House of Mandi

Whenever we’re looking for Mediterranean or Middle Eastern food, we try to seek out options that aren’t “typical Greek” – and that brought us to House of Mandi, a Yemeni restaurant that had recently opened in Anaheim. At the time, it had a similarly new Yemeni rival in Monasaba, the first U.S. location of a Canadian chain with superb interior decor and a fast-casual business model. For all its flash, Monasaba closed after a year in business. House of Mandi survived, and feels like what it is: a single, family-owned restaurant with much more space and an unusual menu.

It’s entirely possible to have a conventional Mediterranean meal at House of Mandi, including grilled chicken, hummus, and mutabbal (akin to baba ganoush), as well as gigantic disks of pita-like bread. But the real rewards come from ordering its namesake Mandi (roasted lamb atop fruit-laden, seasoned rice), bubbling hot shrimp Hrada, and generous portions of spicy grilled mussels. Everything savory we tried was so delicious and intensely flavored that we can look past some of the small issues we encountered.

For example: It would be an understatement to call House of Mandi’s initial menu unnecessarily confusing, and it hasn’t gotten much better. The list of choices began with a half-dozen seemingly identical dishes differentiated solely in descriptions by the cities they came from. Since then, the menu has been rearranged and now leads with a nearly $600 whole lamb mandi as a “share dish” – not much thought has been given to making the choices easy for most guests to understand or choose from.