#188: World Cup City - Iraq š®š¶
Day 22: Sweet Mesapotamian treats
Welcome to an ongoing Brussels Notes series exploring the 48 participating countries of the 2026 World Cup, without leaving Brussels. Read the explainer, and then subscribe.
IRAQ v France
MyDay Restaurant - Iraqi cuisine, Rue Haute 94, 1000 Bruxelles
Outside on the footpath, a gaggle of older men are sitting on small terrace chairs and drinking coffee from little white cups. Inside, speakers are playing chill, almost maudlin guitar music, it could be Latin but more likely to be Arabic, given the surroundings. Itās a feast day in the Islamic calendar, and one of the men out on the terrace nurturing his coffee is kitted out in a cream djellaba. Service, from the only man who seems to be working today, is prompt and phlegmatic, but not at all rude; maybe heād prefer to be somewhere else, maybe he just wants to get on with cleaning the salad bar which I had interrupted with my arrival.
Thereās a fan in the back of the restaurant thatās running hard, but otherwise the place is quiet, soporific even, when compared to the hustle of the Hoogstraat outside. I see from the menu that they serve breakfast until 12pm, and my watch says itās barely 11. My protocol with these kinds of visits is to try and order something that I have not heard of before, so long as I reckon I might actually eat or drink it. On the table opposite me is a little plastic sign advertising a dish of Arabic ice cream with pistachio baklava, and I am tempted. I am aware of the sweetness of desserts from this Mesapotamian corner of the world - with their emphasis on honey, dates and sweet pastries - but this is too rich for my blood, not to mention that itās made with "100% natural milk", and I've left my lactose pills at home.
I swerve the baklava on the menu too, plumping instead for a serving of basbousa and a stubby brown bottle of Traubi, a sparkling Iraqi soft drink made from raisins. While he prepares my order I ask the man standing behind the salad bar where the toilet is. He points to a corridor at the back of the room. There are few explicitly Iraqi restaurants in Brussels, certainly when compared to some of the other populations displaced by the destructive wars and civil wars in the Middle East in the past 25 years. Think of the raft of Syrian kebab shops exemplified by the My Tannour chain, the minimarkets run by Afghan refugees - often with their home countryās flag hanging somewhere in the place - and recently too new Palestinian restaurants that have opened in the city.
And yet MyDay - which advertises itself as āOriental and Iraqiā - is one of only a handful of its kind in Brussels. There are brightly-painted watercolours hanging on the walls towards the back of the restaurant, depicting domed waterside villages in verdant surroundings, alongside tapestries and a collection of terracotta pots next to a display of honey jars for sale. By the toilet entrance thereās a fridge thatās been stuffed full of large ripe aubergines, and on the way back to my table my eye is drawn to the fridge behind the bar thatās stocked with a collection of brightly, even lurid, coloured bottles, some recognisable (Palestina cola), but many of them brands that are unfamiliar to me.
The Traubi is floral and jammy and fruity, refreshing after the unexpected heat of the morning. The basbousa turns out to be a square of semolina cake with a blanched almond embedded in its surface and the whole thing dusted with a thin layer of sugar, and when I push down with my fork it oozes syrup all over my little saucer.
Tomorrow, weāre sticking around this part of the world...
Thanks for reading - Iām writer Eoghan Walsh and this is my weekly free-to-subscribe newsletter about life in Brussels. If you like it and youāre not already subscribed, you can sign up here!