FACING PAGE:
Olives, assorted
baklava and chicken
kebob with syrian bread
from Aleppo Sweets.
THIS PAGE: Spicy sour
shredded potato and
tomato egg drop soup
from Chong Qing.
ALEPPO SWEETS
It’s a disappointment to get takeout
from Aleppo Sweets — but only
because the restaurant is so
charming. Everything about the
small space sparkles, from the
copper tea kettles and glittering pendant
lights to the prismatic windows tinged with
hues of green foliage. Syria has faced nearly
insurmountable struggles but, in this Aleppo,
the romance of its culture is fully immersive.
The scent of baklava, the sounds of Middle
Eastern music, the awareness of how furtively
this world needs to be protected: All
of it is evident in the food, even when it’s
packed in plastic.
Syrian ingredients are both earthy and
light, an Edenesque exploration of agriculture.
Meat is readily present, usually marinated
and grilled, but even the most flavorful
kebabs play second fiddle to vegetarian
options. The house hummus is entirely
smooth and almost smoky and an irresistible
glue when you’re piling tabbouleh and labneh
onto thin sheets of bread. Add in a plate
of stuffed grape leaves, a bowl of baba ghanoush
and a half-dozen fried falafel and you
might swear off of American fast food forever.
(It’s not any faster and the culinary
comparison is shameful.)
And then there is fatayer. Technically,
fatayer is a hand-pie in a variety of shapes,
filled with ground beef, spinach or cheese.
But owners, Youssef and Reem Akhtarini,
form their dough into a pizza-like disc and
slather it with za’atar (a savory sumaccentered
spice blend) or Aleppo pepper
which, like all the food here, lingers on the
tongue like memory.
At its core, however, Aleppo Sweets
defaults to its name: sweet in its translation
of Syrian life and in its signature wedges of
baklava. This is where Akhtarini earned his
reputation and livelihood and people still
appear on the sidewalk to gather up small
ribboned boxes. For a dessert that often
coats the teeth with sugar, Akhtarini shows
restraint: his baklava sings of nuts and dark
chocolate, a panoply of texture and stories
from across the world. If Proust had his
madeleines, Ives Street has this: a singular
bite of a gorgeous, complicated life. If it
wasn’t ours in the past, no matter; it has
become a deeply moving experience shared
by the community. And taking a bite as you
stroll the street, or in the confines of your
kitchen, alone, does nothing to dissipate
the impression.
107 Ives St., Providence, 533-9019, aleppo
sweets.com. MUST GET: Mezze, fatayer, kibbeh,
baklava.
CHONG QING
Curb appeal is not going to lure
you into Chong Qing. The
generic photos of composed
stir-fry looming over Wickenden
Street offer no glimpse
of what lies in the kitchen — which turns
out to be a visceral connection, not only to
Chinese culinary heritage but also domestic
life. No doubt America has its own evolving
perception of what traditional Chinese cuisine
is but indigenous dishes often go unnoticed
in the international marketing pitch.
That’s where Chong Qing comes in. The
restaurant is not concerned with American
standards nearly as much as it is with recreating
a Sichuan home in the Ocean State.
Even packed into homogeneous takeout
containers, these are dishes that surprise
with spice, heat and texture. There are
plenty of doughy dumplings and noodles
for those tied to the familiar but so much
lies outside the expected. Hand pulled
noodles are intensely chewy and laden with
cumin-scented slices of beef, redolent of a
Far East palate that extends miles outside
of China. But the most compelling dishes
are homey and hearth-bound.
The combination of tomato with eggs may
not be particular to any culture but its execu-
RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l JULY 2020 81