Eat This Riverside: Lamb and Fish Yemeni-Style at MandiXpress

Riverside has a new Yemeni restaurant: MandiXpress. Located on University Avenue, between Brockton and Market, across the street from the Chamber of Commerce, this spot opened at the beginning of April. To the best of my knowledge, it is one of only two Yemeni establishments in Riverside—the other is Qamaria Cafe, at the other end of University by UCR, which focuses more on coffee service and pastries. MandiXpress, on the other hand, has a full menu for lunch and dinner in addition to coffee and breakfast treats; they even offer hookahs for folks who want to unwind after a long day’s work with a charcoal-powered water pipe.

Yemen is an enormous country—25% bigger than the state of California—situated at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula on the Gulf of Aden, separated from the Horn of Africa by a narrow strait. Yemeni cuisine reflects its geography, with dishes that bear the influence of many neighbors: grilled meats flavored with East African spices, flatbreads cooked in a South Asian–style tandoor, and more generically “Arab” culinary influences, like a taste for lamb, poultry, and rich, murky sweetened coffee.

The heart of MandiXpress’s menu is the mandi—roasted chicken or lamb served over rice. Partner Saed Arafeh tells me that back in Yemen, these dishes are typically cooked in brick-lined underground pit ovens, with rice in a pan at the bottom of the pit absorbing flavor from meat drippings that emerge from the lamb or chicken suspended overhead. Here in Riverside, they make do without the underground tanoor.

Nevertheless, MandiXpress’s lamb mandi is delightful, with a huge chunk of braised-then-roasted bone-in lamb shank perched on a heap of aromatic saffron rice, with crispy onions, raisins, and almonds added at customer request. Try the smoked yogurt sauce alongside—a pleasantly tart and smoky condiment that sings a bright counterpoint against the warm, deep bass tones of the lamb.

A similar hunk of lamb comes in broth as Lamb Burma—fall-apart tender lamb shoulder with strata of unctuous fat, meat, and startling yellow connective tissue that collapses with a gentle prod of the fork. Don’t skip slurping the broth—it’s an intensely lamby consommé and packs a heck of a meaty punch. It’s the kind of pot roast I long for during the rainy days of April.

Lamb gets yet another treatment on the menu in the form of Fahsah, which Saed tells me is one of their most popular dishes. Fahsah is a stew made with shredded lamb and beef in a tomatoey sauce—it’s not quite a sloppy joe, but it’s not far off.

It comes bubbling away in a stone casserole with your choice of sauce on the side (I recommend the sahaweq, a fresh tomato/garlic/cilantro salsa) and a giant round of Yemeni bread, crisped on the walls of the tandoor and flecked with pungent nigella seeds. It’s great!

I’d also steer you to try the Fish Mova—it’s a whole bone-in pomfret seasoned with chili paste, cumin, and other dried spices, roasted in the intense heat of the tandoor. Pomfret is a firm, white-fleshed, meaty fish, and it does very well roasted at high heat. If you’re like me, you’ll spend a happy hour extracting morsels from every nook and cranny until you’re left with nothing but a Heathcliff-style fish skeleton.

I’ve been to MandiXpress a few times already and am looking forward to going back to try out the rest of the dinner and dessert menu. On my to-do list:

Kibddo Qolabat: chunks of lamb liver sautéed with tomato, onion, and scallions
Honeycomb: sweet rolls arranged in a honeycomb pattern, stuffed with cheese
Breakfast Plate: I sampled the Yemeni-style shakshouka—which is closer to an onion scramble than the poached eggs in purgatory I was familiar with—but I’m really excited to try the full Yemeni breakfast: a DIY breakfast buffet with poached eggs, dips, bread, beans, olives, and cheese

I was not familiar with Yemeni cuisine when I popped into MandiXpress, but I’m very glad I did. Saed, the partner who spoke with me, asked me to forward his encouragement to readers to give Yemeni food a try: “It’s not that spicy! It’s more about different flavors—just come and taste it and try it! We are more than welcoming.”

In addition to the Riverside location, Saed and his partners have two additional Southern California branches of MandiXpress in the works: in Irvine and Downtown LA. So, get on the Yemeni train now! You won’t regret it.

MandiXpress is open seven days a week. At the moment, they’re open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., though as they firm up their staffing, Saed tells me they’d like to expand their hours in the morning for coffee service (both dine-in and to-go through their drive-thru window) and in the evening till midnight, so you can linger over spiced coffee and hookahs. The dining room is sparkling clean and decorated with murals illustrating people and places in Yemen.