Doha Esphahan is for Lovers!
Happy Valentine’s Day, Here There and Everywhere readers!
Today, we are still in Doha, Qatar, and I have saved a very special restaurant to share with the, the Esphahan, in the heart of the restored Souk Waqif. It was so special that a friend took me there because she knew it would delight me, and it delighted me so much I had to take AdventureMan, so I got to eat here twice in the same trip. 🙂
Doha legend has it that the Amir of Qatar walked into this restaurant (somewhere? in Esphahan?) and said “I want this restaurant in Qatar!” It’s a wonderful thing to be the Amir of a country with all the natural gas resources in the world, and, as if by magic, this fairy-tale restaurant appeared in Doha. How cool is that? Like he could have had the dining room reproduced in his own palace, he could, he can do just about anything. But he choose to enhance this wonderful restored market, the Souk Waqif, and make this restaurant one of the cornerstones, one of the delights of the market. You gotta love noblesse like that. He shares.
From entry to exit, it is a treat. The food is fabulous, the service friendly, skilled and attentive, they bake their own bread and the decor is WAAAAYYYYYYY over the top. Oh, what fun.
It starts at the entry, which is on the main walking street in the restaurant area of the restored Souk Waqif:
It might be too gaudy for you, but it thrills the little-girl-who-lives-in-my-heart, all those mirrors, all that interconnected design, the tableaux – maybe over the top, but I love it.
They also have great music, none of this Hotel California stuff.
See! It really is a Valentine's Day restaurant!
The Amir's private dining room can be entirely closed off for private dinners.
The truth is, the Esphahan is also for families, including very large families. There are large divided sections where families or groups can sit on the floor, traditional style, or there are dining rooms upstairs which can comfortably serve couples, small families, large families and extended families for your special occasion.
The food was fabulous. Most of the dishes are dishes you can order at almost any Iranian restaurant, only bumped up a notch. They were delicious. Service was so attentive that I could never take any photos of the food without being really, really obvious, and we were also surrounded by a lot of traditional families, and I am careful about pulling out my camera in those situations. (Sorry Purg, I know you like the food photos.)
Don’t take my word for it. Go. 🙂 See – and taste – for yourself.
I wonder (random musing here) if Americans had more exposure to Iranian food, if our countries would be better friends? I want to go to Iran so badly. AdventureMan, too. We wonder if we will ever get the opportunity. We are SO near – and yet so far . . .
Dining in Doha: Khazana
“There’s this new Indian restaurant not to far from here,” said my good friend, Texas Grammy, as we left the Souk Waqif Hotel. “Let’s just walk around and see if we can find it.”
We always love walking around in the souks. We used to back when it was “off-limits”, considered a dangerous place for Western women to be. We always figured if we dressed modestly and kept kind of quiet, we wouldn’t have any problems – and we never did. We rarely saw other Western women down at the Souk Waqif then, but mostly we went early on the hot summer mornings, so we didn’t see much of anyone except the veiled and abaya’d women who shopped there regularly.
We walked around, noting the changes, but eventually had to admit defeat – we couldn’t find the restaurant. As we wandered, we started asking people. You know how once directions take more than like five turns, you can’t remember them all? So we would go one or two turns, then ask again. The last time, the sweet shopkeeper’s assistant walked us all the way there. It was actually only about a block from the hotel, but in the opposite direction from which we had walked.
It was worth the walk!
Khazana is a green oasis in the middle of a dusty souk area.
It’s built in one of the historical buildings, so they had to preserve all the original walls and windows. It means there is not one huge dining room, but several small, intimate dining areas:
We ordered fabulous foods, and most of them I didn’t get a chance to photograph; we were busy chatting and busy catching up and having such a good time! But the food is FABULOUS. Fresh. Tasty. Spiced just enough to capture your interest, not enough to blow your brains out.
The service was attentive and charming, without being overly intrusive. The tea was excellent. Everything about the meal was refined and delicious – the food, the setting, and the excellent service.
We were told that the restaurant was there because the Amir of Qatar wanted it there. He is a man of excellence, and he wants excellence for Qatar. We asked if he dined there, and the waiter looked around, and his eyes gleamed, and then he whispered “we are not allowed to say.” He had a great big smile on his face as he said it, full of pride.
I would dine there again, in a heartbeat. I am betting we will need reservations the next time. 🙂
The Demise of Tanureen
As we were sitting outside, having one of our very best days in Kuwait, eating lunch at Tanureen, we got some very sad news. Our kind old Egyptian waiter told us there is a strong possibility Tanureen will close in May, the land may be used (sigh) for another mall. (Here’s the first review of Tanureen.)
What a great pity. We have enjoyed so many happy hours at Tanureen, so many good meals. It’s one of the treasures of Kuwait, only in Fehaheel.
Here is what we were eating, out in the breezy warm sunlight. Sorry that it is already half eaten by the time I got around to taking photos:
Hummos
Muttabel
My favorite, baba ghanoosh, especially with pomegranate seeds
Pan-sauteed Hammour
Grilled Shrimp
One of our funniest memories of going to Tanureen was taking Little Diamond, who asked the waiter how the Tanureen salad differed from the Garden Salad. “They are same-same” he replied. Little Diamond’s little eyebrows came together in a frown. “But one is priced at KD 1.500 and the other at KD 1.750?” she continued. “Same-Same!” said the waiter, this time with a little impatience. She ordered one, and we have always wondered what the difference REALLY is, if any.
The weather is perfect for dining out. Go quickly, before the heat sets in, before the Tanureen is no more.
Mubarakiyya Food Court
Several people have asked where the Fatayer Man is in Mubarakiyya.
Here is what the area looks like:
Here is a GoogleMap of the area (isn’t this amazing? Isn’t GoogleEarth amazing? I can’t believe such great technology is give to us for free. I wish I were smarter, I wish I could put arrows on the map, and stars, but I can’t figure out how to do that . . . yet!
You will see three lines of white running parallel – those are covers over the walkways in the main part of the souks. There are others, but this is the heart, where they sell vegetables, meat and fish. You walk straight down one of them until you get to the open court – you will see a mosque. In the GoogleEarth photo, you will see a round gold circle – that is the dome.
Just below the mosque, in the photo, you will see restaurant seating areas. The one closest to the entrance to the “food court” is the Malik al Saj, or King of (a particular type of) Bread; it is written on a great big blue Pepsi sign, and there are lots of waiters there eager to seat you. The food is fresh, and very good.
Now look at the map again. You will see more seating lower in the photo, over to the left. It is just around the corner from the other restaurant areas. This second area is where the fatayer man is. Just go down around that corner, peek into the restaurant areas until you see him hard at work, and then sit in the area just in front of where he is working. If you order tea, in this cold weather, they will bring you a pot with a charcoal heater, to savor while your fatayer is baking.
You can find these tea-heaters in the souks, too, but don’t use them inside, because they need charcoal, and using charcoal inside is a really bad (as in fatal) idea.
Words you need to know if you are not an Arabic speaker:
Chai – tea
fatayer – a breakfast bread filled with “jibn” (cheese), Halloumi (salty cheese) zatar (thyme-sumak spice mix) or jibn/halloumi wa zatar (cheese/salty cheese with thyme-sumak mix)
shish taouk – marinated, grilled chicken on a skewer
semak – fish (some of the fish served is amazing)
mixed grill – mixed grill 🙂
Happy eating! Go while the weather is cool and wonderful!
Year of the Ox Starts 26 January!
(The US Postal Service has issued a Year of the Ox postal stamp, above)
To our great surprise, there are several very good Chinese restaurants in Kuwait – if you don’t think so, check out the number of Chinese people eating in a place, and eat what they eat. Several Chinese restaurants in Kuwait even have honest-to-God Chinese cooks!
Chinese New Year’s is a great excuse for a party, and wearing your favorite red dress. 🙂 It’s almost here – January 26th.
Chinese New Year
The Year of the Ox
by Holly Hartman
from InfoPlease website on Chinese New Year
4707 (or 2009) is the year of the ox
Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. The Chinese year 4707 begins on Jan. 26, 2009.
Chinese months are reckoned by the lunar calendar, with each month beginning on the darkest day. New Year festivities traditionally start on the first day of the month and continue until the fifteenth, when the moon is brightest. In China, people may take weeks of holiday from work to prepare for and celebrate the New Year.
An Obstinate Year
Legend has it that in ancient times, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. Twelve came, and Buddha named a year after each one. He announced that the people born in each animal’s year would have some of that animal’s personality. Those born in ox years tend to be painters, engineers, and architects. They are stable, fearless, obstinate, hard-working and friendly. Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Walt Disney, and Anthony Hopkins were all born in the year of the ox.
Fireworks and Family Feasts
At Chinese New Year celebrations people wear red clothes, decorate with poems on red paper, and give children “lucky money” in red envelopes. Red symbolizes fire, which according to legend can drive away bad luck. The fireworks that shower the festivities are rooted in a similar ancient custom. Long ago, people in China lit bamboo stalks, believing that the crackling flames would frighten evil spirits.
The Lantern Festival
In China, the New Year is a time of family reunion. Family members gather at each other’s homes for visits and shared meals, most significantly a feast on New Year’s Eve. In the United States, however, many early Chinese immigrants arrived without their families, and found a sense of community through neighborhood associations instead. Today, many Chinese-American neighborhood associations host banquets and other New Year events.
The lantern festival is held on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Some of the lanterns may be works of art, painted with birds, animals, flowers, zodiac signs, and scenes from legend and history. People hang glowing lanterns in temples, and carry lanterns to an evening parade under the light of the full moon.
In many areas the highlight of the lantern festival is the dragon dance. The dragon—which might stretch a hundred feet long—is typically made of silk, paper, and bamboo. Traditionally the dragon is held aloft by young men who dance as they guide the colorful beast through the streets. In the United States, where the New Year is celebrated with a shortened schedule, the dragon dance always takes place on a weekend. In addition, many Chinese-American communities have added American parade elements such as marching bands and floats.
We heard in church a couple weeks ago that the Chinese labor force is the fastest growing segment of the expat labor force in Kuwait, did you know that? The come in, they focus, they work hard, they produce what they have promised and then – they go back to China. They bid competitively on the contracts, they speak English fairly well, and they get the job done, with none of this human rights baggage that many of the Western countries carry around. Nope. No problem, says the Chinese embassy.
Freej Soeleh
“You’re going to LOVE this place!” AdventureMan crowed from two continents and an ocean away. Our Kuwaiti friends’ son had just taken him and his father to eat in this restaurant, and it was a great experience.
He was right. A couple months later, he took me there, and I loved it. It was a different experience for him, too, when he went with me, because with me, he could sit upstairs in the family section. 🙂
You would never guess a place so full of homages to Kuwaiti tradition would be next door neighbors to the Marina Mall. From some of the cabinets, you look directly over to the mall.
They make their own sweets, and very fine sweets they are. His huge pot is entirely copper, and he makes wonderful candies, which you can buy and take with you, and use for gifts – made in Kuwait!
Pardon my indelicacy, but I love thoughtful decoration. This is the ladies room, and I am crazy about their huge bowl sinks – a wave to the past with the traditional sand and stone colors and materials:
We have all the privacy in the world, although we are surrounded by families. By the way, this is not a great place for an intimate, romantic dinner. Children are everywhere, clearly welcome, and bouncing off the walls. It is noisy. (We don’t mind.) When you want a waiter, you press the call button on the wall next to the little windows, which open and close.
At night – OK, this is hokey, but the truth is, I love it – they have a ceiling full of “stars”:
One thing we really love is that you can get Kuwaiti foods here. We love trying different things. One of our favorites is the Fish at the Bottom of the Pot:
Very shortly, pre-food food arrives – the beignets are light and sweet and irresistible:
As you can see, the prices are reasonable:
We have never ordered the camel milk:
To get to the Freej Soeleh coming south on Gulf Road, turn in where you see that big old Kuwaiti Style hotel, I think it is the Al-Ghanim, and then take the first right onto what my friends call Salmiyya High Street. You take the last right going toward the Marina Mall just before the mall, which will take you right into a parking area. If you look on your right, you will see the Freej Soeleh.
If you are coming South on Gulf Road, take the exit that goes in front of Marina Mall and turn right just past the valet entrance to the Mall. You will see a parking lot – and the Freej Soeleh – on your left.
You can take the elevator up to the second floor, if you are a family. If you are bachelors, you can take the escalator up to the first floor. The food is good in either place. The family section is more colorful.
If you go early – like noon for lunch, six-thirty/seven for dinner – you will walk right in. If you go later, when the Kuwaiti families stream in, you may have to wait, but they have a great waiting area, and you can watch the caramel man make candy.
Please, my western friends, if you go, dress modestly. This is a family place; most women are in abayas. I have never seen another western family here, but then we are all in cabinets, so that’s not such a surprise. It is a gem of an adventure in Kuwait.
I apologize that there are no photos of the main courses. There is always SO MUCH food. It comes, there is a frantic trying to organize the table so it has enough room for everything, and it all smells so good! You tend to just dive in.
The one jarring element is that when you are having appetizers, the tabbouleh, the muttabel, the hummus, they bring a plastic bag of bread on a plate. . . I guess I get spoiled down at the Mubarakiyya market, where the bread is always freshly made . . . I wish they had fresh hot bread, but the food itself is GOOD.
Do You Have Reservations?
AdventureMan and I read a lot, and there is a standing joke between us – there are times, like reading a detective novel set in China, when one of us just gets a craving for Chinese food. Or it could be reading James Lee Burke and we have to have some Jambalaya or shrimp. The day we went to the Arabic Early Bird, AdventureMan had been reading the latest Odd Thomas book and needed a breakfast fry-up.
So Friday, after church, when I told him I really needed to go to Tang Chow because a minor character in a book I am currently reading ate Peking duck and Tang Chow is the only place I know in Kuwait that serves Peking Duck without needing advance warning. We usually go to China Queen, but for Peking Duck – only Tang Chow will do.
So we walk in and there is not one single other customer there. The hostess says “do you have a reservation?”
The rational part of me figures some people have called ahead and requested specific tables and she is trying to ask if we are one of those. The irrepressible part of me just laughs to hear such a question when the restaurant is absolutely EMPTY!
We eat around 7 most nights, it’s cultural and also we don’t like to go to bed on full stomachs, we like to have some time between dinner and bedtime. We make jokes about “the American seating” and “the Kuwaiti seating,” like if you are on a ship, and there are separate dining times for the children and the parents. We eat with the children, and as we are leaving, we watch the culturally-late-diners streaming in as we are streaming out.
There are times when it is a special event, and all the tables are reserved. AdventureMan figured out that we can sometimes wheedle a table saying “We are American! We will be gone before they ever show up for their reservation! I promise!” and they will give us the table, and sure enough, we are gone before the reservers ever show up.
It’s still funny to hear that question when the entire restuarant is full of empty seats, like they are going to turn us away if we don’t have reservations.
Anthony’s At the Airport
We like the Anthony’s chain of seafood restaurants in the Seattle area, and we did not know they had one at the Seattle airport. We got there early, our flight was delayed, so we decided to have breakfast. There were all kinds of options, but when we saw the Anthony’s, we knew that was where we wanted to eat.
First, as you walk in, the floor is sort of sea-like, beach and sea-like, all done in stone and concrete and glass, but in waves. I was so fascinated by having all that beauty underfoot that I completely forgot to take any photos, but it thrilled me to have artwork so beautifully utilitarian. I can’t imagine who designed it, but it delighted my heart.
And, speaking of hearts, AdventureMan and I were disgustingly good. We just got our blood tests back and while our cholesterol levels have improved, we are still borderline, and want to be careful. I am not a big fan of oatmeal, but when it is smothered in brown sugar and pecans and blueberries it is a whole different ball game.
AdventureMan had the granola with bananas and blueberries – and said it was a “Yumm.”
We loved the windows of the restaurant – it reminded us of the old Saarinen TWA wing at JFK airport, with it’s soaring ceilings and feeling of flight.
I love the care taken with the details – even the teacups:
And the reminder that Anthony’s – even at the airport – sticks close to the sea:
Tai Ho in Kenmore, revisited
I can never go back to Seattle without touching bases with my best friend from college, we never miss a beat, once we are back together, even after all these years, it’s just all about catching up, and there is never a dull moment. It is particularly delightful to me that she and my husband also get along so well.
Many times, with her busy schedule, with my blowing into town for a short time, we have to catch what time we can together. Last time I was there, she introduced me to Tai Ho, and oh! WOW!
This time we ordered totally different things – and the food was equally delicious. Wontons, Dumplings, Noodle Soup with Chinese Pickles, Shrimp with vegetables, and Chicken with Black Beans and garlic – great food, even better conversation, and an wonderful, unforgettable evening. Everything was delicious, but the noodle soup was my hands-down favorite. They make their own noodles, and on a cold night, oh, hot Chinese noodle soup – my favorite.
Joe Patti’s and Joey Patti’s in Pensacola
My son’s wife looked at me thoughtfully, and said “Has anyone ever told you about Joey Patti’s?”
“I’ve seen his ads,” I replied.
“Pensacola people say his seafood is the BEST,” she says. “I’ve eaten there once, and I thought it was pretty good. You might want to give it a try.”
I understand what she means. She knows that wherever I go, I like to look behind the curtains, to know where the locals go, what they talk about, how they think. I like to know what makes peoples tick. We are all more alike than we are different, but the differences are so interesting.
Joe Patti runs his own fishing fleet. He processes and sells some of the freshest seafood in the Gulf. He is a big feature on the Pensacola waterfront, and nearby is Joey Patti’s restaurant. We saw lots of happy seagulls and pelicans around the boats and seafood plant, and the parking lot at the restaurant was totally full.
We followed the signs for Joey Patti’s, connected – we don’t know exactly how – one is a seafood seller, one is a restaurant. We were given the very last available booth in the very large restaurant, which was totally bustling with customers – all of Pensacola seemed to be eating lunch there the same day we were there. We soon learned why – the food was simple Southern seafood at its best – fresh, hot and oh, so good.
Clam chowder
Crab Cake Sandwich
Oyster Po'Boy Sandwich
Hush Puppies (actually, there were more, but we couldn't wait)
If you get to Pensacola, look down on the waterfront for Joey Patti’s. You’ll be in for a treat.
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