Author: Mark

Download the app and get ready because Deliveroo is planning to soft launch in Kuwait next week. Deliveroo is the British equivalent to Carriage and they operate in over two hundred cities including Dubai. Behind the scenes, Deliveroo has been offering restaurants super competitive rates trying to woo them away from Carriage. I also heard that for the first 6 to 12 months, Deliveroo will be offering customers free delivery to get them to stop using Carriage as well.

Carriage has already started fighting back, they launched their unlimited free deliveries service last week and probably have a few more tricks up their sleeve.

CEC Entertainment, Inc has signed development agreements with franchisees for 25 new Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants across Mexico, Egypt, Kuwait, El Salvador and Bahrain, a news release said.

The company has been actively growing its international franchise footprint and currently operates 65 Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants across 13 countries and territories outside the U.S., with the biggest concentration in Mexico and Saudi Arabia. [Source]

If you grew up in Kuwait during the 80s you’ll remember a place called Showbiz Pizza Place. In the US, Showbiz were actually direct competitors to Chuck E Cheese which was created by the Atari founder back in 1977. Chuck E Cheese went bankrupt in the early 80s and got purchased by ShowBiz Pizza Place. ShowBiz then went bankrupt themselves back in 1992 but Chuck E Cheese is still around somehow. I’ve only been to Chuck E Cheese once as a kid back in 1988 when I was in LA and all I remember is how similar it was to Showbiz. Back then it was full of arcade games and they even had an animatronic band like Showbiz. It was a lot of fun but not sure how relevant Chuck E Cheese is today…

Over the weekend I finally got to pass by Oak and Smoke and try the place out. Previously they only had delivery, but last month they opened up a new location in Shuwaikh and I’ve been meaning to pass by ever since.

For those of you that have been to the original RAW sushi place in industrial Shuwaikh, you’ll recognize the Oak and Smoke location since they took over the old RAW. BUT, they also took over the whole basement and that’s where the main restaurant is located. Getting down there is an experience which I think adds a lot to the place. The entrance to Oak and Smoke is through an alleyway which was softly lit with a red glow. Once we walked into the alleyway we started following a guy until we got into a large industrial elevator. With a press of a button we started going down and it felt like we were about to enter a club. The fact they were able to turn a simple thing as entering the restaurant into a very instagrammable moment is super smart and something a lot of their customers will share. After the short ride down the lift we walked into the restaurant which I think looks amazing. The ceiling had vintage metal ceiling tiles, the walls looked aged, there were two fake backlit windows and also beautiful chandeliers. I think it’s one of the coolest looking spots in Kuwait.

Oak and Smoke’s menu is pretty small with six starters and two mains. We ordered Tri-Tip for starters which is composed of thinly sliced beef and arugula over a horseradish cream, as well as some Vietnamese hot wings and then beef ribs and brisket for our mains. I didn’t have the wings but the Tri-Tip was good and kept us patient until our main dishes arrived. I’ll make this quick, just go there and order the ribs. Seriously, maybe with some soda but you’ll be more than satisfied with just ribs. It was just too good, super juicy and flaked off the bone so easily. We were 5 and we downed nearly 3KG of ribs in just a few minutes, and that was right after going through three orders of brisket!

The only thing I’d avoid at Oak and Smoke is their dessert which was a dish that combined of what looked like canned fruit served over white cream. They’d have a better dessert if they just served a jar of Nutella with a spoon. Other than the dessert there really isn’t anything to complain about. Pricewise, we were five people and ended up paying around KD18 each but that included 4 orders of brisket, 2.7KG of ribs, 2 plates of hot wings, 2 plates of tri-tip, fries, dessert, and drinks. If you’re looking for a new restaurant to try out I’d highly recommend experiencing Oak and Smoke. They take reservations so better call ahead just to be safe. They’re on instagram @oakandsmoke and you’ll find their number and link to their location there.

Zahed Sultan’s re_use exhibit opens up today at the Scientific Center with a special performance live in IMAX. Other than that, the rest of this weekends events are all on Saturday including Feed Market which takes place at the Zoo and Revive Sawaber event happening at Sawaber in the City. Check out the full list of events for this weekend below:

Thursday
Exhibition: Abstraction by Farouk Hosny
re_use / IMAX (Live)

Friday
Friday Run

Saturday
Feed Market
Guided Tour: Grand Mosque
Revive Sawaber
Shinsawi: OUTDOOR volleyball
Book Club: Lord of The Flies by William Golding
Movies at the Park: Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]
For a full list of upcoming events click [Here]

Sometimes events get canceled or have details changed so always double check with the organizers.

Screenshot from Green Book

The movies below are now showing at Cinescape, Grand Cinemas, Sky Cinemas and VOX:

New This Weekend:
Black ’47 (6.9)
Green Book (8.3)
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (8.5)
Mia and the White Lion (6.9)
The Mule (7.2)
The Super (6.0)
Zoe (6.1)

Other Movies Showing Now:
Aquaman (8.2)
Backtrace (3.7)
Bumblebee (7.2)
Cold Skin (6.0)
Creed II (8.0)
Mary Poppins Returns (7.4)
Prospect (7.0)
Ralph Breaks the Internet (8.1)
Second Act (6.2)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (8.6)
The Grinch (6.1)
The Sisters Brothers (7.1)

The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:

Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Oceans: Our Blue Planet (7.4)
Planet Power 3D (N/A)

Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.

Earlier in the week I posted about the new dumpling place Wu Fu Dumpling Bar but, the day I posted about them they closed down for some reason. But, they just reopened again today so if you wanted to try them out they’re now back online on Carriage.

The UAE cabinet has begun the implementation of 100% foreign ownership and 10-year residency visas for expats, investors and businesspeople.[Source]

What I found sad is the sub headline for the article which states that the new laws are expected to help retain expats in the UAE. It’s sad because most of the articles in Kuwait talk about different ways to get rid of us while UAE is appreciating their expats and wanting them to stay longer.

The Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmed causeway project is nearly complete and is set to open this coming April. Once it opens the bridge will be the world’s longest with a total span of 48.53km [Source].

Going by the drone footage in the two videos here, the drive will be very scenic over the Kuwaiti bay and take around 35 minutes from one end to the other. There isn’t anything on the other side to see yet but at least the road isn’t broken and full of potholes and little rocks flying around like every other road in Kuwait at the moment.

The new Suzuki Jimny is one of the hottest and hardest to get cars right now in the market. When it launched in Kuwait back in October the dealership sold out of the Jimny on the same day (65 cars is what I heard). The resale value of the car is probably the highest right now as well since whoever was lucky to buy one can sell it for basically the same price they paid for if not more. I’ve been wanting to try the Jimny ever since it launched and I was lucky enough to have a friend who lent me his to drive for a few days. Spoiler: It was a lot of fun!

The Jimny is a very tiny SUV that kinda looks like a mini Mercedes G-Class. It has a very boxy minimalistic design which I fell in love with ever since I saw the car when it was announced early last year. The car comes in 8 colors but my personal favorites are the Jungle Green and the Chiffon Ivory which is the color my friend luckily had and pictured in this post. There are no options for the interior color, all Jimny’s come with a black interior (thankfully). Locally, the car comes with practically no options other than powered windows. For some reason the GCC spec doesn’t include options like LED headlights or a stereo with a seven-inch screen and Apple CarPlay. The GCC spec also doesn’t include safety features like Weaving Alert and Lane Departure Warning. This isn’t the dealers choice, Suzuki just doesn’t offer these options for the GCC models right now.

As soon as I sat in the car I felt very comfortable and cozy. I’m 6’1 and there was lots of room for me, even in the back seat surprisingly. The car’s pillars are also fairly thin so there are no blindspots around the car and the large windows bring in a lot of light helping give the car a very open and spacious feel.

Driving the Jimny is a lot of fun, the small size and the fact you can see outside in every direction helps give you a layer of confidence you might not usually have when driving. Actually driving the Jimny reminded me of the Fiat 500 and my old Vespa since both of those were super fun and very easy to manage. You can tell what kind of mood the car put me in from the photos in this post, it’s not a serious car and so I wanted to have fun with it. But don’t get me wrong, the Jimny is still a very capable SUV, it’s actually why the older model had such a cult following. I took the Jimny out to the Mutla Ridge (pictured above) and it didn’t have an issue climbing up the ridges and even the deep sand wasn’t much of an issue since the Jimny is a fairly light SUV. It’s an off-road car as much as it is the perfect city car.

When I finally had to give the car back to my friend it felt a bit sad. Because its so easy to get comfortable with the Jimny, I quickly got used to it, and for the few days I had it, the car felt like it belonged to me. Thankfully the dealership doesn’t have Jimny’s for sale at the moment or else I might have been tempted to just pass by and pick one for myself. At only KD5,500, the Jimny is pretty much in impulse buy territory for a lot of people. But even if you weren’t looking for a fun second or third car, the Jimny would be a great primary one. The car is perfect for driving around in the city or areas like Shuwaikh because of the small size, but even on my drive to Mutla I didn’t feel like I was in a slow car and the ride was pretty comfortable.

If I didn’t already have an SUV I would buy one without hesitation. Plus, the amount of accessories and customizations available for the Jimny is just crazy. For KD5,500 I don’t think there is any other car on the market thats as fun to drive or as good of a deal.

The Bait Al-Othman Museum originally opened back in 2013 and I passed by it a few months after opening to check it out and post about it on the blog. But last week I went back to the museum again and to my surprise, it turned out they had expanded the museum considerably since my last visit 5 years ago.

I’m having a difficult time trying to decide how much information I should share about the place. When I visited the museum last week I went expecting to see the stuff I had seen the last time I was there, basically various rooms covering important aspects of Kuwait and its history. But once I started exploring some of the new sections which I hadn’t seen before, I realized Bait Al-Othman is by far one of the most bizarre and entertaining museums in Kuwait. I had such a good time that I want to go back again with more friends.

Some of the new areas of Bait Al-Othman felt like they had been taken from the now closed old Science Museum in Kuwait City. The museum has such a random combination of content including a small haunted house, loads and loads of stuffed animals and even a hostel. I really want to share more details but I think it would be a lot more fun to just go there without knowing too much about the place.

So if you haven’t been to Bait Al-Othman before or at least not recently, you should definitely pass by the place. The museum is located in Hawalli [Google Maps] with loads of parking space available. Their opening hours are from 9AM to 1PM and 4PM to 9:30PM everyday except on Fridays they don’t open in the mornings.

Pro Tip: You need around 3 hours or more to see everything, and make sure you visit all the rooms. There are some areas which look closed off but they lead to other areas. So explore it all.

On Saturday while at Qout Market, I got to try a new dumpling place called Wu Fu Dumpling Bar and it was delicious. It was so good I actually had it again last night at their restaurant. Well technically not their restaurant, they operate out of the kitchen of another restaurant that’s located inside Shuwaikh Market called Zoi. If you’ve never been to Shuwaikh Market, it’s a fairly gloomy looking place and pretty much dead all of the time. When I was there last night there was nobody else at the restaurant so the atmosphere was non existent. Also, if you’re expecting a Chinese theme of a sort then you’re also out of luck since Zoi is actually a Greek Restaurant with an interior that looks like an inside of old cottage with other parts looking like an outdoor garden. Not a nice place to sit, but I was there for the dumplings so didn’t really care.

Wu Fu are also on Carriage so you don’t have to visit the restaurant if you don’t want to, but I like my dumplings fresh out of the pot which is why I chose to go to them instead of have the food come to me. Last night Wu Fu were super busy with Carriage orders and I ended up waiting around 40 minutes for my two dumpling dishes. I actually had a third order but they had to cancel it for me since they ran out of it before it was my turn, in fact, they were pretty much out of everything on their menu last night. The food took forever to come and I was pretty frustrated, but when the food finally did arrive it was so good it made everything better. They were very apologetic about the delay, they just had a ton of Carriage orders and were trying their best to keep up.

I should mention that other than the fact their dumplings are delicious, they’re also reasonably priced. An order of dumplings which consists of 10 pieces costs around KD2.800. They have around ten different kinds of dumplings they make using either lamb, beef or chicken, as well as having vegetarian and vegan options available as well. But if yesterday was a regular day for them then it looks like they sell out from most of their stuff by around 7 or 8PM.

If you want to have the dumplings fresh then you can visit Wu Fu at Zoi in Shuwaikh Market or else find them on Carriage and maybe the next Qout Market. Check them out on instagram @wufu_kwt

Either Kuwait Airways are being super honest here, or someone hacked their @kuwaitairways instagram account…

Thanks Maz99

Over the weekend Carriage launched an amazing new membership service called Carriage Black where for just KD3.5 a month you’ll get unlimited free deliveries. For someone like me who basically uses their service every day, and sometimes multiple times a day, this is a pretty incredible deal. But, I think I know why they’re doing this.

From what I’ve heard, when Deliveroo launches in Kuwait (any day now) they will be offering free delivery to customers for at least the first 6 months. That would pretty much kill Carriage so this is a way for them to compete with Deliveroo.

If you want to sign up to Carriage Black then make sure you have the latest updated version of their app since the service only became available with their most recent update.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Yousef, head of Kuwait’s Football Association, said that Kuwait cannot facilitate the conditions of participating in hosting some of the World Cup matches.

Yousef told Kuwait’s al-Rai newspaper that it is hard to accommodate FIFA’s main conditions in Kuwait, the biggest of which is allowing all nationalities to enter the country with a visa upon arrival, including Israel.

He added: “Even if we selectively picked the teams playing in Kuwait, we cannot prevent the audience from attending. There are also alcohol brands that are sponsoring the event and would like to sell and promote its products during the games, and that is forbidden and criminalized in Kuwait, so how would we solve this problem?” [Source]

I didn’t even know Kuwait was even in the consideration to co-host the World Cup. This is such a huge missed opportunity, one which I don’t think we’ll have again. Qatar spent a lot of money getting the World Cup to come to the region so we basically would have gotten a free ride. The amount of publicity and visitors we would have gotten by hosting the World Cup, and all the improvements the government would have made to the local infrastructure, it’s so sad all this isn’t going to happen now.

Qout Market is back this coming Saturday and it’s taking place in Safat Square again (pictured above). Other than that there are a few other things going on this weekend, check out the full list of events below:

Thursday
Exhibition: Abstraction by Farouk Hosny
Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra

Friday
Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra
Friday Run
Stargazing in AlSalmi Desert

Saturday
Sunrise Yoga
Qout Market
Exhibition: Abstraction by Farouk Hosny
Movie Discussion: 12 Angry Men
Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]
For a full list of upcoming events click [Here]

Sometimes events get canceled or have details changed so always double check with the organizers.