montecristo No. 2--stuffed with beef. Old Jerusalem also makes one of the best falafel plates in the Valley. You get about five crunchy, golf ball-size falafels with all the trimmings.
Naturally, there is hummus. Old Jerusalem’s is so rich with sesame tahineh that it will remind you of a nonsweet halvah confection.
There is also a range of grilled meats, served either in hot laffa bread or on plastic plates with fries and a choice of salad. The beef version is a bit tough, but the chicken kebab is tender and good. One more possibility is shawarma, first cousin to the Greek gyro: browned beef sliced from a rotating vertical spit.
Dessert isn’t much. Sometimes it’s a nice homemade baklava; at other times, Middle Eastern cookies that the family buys locally. But in the end, the menu’s boast, “Just like home,” is not an idle one. Of course, that goes double if your home happens to be Morocco or Israel.
BE THERE
Old Jerusalem, 7147 Winnetka Ave., Canoga Park. Open 7 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 7 a.m.-midnight Friday. Parking in lot. No alcohol. Cash only. Lunch for two, $12-$21. Suggested dishes: breakfast special, $3.99; hamim, $7.50; Moroccan cigars, $3.95; falafel, $3.50. Call (818) 347-9954.