I while ago, I was standing daydreaming in the lesbian section of a clothes shop called Minge, or at least it sounded like Minge. It certainly had the letters M, N and G in its name but actually I’m not that sure now. Before long, I found myself contemplating lentils. I really like them, in just about any form, especially soup.

Lentils popped into my mind because as a kind of softener for being dragged through another Dubai mall shopping experience, I new I could look forward to a bowl of the most amazing lentil soup, in Cafe Bateel, which has got to be the best ever unlicenced food outlet in the Middle East (Cafe Bateel Menu). 

I’d walk a long way for that bowl of soup, although, unlike Esau, I doubt I’d surrender my birthright for it. Full of protein and fibre, they are a healthy addition to any diet; Hippocrates, it is said, prescribed lentils for patients with liver problems.

Lentil soup appears in many forms and while its origins are undoubtedly middle eastern, it is, I think those clever Lesbians we have to thank for the addition of lemon juice. Never had lentil soup with lemon juice? You must try it. The lemon cuts through the sometimes heavy, grainy feel of lentils on the palate and the first time you taste it, your scepticism is immediately dispelled in that sharp tangy confusion of taste and texture. That said, Bateel lentil soup is super smooth, probably having been passed through a fine sieve a few times. So smooth in fact that a small bowl of delicate lemon and zaatar croutons, accompanies it, to add another dimension. It is rich and unctuous, delicate but aromatic, and wholly fulfilling. 

As I was finishing my soup, in an uncharacteristic silence, my mind drifted, as it often does, to how pretty soon we’ll all be consuming more lentils, disguised  as steak or burgers and probably wearing them as well if the climate protest maniacs get their way. I also suddenly wondered where I had gotten the association with Lesbians. Was it the ghastly clothes I had been looking at in Minge? I sought the advice of my wife, always to be relied upon to bring the scalpel of clarity to my jumbled thoughts: “Lesbians? Lesbians? Tsk, Lebanese, you plonker!”