Falluja Restaurant Is Reborn in Baghdad, Offering Nostalgia With Its Kebab
Long before Falluja was known the world over for deadly jihadists, it was known all over Iraq for its kebab — fatty lamb, ground and mixed with onion, grilled on a skewer over an open fire and served with a pinch of sumac — at a joint called Haji Hussein. Everyone, it seemed, ate at […]Tim Arango writes for The New York Times:
Long before Falluja was known the world over for deadly jihadists, it was known all over Iraq for its kebab — fatty lamb, ground and mixed with onion, grilled on a skewer over an open fire and served with a pinch of sumac — at a joint called Haji Hussein.
Everyone, it seemed, ate at Haji Hussein: locals, soldiers, tourists and businessmen traveling the Baghdad-to-Amman highway that runs through the city. Starting in 2003, journalists covering the war ate there, and so did American soldiers and the insurgents who fought them, perhaps even at the same time.
The restaurant was damaged by bombs multiple times, and entirely flattened once by an American airstrike. It was rebuilt, embraced as a symbol of Falluja’s own rebirth after years of war, only to be abandoned when the city fell to the Islamic State more than two years ago.
Now the much-loved kebab restaurant has been reborn again, this time in Baghdad, in a modern, three-story building in the upscale Mansour neighborhood.
