Accessible Restaurants, Middle Eastern Edition

[bairnsidhe]

So I love Middle Eastern food.  Like... an embarrassing amount.  It's consistently okay for me to eat, even on days when my sensory inputs are spamming the Do Not Want buttons, and there's a nice range of mild/savory/spicy to choose from.  However, due to that exact thing, I often end up at a Middle Eastern restaurant unable to order.  The menu is hard to hold as my hands try to escape my body, the words slide away from me as I try to talk, and I never know if the dish will be heavily garnished with my one and only food allergy, parsley.  (Yes, I am aware of the irony that I adore Mediterranean/Middle Eastern food, and cannot eat tabbouleh, but it is Tasty Death Salad for me.)

Problem: It's hard to order when my neuro-divergence gets strong.

Solution: Visual menus.

Enter, the Marble Top Cafe  and it's delightful manager, a friendly man named Osama who resembles a Middle Eastern Uncle Iroh.  They have a visual menu on their counter formed of photos of the dishes they make, as they make them.  It's not prop-photos, those dolled up, too-perfect meals made of inedible things (falafel isn't pretty, it's not supposed to be, it's supposed to be tasty) but actual pictures of food, laid out with labels.  I was able to order by pointing, and I deftly avoided anything that came with large doses of parsley.

The service is great, in addition to the visual menu being easier to work with, Osama took my order of lemonade and brought out a glass of REAL lemonade, like with actual lemons, not a concentrate or powder.  I can't recall the last time I had lemonade at a restaurant and it was sour enough, but this stuff was good.  We happened to arrive in between lunch and dinner, so after we ate, Mom and I had a lovely time talking with Osama about everything from politics to the differences in sodas here versus in the Middle East.  And it turns out the visual menu I loved so much is a reverse curb cutter effect, they installed it for use by Saudi-American customers who like to know how much rice they'll get with their meal.  Which goes to show diversity helps everyone, not just the people who benefit on the front end.  (In other news, water is wet, and air remains good for you.)

So the next time you want to get good Mediterranean, Greek and Middle Eastern food in the Kansas City area, look them up.  Help support accessible restaurants, and get some great food too!

Comments

Try this ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

If you love real lemonade, try bumping it up with Buddha's hand zest or syrup.

Re: Try this ...

[bairnsidhe]

I will do so, I've been following your Buddha's hand recipes and thinking I need to get some and try those.

Re: Try this ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

They are wonderful fun, and so versatile! At first they look really confusing and it's all, "What do I do with this?" But then you start exploring it's like MAKE ALL THE THINGS. :D I am loving the syrup in tea.

[readera]

That's great that its accessible! If I'm ever in the area, I may have to look it up.

[bairnsidhe]

I know!! If you do ever stop by Kansas City, let me know and I can provide a list of great spaces.

[readera]

Thanks, I will!

[we_are_spc]

I wish I could, but I'd have to leave the airport for that (If it's in MO)...not sure I can do that. :/

visual menus are awesome. That's the first time I've heard of something like that-and now I'm curious if they go the complete opposite and have Braille as well. Huh.

Re: Deversity helps everyone, I bet that's good for those just coming over and can't speak much English yet. Like you, they could order by pointing at what they want. :)

-Fallon~

[bairnsidhe]

Yeah, our airport is WAAAY out in the sticks, and everything interesting is in the middle of the Metro Area. It makes short-stay entertainment (like a 7-hour layover) hard to come by, as you have to leave 45 minutes each way off your plans just to get to the place that's fun.

Visual menus are the BEST. I adore them. The prevalence of Braille menus is still rather slim, although anyplace that has one kind of accessible menu is likely to be more willing to work around a problem (like by reading out the menu, or talking about what type of food a blind customer wants).

That's a good point, and it makes sense to me that a restaurant run by a family of immigrants would have good ESL assists as well. Because immigrants and diversity are good for society.