Delicious decisions at Sparty’s Kabob

I’m apparently very rusty when it comes to any sort of food-related situation where I have to make numerous choices while the person preparing my meal is standing before me. Recalling my former ordering proficiency at restaurants like Qdoba and Jersey Giant Subs, I figure the pandemic-induced popularity of online ordering must have atrophied the part of my brain that can make such choices while being watched. The plethora of options available at Sparty’s Kabob, an Iraqi restaurant in East Lansing’s Trowbridge Plaza, made it a great place to reawaken this terribly vital muscle.

I was completing a number of errands, ending with grocery shopping at the Sparty’s-adjacent Fresh Thyme Market. In the classic fashion, I decided that even though I’d just bought groceries, I bought them so well — with such consumer smarts — that I deserved to take the night off from cooking. Exhausted as I was, I blurted out the first menu item that seemed reasonable: the standard-sounding Sparty’s Plate.

Thus began the gauntlet of choice. The plate comes with your pick of three varieties of rice or bulgur, five varieties of salad and five varieties of meat, plus beans or okra stew, hummus and pita.

With the help of the patient employee behind the counter, I made my way through these difficult choices and decided on cinnamon rice, which I think is a vegetarian version of kabsa, as well as Iraqi salad, eggplant salad, chicken shawarma and okra stew. I also added garlic sauce, pickled turnips and a mix of pickled carrots and standard cucumbers. On the side was a terrine of tahini-forward hummus and three whole loaves of pita. An abundance of leftovers was clearly guaranteed.

The highlights of this Styrofoam-straining feast were the eggplant salad, composed of fried eggplant and peppers; the somewhat sweet and earthy okra-and-tomato stew; and the rice, which was spiced with cardamom and clove, a mix of flavors I find so delectable in Middle Eastern cuisine. The shawarma was also well seasoned, and I assembled numerous delicious wraps out of all of the above until I literally couldn’t take another bite, finally stuffed to the gills and quite pleased with each of my many decisions.