2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
This post will probably be understood just by Lebanese but my sister just told me about this place in Kuwait that sells ka3k and also makes ka3k sandwiches. I got 3 packs of Picon the last time I was in Lebanon so it would be cool if they can grill me a Picon sandwich in kaa3k. They also have a website and they deliver! [Link]
Slider Station finally have a website up and running but when I try to check it on my Mac my browser practically freezes. I tried using both FireFox and Safari and the website seems too graphically heavy to browse properly. From what I managed to see, they have some photos up and the menu but without the prices. [Link]
Yesterday my friend asked me if I wanted to try out a new burger place called Marrybrown. I hadn’t heard of the place before but he told me it was an American franchise. That turned out not to be true because according to Wikipedia “Marrybrown Family Restaurant is a Malaysia based fast food chain”. Malaysia, America.. they both end with the letter “a” so I can see how he could have gotten confused.
We drove to the restaurant which is located at the beginning of Canada Dry street next to a car wash. It’s a really crappy location for a new franchise and the place isn’t even well designed from the inside. I checked out their menu and there wasn’t a single burger on the menu! Turns out Marrybrown is more like KFC and not McDonalds. I ordered a chicken fillet combo, swapped the fries with onion rings and also ordered a chicken ceaser wrap.
We sat down and the food quickly followed. After a few bites it became obvious that although the place looked shady the food seemed to be fresh and everything seemed to taste fine. Thats where the problem is with Marrybrown, its just too normal. There really wasn’t anything I ordered that would make me want to come back again. If I feel like a chicken fillet I would think McChicken from McDonalds or Zinger from KFC. The location and the interior doesn’t help their situation either. Maybe if I ever wash my car at the car wash next door and I feel like grabbing a bite I wouldn’t mind Marrybrown but I don’t think I would ever go out of my way just for them. The final score is 2.5 out of 5.
Tonight I passed by Sultan Center and noticed they no longer had Indian eggs and instead have replaced them with fresh locally produced eggs by KUPCO selling for a very reasonable KD1 for a tray of 30 eggs. I guess the local egg crisis is nearly over?
Badar Al Badoor increased the price of their Kebab and shawerma sandwiches to 300fils.
The box on the left is the original Kellogg’s Cornflakes with their signature rooster thats been on the front of their boxes since 1957. The box on the right is the Sultan Center generic brand of cornflakes.. with a green rooster. Next up, Sultan Center canned vegetables with a green giant as the mascot.
Imagine going into a Burger King only to find out they discontinued the Whopper. This is the new viral campaign by Burger King and its really funny. At one point in this video they give Big Macs to customers who ordered the Whopper! [Link]
After reading the post below by Nibaq on The Local Egg Crisis I am suddenly very disgusted by Sultan Center. I just recently noticed that we have an egg problem, I had heard something about an egg crisis from a friend but only when I was at Carrefour this past weekend and noticed their eggs section was completely empty that I realized how severe the crisis was.
I do all my shopping at Sultan Center and awhile back I noticed they were suddenly getting eggs made in India. I decided to get a pack and later in the evening while making dinner I cracked open a few eggs only to find some strange black stuff inside some of them. It was really disgusting and I ended up throwing away the whole pack. I now don’t buy eggs from India and instead buy the more expensive locally produced organic eggs.
After reading Nibaqs post below I just found out that the fresh eggs Sultan are selling are NOT fresh and instead are over a month old! Thats really gross and no wonder the eggs I got were rotten. I usually don’t keep anything in my fridge for long and to find out that the eggs from Sultan are a month old is just shocking specially when eggs last only 5 weeks. Sultan Center should do what Carrefour is doing and not bring in Indian eggs at all! I would rather see the shelves empty instead of buying eggs only to find them rotten.
The egg crisis in Kuwait is a mix of market forces, bird flu, production issues, feed prices and inaction from government forces. The Kuwait egg market is pretty huge; we consume over a billion eggs a year and we just produce around 40% of that. The rest we have to import from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and India.
Production in the gulf has dropped dramatically this year due to the bird flu epidemic. Kuwait was hit first which led to 6 out of the 8 farms to stop production, cutting our production levels to 15%. These farms have just recently started production and will take another 12 months to reach their full levels.
Saudi Arabia has recently been hit by the bird flu virus which has cut their production. This has also led to Kuwait placing an import ban on Saudi eggs in order to protect our local farms and people.
Due to the high demand from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries our other exporters like Jordan and Syria have placed an export ban to keep the remaining eggs in their own country to avoid their own crisis.
The only remaining eggs that we can import are Indian. Indian eggs are considered the cheapest and lowest quality eggs that you can find in the market. They take over a month to arrive from India to Kuwait via container and sometimes not qualified for human consumption. Sadly main supermarkets are marketing them as “fresh eggs”. Fresh eggs are considered by USDA and GCC law as eggs are maximum 3 days old from the farm. Indian eggs are over 30 days old from the farm.
The other factor in the egg crisis is due to feed supply. Since under Kuwaiti law chickens must be fed 100% organic feed without any chemicals, feed additives or meal. This adds up to 70% of the cost of the egg and this year has been a huge increase in feed prices leading the Kuwaiti egg producers to also increase their prices.
They have requested from the government to offer them a subsidy on the feed to reduce their cost, yet the government has not been helpful. Instead the Ministry of Commerce and Kuwait Coop Supermarket Union has been demanding from them to reduce their prices to pre-bird flu and feed increase prices or face being shut out of the supermarkets.
This is of course a guise of “protecting the consumer”, since they are still selling Indian which are over a month old as “fresh” eggs around 1KD when the real cost of Indian eggs is around 400fils. The Coops are making over 250%. Compare this to real fresh Kuwaiti eggs which are just above that price. This is so they can increase their profit margin by cheating the local consumer and leverage the Kuwaiti egg producers to submit to their control.
Other Gulf countries are facing the same shortage in Kuwait, but instead of fighting the local producers they have been offering them support by giving them bigger subsidies and allowing market forces to choose the egg prices.
So support your local egg producer by buying from their official stores in Shuwaik area near the vegetable market. They are offering real fresh eggs and at reasonable prices, and demand for the Coops to bring Kuwaiti eggs back.
Eggs in liquid form, you buy them and they come in milk like cartons. All you need to do is open the carton and pour the egg out onto the pan and voilà! Problem is it costs around KD2.500 at Sultan meaning you might as well pay that much and get the healthier organic eggs.
This surprisingly looks delicious! [Link]
Ever wanted to know how to replicate Chili’s Molten Chocolate Cake, KFC’s Cole Slaw or In-N-Out’s Double-Double burger? Well I just found a site called Top Secret Recipes and it has a ton of recipes to help you clone your favorite dish at home. [Link]
24. Dredge thinly sliced chicken breasts in flour or cornmeal; cook about two minutes a side in hot olive oil. Place on bread with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise.
101 simple and quick recipes like that. They all seem very easy to do. [Link]
Budour emailed me telling me about her home-based bakery specializing in desserts. According to her, what makes her different from other dessert places that have popped up is that she takes pride in making simple straightforward good desserts without the fuss. I haven’t tried her desserts so I can’t vouch for her but the pictures on her site do look appetizing.
With all these small businesses popping up I should probably go ahead also and open up my own shawerma place. It would be cool to have my own shawerma place and I can have a large pink magenta sign outside and my place would have some weird cheesy name that doesn’t make sense like “Rose of the Shawerma” or “iShawerma”. Anyway, you can check out the deserts Budour has to offer by visiting her website bdesserts.com
I got an email today from a reader informing me of a new burger place that opened up called Cheeburger Cheeburger. Its an American chain that opened up their first international branch here in Kuwait last month and according to their website, their burger was voted the best burger in 28 cities. The problem was where they opened up their location, Souk Salmiya. I hate that place, its probably one of the worst designed malls in Kuwait containing some of the crappiest stores and its always over crowded and parking is always nearly impossible to find. Still, I decided it might be worth the visit and so after work I headed straight to Cheeburger Cheeburger.
The place is located on the top floor in the food court and their location is surprisingly pretty big. The interior is themed like Johnny Rockets which is the 1940’s-50’s style although I doubt they copied Johnny since both restaurants launched around the same time back in 1986. When I got the menu I noticed they had a limited time special offer going on where 1/3 lb burger with fries and coke was priced at KD2.250 while everything else on the menu had 25% off. I decided to go with their combo and I ordered a side order of onion rings with dipping sauce. The way you order the burger at Cheeburger is you choose the thickness of the burger, you then choose the type of cheese you want on it (they have 8 kinds) and then you choose what toppings you want and if you want any certain sauce. I didn’t get too creative with mine since it was my first time, I just went with swiss cheese, ketchup, tomato and lettuce.
A few minutes after placing my order my coke arrived and it was in a jar! I thought that was pretty creative since I don’t recall ever getting my softdrink in anything but a cup. While waiting for my appetizers I noticed a bunch of Trivial Pursuit cards on the table near the salt and pepper shakers. At first I assumed that some kid had left them behind but then I noticed every table had a bunch of cards. Turns out they have them there for the customers to entertain themselves with while they wait for their food to arrive.
The first thing the waitress brought me were my onion rings and fries followed shortly after with my burger. The onion rings were skinny but delicious, the dipping sauce had a lot to do with it. Anyone who’s had the awesome blossom at Chili’s will recognize the sauce immediately, I love it. The fries were good but nothing to set it apart from the competition. My burger, well I can’t imagine it being voted the best burger in 28 cities. It wasn’t bad, on the contrary it was good, it just wasn’t special. Thats probably my fault though since I went pretty safe with the toppings. The bread was good, the meat was good, it was everything else in the burger that didn’t stand out. Maybe next time I could try their one pound burger, according to their website if you can finish it they would put your picture up on the wall and I can’t imagine it being that difficult to finish.
The place in general wasn’t disappointing, they had a lot of little things that made it special and thats what I liked about the place. For example nyone who’s eaten at Johnny Rockets knows how crap their paper napkins are, they are too tiny and too thin. Well at Cheeburger Cheeburger their paper napkins are kitchen paper rolls which is fantastic. I know napkins aren’t usually important in a restaurant review but I just wanted to use it as an example of the little things I am talking about. My biggest disappointment in the place is the location and location is everything. I hate Souk Salmiya and I know I am not the only one. If Cheeburger Cheeburger was open at say Marina Mall or in Jahra then I would go back again over and over but sadly I doubt I would go back to Souk Salmiya unless I really had to. If it was located anywhere else it would most probably get a 4 out of 5 but because its in Souk Salmiya I am giving it a 3. My bill came out to be KD3.150 which I think is a steal. You can check out their menu by clicking [Here]
