Next time you fly anywhere, please steal two Emergency instruction cards, those illustrated, often laminated , guides on what to do in case of emergency that come in the pocket of the seat in front of you, usually along with a bag to vomit in. Let me know when you steal them, and i'll send you my mailing address. I collect Emergency Instruction Cards.
Asha Bhosle is a Bollywood legend, 1996 Grammy and 2002 BBC Lifetime Achievement winner, AND she also cooks great meals for friends and family. She also wrote and recorded over 13,000 songs, so say the write-ups on the LP-cover-shaped menu at her restaurants.
Despite being inside a mall, Asha's in Kuwait has a great atmosphere. After all, it is Marina Mall, complete with yacht "parking" , and Asha's not only has pretty food and ambiance, it also has a sea view and a resident dj playing remixes of Asha's 13 thousand songs. And the food is dreamy.
Here in Bahrain there's Lanterns,Nirvana,Clay Oven, Copper Chimney... plus dozens of other places unworthy of mention because the food there looks like reddish, oily mud and taste of too much ghee and turmeric. As my first contact with Indian food was at Asha's , I kind of have been expecting too much from any other Indian restaurant.
Lanters is FUN. It's got its own sikh live band ( not zz top, sorry to disappoint you) and a half pick-up truck framing the bar. It's super kitsch, it's got that yellow glow of candlelight everywhere, and a saturday night promo of all you can eat for 5BD (15 dollars, i think). Food's good and plenty, so make sure you bring an appettite. They have this "Tid Bits Platter" and the snow fried mushrooms are deliciously fattening.
The other night we had a late night meal at Copper Chimney, but neither Anis nor I knew how to order. I thought an Indian green curry was similar to a thai green curry and ended up with potatoes and cauliflowers drowned in spinach-ghee sauce. Anis ordered " chicken with that sauce that's not scary hot" and ended up with tomato ghee sauce. Our friend Sheyma knew how to order and got delicious vegetarian paneer dumplings in malay curry sauce.
Once we went to Nirvana at the Ritz-Carlton, but the food was not really memorable, because the hotel was undergoing renovation so we mostly felt annoyed by hammering and sawing noises. I'll need to go there again to write a more accurate review...
Some say that there is no such thing as bad pizza. Those that have said that have never had pizza in the Middle East. Everybody loves pizza and we are no exception, so we are always hoping to find "more-than-edible" pizza, but rarely ever do. My first terrible pizza experience was in Egypt. We were having a late-night chat, Anis, my Dad and I, at the lobby cafe at the Heliopolis Meridien, in Cairo, and decided to have a bite. We ordered a seafood pizza and, about an hour later, got a thick soft round crust with overcooked prawns, bechamel and plastic-y cream cheese. The waiter asked if we would be having catsup with that. We said no, thank you, but we would like some oregano (there was none) and olive oil. But there was no last-minute fixing it. That was the most disgusting pizza I had ever tasted.
Until last wednesday, when we went to Luigi's, in Budayia, Kingdom of Bahrain.
Located in a outdoor food court, Luigi's is a clean, nicely decorated place. As we went in, we overheard an expat mom tell her 10-year old son, "That was nice pizza", and felt hopeful. We were hungry but still noticed we were the only two adults in the place. Oh-oh. Luigi's seems to be a teenage girls hangout. Or maybe it was just that evening. Anis ordered a seafood pizza, i ordered a Luigi's. We had a rucola salad as a starter, but couldn't go halfway through it, as it was drowned in Balsamic Vinegar. Then the thing Luigi calls pizza was served, and it was so sad, because the crust was thin and crispy , just the way we like it, but the cheese was plastic. Fake shredded mozzarela full of xantan gum, for that vinylic effect. They were the saddest excuses for pizza we have ever seen.
We asked for the check and returned the barely touched, intensely overpriced (BD3/100, around 10 U$ for each plate sized thing),Luigi's crispy dough with vinyl cheese and toppings to wherever they came from. We had no cash and it was a problem because the waitress told us no debit or credit cards were accepted. So I fumbled around my bag and came up with 4 Dinars, along with the suggestion that since we had not touched the "pizzas", could we pay only for the soft drinks? That's when Anis realized the woman sitting at the table right behind me - the only other adult person in the place- was the owner of Luigi's. So there was no Luigi, even though the ethiopian waitress had assured us the pizzaiolo was italian. Well, she actually said there was an Italian chef, she never did say pizzaiolo.
At first she was kind, offering us the opportunity to pay whenever we came back there, and then I had to open my big mouth and tell her we probably wouldn't, because we didn't like the pizza. Mrs. Luigi's didn't like that, and demanded to know why. I told her it was the cheese. She told me it was the best they could offer to keep their prices reasonable, and I suggested she'd go to Mino's, in Adlyia, and try some real pizza, at the same price as Luigi's, but real real pizza. She made a face and told us to leave. We paid for our drinks and the vinegar salad, and left to Caramel cafe and bakery,at the same food court. More about Caramel soon. Now let me tell you about Mino's.
A converted townhouse in the narrow streets of Adlyia, Mino's serves much-more-than-edible pizza. The place decor is as cheesy as it gets --cheesy, pizza, it's all related-- acrylic painted murals, imbedded in arches, showing a bridge between Bahraini and Italian landmarks, but the pizza is GREAT. Real thin and almost crispy dough, real crispy dark and floury border, real fresh mozzarella. Fresh basil. Crostini with chopped tomatoes and olives. Real olive oil. And a real Italian running the place: Mino.
We're caught. Clipboard guy promises us a free holiday at a 5 star resort if we go to a presentation. One week, anywhere in the world, if we will just seat through a 2 -hour presentation.
Last time we were in Egypt, clipboard people abducted us -- Anis, his parents and I -- as we came out of a short Nile Cruise. They took us to a tiny air conditioned room, and offered us a world of holiday opportunities if only we'd sat through a 2 hour presentation. We tried to decline and they sort of took us hostage for a few minutes. It was weird and all in arabic, us four and every minute one more clipboard person coming into the tiny room, and they couldn't believe we were declining their amazing offer. We literary had to break out and escape. They wouldn't let us go peacefully. But we did.
Back to Dana Mall. We let the guy talk and ended up agreeing to go to the lecture. We had been watching 4 seasons of Alias back-to back, and secretly hoped he was actually a recruiter for a secret service agency.
The Friday after we went to the presentation, at an office in Almoayed Tower in Seef.
And there we were, in the elevator of Almoayed Tower, thinking out loud " What are we doing here, really." It's Friday afternoon, there's lots of way better things to do, and we're going to check out what the clipboard guy was all about. It was one of those generic offices, the kind you can rent for a couple of hours, even. Pictures of the King and Prime Minister. Chairs still in plastic. A couple of bad taste generic posters. And a few Bahraini families, obviously low end of middle-class type. We sort of stood out because we were the only ones not wearing tradicional dress and didn't have 7 kids with us. Several men wearing really bad fitting polyester suits and flashy ties walked around. Anis whispered "Fresh out of tunis prisons" and wanted to leave right away but I stopped him. The same invisible power that makes me enjoy watching Dr Phil, or the Tyra Banks Show ( yes, I confess), was making me stay there. It was like being in a theme park for me. And then they called our names. We went into the smaller generic office with 4 men wearing ill-fitting suits. The main ill-fitting suit man greeted us and asked " Have you ever heard of Time-Sharing?" We ran out. There was still time to catch a movie across the street at the mall.
So we went to Dana Mall, a mall that has nothing special except for the Calvin Klein shop and a very comfortable cineplex. We went there to watch V for Vendetta, and after all that Diet Coke i really needed to go and do a number one. I found the restrooms by the food court and went in....yeachhhhhhh...impossibly gross, not one clean stall and the place smelled so bad i just walked in and out. On the corner there were two ladies, whom I suppose are responsible for the restroom maintenance, but they were just chit chatting away while a few women looked around in utter disgust and a poor mother held her 6 year old daughter high above the toilet seat so she could pee. I tried looking for another restroom but a different door led me to the same place. Even though it was an emergency, i held it in until we got home. I was wearing flat strappy sandals and there was no way I'd walk on those puddles of whatever they were in the stalls.
We meant to go to Nino since it opened in A'Ali Mall, but somehow always ended up at the cafe at THE ONE. But this time we were determined, and after a day of intense shopping for linen napkins and japanese raku bowls, we decided it was time to try it out. The place looks beautiful. I'd easily live there, and as we were seated, Anis and I began the mental conversion of this place into our new home. We re-positioned windows and decided where the master bedroom would be. When the bread basket came, we asked the waiter if it was possible to change the music for something more chill-out. There music playing was way too doosh-doosh clubby for eating. The waiter said "no problem" and we set on to enjoy one of the best selection of breads we had ever tasted. Proper ciabatta, with and without olives, some dense whole grain rolls that tasted like heaven, rye with a crispy crust and perfectly soft dough...the whole basket was yummy, and we don't blame the waiter for not letting us know where the bread came from...I'd keep it a secret too. What we do blame the waiter for was his - or whoever was in charge of dj-ing - poor poor taste in music. After the doosh-doosh, i guess after our request, the music changed for worse, some sort of poppy ballad compilation, which included that yucky " You're beautiful" that we're all tired of listening to on easy fms worldwide...So that's what they think chill out is, but I digress. On to the food. I ordered tagliatelli with chicken, sundried tomatoes and fresh herbs. Anis ordered a steak. Chicken pasta was ok but i can make a better one at home with the same ingredients. Anis' steak was never delivered. While my pasta went cold, we asked several waiters about the steak. Some 15 minutes later, I had finished my pasta and the last waiter we asked came back to tell us that the order for the steak had never been placed. Not cool. We asked for the bill, paid it, and stole the salt and pepper shakers just to spite them.
After a smelly flight in Arabia Airlines from Manama to Alex through Doha, where poor Anis suffered approximately 3 hours next to a guy whose talent was to reproduce the original scent of gutter with his armpits, we finally arrived at 11pm. The Alexandria International Airport looks like a roadside bus terminal. Seriously, they could really use a new airport, judging from the number of real estate developments and high risers and super hotels in the area, you'd think they'd have a slightly bigger airport. Not really.The most important travel tip about the Alexandria Airport is, when arriving there, once you are out of the plane, run to passport check. There's only one counter and Egyptians are not really famous for being organized and polite. People will be elbowing each other to get ahead. You either run to be first in line, or chill and wait until everyone does. One thing you can do to pass time is change your money at the exchange counter. Because if you wait to do it after you go through customs, you will have to wait for the exchange guy to come back from the counter before passport check. He works both counters. The duty free shop is cute, like a big dime store in Paraguay. I'm serious. You can buy aluminium pots and pans, counterfeit barbies and little tins of Nivea cream, all in the same place. And I saw some guy get busted for drugs, right in front of me.
I love recreational slumming..
About 20 days later, when we were coming back to Bahrain, I met these two pretty brides at the Alexandria airport and they kindly let me take their picture together, although it was the first time they met. Both were flying to Kuwait to meet their new husbands. I thought it was cute and bizarre that they would fly so early in the morning and arrive already in their wedding gowns, jewelry and make-up. Unfortunately I don't speak arabic, so I didn't get a chance to talk to them more. But while Anis checked our luggage and got the boarding passes, I watched the brides say goodbye to their families, cry a little, listen to( what i think it was )advice, buy juice and water at the duty free, and sit on opposite sides of the hall and peek at each other from time to time. Some ladies would walk up to them and say mabrook. I did too, and asked if i could take their picture together. The bride on the right walked with me towards the other, sat and I took their picture. They didn't really talk to each other, though.
For our last two days in Egypt, we decided to stay at a different hotel before flying out of Alexandria. We took the train from Cairo to Alex, the Spanish train this time, and made a reservation on Expedia, nearly midnight the night before, to El Salamlek , located inside the Montazah Gardens in Alexandria.
El Salamlek used to be one of the royal summer retreats.Apparently, it was built by HH Khedive Abbas Helmi II, in 1890 something, as a hunting lodge for his (then) mistress the Countess May Torok von Szendro ( they married at some point). It's an old mini palace, restored but still retaining that creepy decadence of westernized arab aristocracy. We stayed at the Pasha Suite, complete with a black and white portrait photo of a dead child princess by the bed, rococo iron bed and striped wallpaper in various shades of pink. The great thing about this hotel is that it is smack in the middle of Montazah gardens, which i am guessing was the royal family's summer house backyard. Now it is public, thank god for that. Of course, as anything public in Egypt, to get it you must go through a couple of military checkpoints, but i figure it's still better than being blown up by some unhappy terrorist faction. At the reception, when we told the 3 receptionists we had made our reservations through Expedia, they did not know what that was. I was moody and cranky after 3 hours on an early morning train from Cairo, so I sort of just watched Anis deal with them. He actually had to open his laptop and show them the reservation. It was a good thing he saved the page because there's no wi-fi there ( but we didn't expect it to, anyway). We had a tiny balcony but the view was great. Don't have breakfast at El Salamlek. We did and it was gross. Dinner was not bad, we went to the french restaurant which used to be the pasha's den. Apparently, the cutlery and china are the same as from the Basha time. French service is annoying though. Food was good but not exceptional, french fare straight from school of culinary arts txtebook, i could tell. But no complaints there, it just added to the whole decadent experience. Anis explained to me that keeping the Salamlek as it was and having the staff dress as they did in the Basha time was like a big joke on royalty. The last Basha pretty much let Europe trample over Egyptian people, their heritage and culture not to mention all the commercial exploitation. And all that because he dreamt of being french and tres chic. More about the mistress Countess who died as Haile Sellassie's wardrobe consultant, on
http://www.egy.com/historica/94-10-06.shtml
I love these old refurbished hotels, specially when they are run by the French. The French do a mean breakfast, with proper pastries and all, and they really train their staff for good service. The Sofitel Cecil is located between the Mediterranean Sea and a fantastic bakery. The room we stayed in was tiny but cozy, but the Sofitel main attractions are the revolving door and the tiny elevator, with cage doors and brass and weights . You can tell it was a five-star in the early 1900's. Now it is a 4 star by Egyptian standards. By my standards, it is a 3 star with honors.
The location is great not only for the bakery meters away, but also because it is walking distance from the Alexandria Library. You can walk along the sea or take a horse carriage, which is CRAZY. I hailed one thinking the guy didn't see me hailing but he did. He crossed in the middle of buses, cars and the usual egyptian chaotic traffic to pick Anis and I up. That was an adventure.
My first impression was...hummm, smells really nice in here. And I had just come into a public restroom inside a shop. You gotta go when you gotta go, and I am always one to dread going - no matter if it's number One or number Two - to a toilette other than my own, in the comfort of my home. Speaking of number One...the super clean, nice smelling toilette, is at a shop called The One - Total Home Experience. Establishments all over the world, please get a hold of The One's restroom maintenance protocol AND USE IT. Your customers will thank you, I promise.