Souk al Waqif: Soy Restaurant
I’ve heard mixed reviews of Soy, and since I love Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean foods I was eager to give it a try. I’ve been twice, love the menu, love the chairs, and holy smokes, the place is HUGE.
I love the variety of restaurants in the Souk al Waqif, and it is nice to have this alternative. I will never order the Chinese set menu again, however. The main course, grilled shrimp, came with three delicious looking breaded shrimp on skewers. I carefully removed the tail and bit in – there was shell on the shrimp!
Maybe this is really authentic, I thought. Maybe real Chinese people eat the shrimp shell and all, but my lunch-mate scowled and called the waiter over and complained. “These breaded shrimp were deep-fried with their shells still on!”
The waiter disappeared, and we waited. He came back and told us that is the way they were cooked, every time. Well, OK, so we took the shell off and ate the shrimp, but you can bet money that we will never order that set meal again!
The set meals are a nice deal. 49QR takes care of a soft-drink (ironically, you pay for water, but the soft drinks come with the meal), and then your choice of one of three set meals – the Chinese, the Japanese or the Thai.
Back another time, I tried the Japanese, which I liked, except the Teriyaki chicken had barely any teriyaki taste. The miso soup was very good, the salad strange, and the green tea ice cream for dessert was good.
My lunch friend had the Thai, which had a very good soup, a strange salad, a very good main course and a good dessert, I think deep fried ice-cream.
I love the chairs. I love having comfy chairs with arms to eat in. I love it that the restaurant is huge, with lots of different dining areas, tucked away behind the other restaurants.
My favorite part of the set meals are the soups and the rice. Both are excellent.
Even after the Chinese shrimp disappointment, I would like to go back again and try ordering a la carte from the menu, to see how we like it. Even if a restaurant is uneven, often there are things they do really well, and if you stick with those things you can have a good dining experience. So my review is mixed, but it’s not like I am saying I will never go back. It was a good experience, and I want to give it another shot.
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The restaurant looks nice,especially the decor!! & the food looks delicious!!The presentation of the food is also nice!!
Presentation isn’t everything – but it matters. For me, I really like good food. Tonight we ate in a place totally without atmosphere, except for bad atmosphere, but oh, the food was delicious.
The fried rice looks like the original Asian fried rice puffed up from frying ,not we get in Kuwait Indian basmati warmed over with some soy sauce . And the place looks clean and shiny
Dont take this the wrong way but you’ve been posting a lot about food and restaurants( and I love that) but what happened to your sunrise posts? π¦
I remember as a child eating deep fried shrimp with the shells left on when we lived in Hawaii and California. Maybe it was a certain type of shrimp because the shells were thin and very crispy.
Daggero, did you know that at many of the restaurants you can get sticky rice just by asking for it? Or Chinese rice? They have told us that they serve the Basmati because that is what most of their customers think of as “good” rice. The place IS clean and shiny, and I hesitated to complain about the shrimp as I had a feeling it MIGHT be authentic.
LOL, Mathai, you do know I moved to Doha, don’t you? I don’t live in a high rise any more, I live in a villa. I have lots and lots of birds; I should try photographing them. π But I don’t see the sun rise nor set.
I’m glad you said that, Momcat, because I had a feeling it might be authentic. There are a lot of things my Chinese friends won’t let me eat when we go to those Seattle restaurants whose menus are only in Chinese, like chicken’s feet. Shrimp still in the shell is not such a far cry, but it is strange to bread a shrimp that will have to be peeled, at least in my book.