Category: Food & Drinks

Thats what I said, Fillet-O-Fish [YouTube]

Last night I passed by the French restaurant Fauchon in Laila Gallery for dinner. Laila Gallery isn’t one of the best malls on that street so having a lush restaurant like Fauchon in it is kind of strange. From what I heard though is that the owner of Laila Gallery is the same owner as Fauchon so thats why he opened it there.

I will start by giving a quick rundown of all the food we ordered. For starters we had two two dishes, one involved salmon while the other involved lobster. I then had a wild mushroom soup while Nat visited the salad bar. For the main course I had the beef fondue while Nat had the hamour and lobster dish. Finally for desert we chose 2 pieces of cake from their desert tray.

First the negatives. The starters were really forgettable, I would not order them the next time I visit. They tasted fine but fine wasn’t what I was expecting at a place like Fauchon. The soup was ok but I’ve had better versions at Nino’s and Lorenzo. Nat also ordered a mango juice but it tasted like water had been diluted with it which made it really nasty.

So after a disappointing start to dinner I was worried our main courses would also turn out to be flops but luckily that didn’t happen. My dish, the beef fondue was mouthwatering. The presentation of my plate looked very neat, it came with one large bowl filled with cubed beef and potatoes alongside three smaller bowls filled with different sauces for me to dip the beef into. The flavor was very strong and the quantity was very filling, I definitely made the right choice with my main course which by the way was difficult to choose because so many things on the menu looked good. Nat enjoyed her lobster but found the hamour pretty bland but in the end it kind of balanced out. Finally when done our desert arrived, I had the chocolate mousse cake while Nat had the same except with a raspberry mix. As expected since chocolate and cakes are their specialty, desert was delightful.

The interior of place was very stylish with silver curtains and pink lighting. Our waiter was very friendly and helpful and later in the evening the manager even came and spoke to us to make sure everything was going fine. The whole evening would have been perfect if it wasn’t for the disastrous start. The prices of the dishes varied from overpriced to decent. The lobster dish we had for starters was around KD5 which I think wasn’t worth it but on the other hand my main course cost around KD6 which I think was very acceptable. The bill in the end came out to KD32 but this is the maximum I think it could reach. Now that I know what to order I can easily bring the bill down to under KD20 the next time. For the final score I am going to give them a 3.5 out of 5. If the starters were good or if I hadn’t had the starters at all the score would have been a 4.

Although there are a ton of shawerma places near my house Dodo is the place I frequent the most. The staff are friendly and quick and they also have a wide range of sandwiches to choose from. Personally my favorite sandwich at Dodo is their chicken shawerma.

I don’t know how accurate this story is but I remember being told that the owner of Dodo was also the owner of Barakat, my favorite shawerma place back in the day when they were open in the old Salmiya near Fay (opposite Hardees). I think its true because one of the employees of Barakat now works at Dodo but it could be just a big coincidence. Dodo is a Lebanese restaurant that serves Lebanese style of food ranging from falafel to burgers to shawermas. One of the advantages of having shawerma at a Lebanese place is the garlic, and the garlic at Dodo is pretty damn good. As I’ve said before, there are only three things in a shawerma, the bread, the chicken and the garlic. The bread is easy to get right so no worries there. The chicken although the taste of it is important, even if you mess up you can cover up your tracks with good garlic since the garlic can cover the taste of the chicken. Now I am not saying there is a problem with the chicken at Dodo, on the contrary, the chicken is really good but the garlic is where its all at.

The size of the shawerma is pretty small and I usually have 3 to fill me up sometimes with a side order of their fries. The price of each shawerma is 300 fils which is cheap and I think with the quality of their shawerma they could easily price it at 350 fils and no one would complain especially when their most recent competitor, Vila Fayrouz Express charges 750 fils for theirs. All is not perfect though, Dodo suffers from lack of consistency which pisses me off. Sometimes I feel the chicken is undercooked and I hate it when that happens but luckily it doesn’t happen often. Final score is 4 out of 5. Dodo is located near La Baguette on Baghdad Street.

Under my Beef Wellington post a reader asked where they could find a blooming onion in Kuwait. The only place I know that makes a blooming onion is Chili’s. They call it the Awesome Blossom.

note: yes it’s currently back on the menu and available

Is there a restaurant in Kuwait that serves the Beef Wellington? Ever since the first season of Hell’s Kitchen I’ve been wanting to try it.

Picture by Jimsterpedia

IKEA isn’t the first place that comes into mind when you think of Indian food but surprisingly, it should. When IKEA was still based in Shuwaikh their restaurant was tiny and had a limited variety of dishes. Now that they are based in The Avenues and have a lot of space they expanded their restaurant not only in size but also in the variety of dishes that they serve.

One of the dishes they used to serve every now and then as their daily special has now become a permanent dish on their menu, the chicken masala.

As I said earlier when it comes to Indian food IKEA isn’t the first thing that comes into mind. Swedish meatballs yes, chicken masala no. Despite how strange the notion of a Swedish furniture chain serving Indian food might sound, they somehow managed to get it right. IKEA serve extremely good chicken masala and they serve it alongside plain white steamed rice. Combined the meal is priced aggressively at only KD1.500! The portion is large and filling and the flavor is pretty darn good. Its currently my favorite dish at their restaurant and a favorite among many. With a cheap price tag, good portion and great flavor there really isn’t much to complain about. Final score is a 4.5 out of 5.

I finally got to try Edo on Friday for lunch and I didn’t find the place that special. With all the hype built up by the “Edo Pride” groupies I was expecting the place to be the place. Everything I tried tasted pretty bland and boring. I still prefer Kei over Edo even though I don’t eat at Kei anymore after Nat found what looked like a thick eyebrow in her maki. I hear Shogun at The Palms is good so I think I will give that a shot this weekend.

A user called Rakkan posted this picture on his Facebook account. He ordered KFC here in Kuwait and found what looks like a caterpillar on one of the chicken pieces. Check out the picture by clicking [Here]

Warning: After viewing the picture you will never want to eat KFC again.

Thanks Anas

Stuck at work and all I am thinking about is food.
This yummy picture was taken by McLoy
The title of this post is spelled correctly.

A site dedicated to helping non-Chinese when it comes to eating Chinese food. Basically if you ever stared at a Chinese menu and didn’t know what a certain dish was then this site should make things clearer. [Link]

It doesn’t make sense as it is but when the Arabic version of the poster says “Start with appetizers” then you definitely know something got lost in translation.

Note: Picture taken at Naif

I am a big fan of the chocolate cheesecake from Lorenzo but today I decided I am not going to have it anymore. I was at The Avenues killing time and on my way out I decided to pick up some cheesecake from Lorenzino Cafe so I could have them at home. It wasn’t my first time, its become a habit for me every time I visit The Avenues.

Today though there was a new manager there and he was a total dick. I went up to the counter and the manager came up to me, I told him I needed cake to go. He was like full cake or slices? I told him I needed two slices. He told me he wouldn’t be able to do that. I was like huh? Why? He told me he didn’t have any staff to action my order. I was like you have that guy (I pointed to one) putting cake on a plate, can’t he also put cake in a box? He told me no he couldn’t. I stood there for a few seconds bewildered before I decided to walk away.

I thought about getting into an argument with the manager because what he was saying didn’t make any sense but then I was like fuck it, its there loss if they don’t want to sell me cake. I should have gotten his name though so I could make an official complaint but I didn’t. All I remember was that he was Lebanese and had a shaved head.

I think this was one of my worst customer service experiences because it was such an avoidable incident. Usually I complain without offering a solution but today I decided I would.

What the manager should have done was the following:

a) Action the order himself which is what I would have done. At work when something needs to go out urgently in my department and there isn’t anyone to action the job then I would do it myself. Last Friday when Lorenzino was MUCH more packed, the manager (a different one) gave us the slices of cake himself. Its not brain surgery, its just taking cake from the fridge and placing them in boxes.

b) If he was too lazy to give us the cakes himself he could have at least told us that we could have the cakes but it would just take a bit longer then usual because they were really busy. Or maybe told us to come back in 15 minutes.

Anyway, I don’t need their cheesecake and I don’t need Lorenzo. If anything I am better off now since cheesecake is fattening.

Just found out from a friend that Taco Time is coming back to Kuwait. They used to be open before in the mid 90’s but then shut down and now it seems they are reopening again. According to their website they will be opening 4 branches, one in Salmiya, one in Souk Salmiya, another in Hawalli and one more in Salwa. The Salmiya one is supposedly behind Johnny Rockets and the signage seems to be up. The launch according to their website is third quarter of this year. [Link]

Instructions on how to make caffeine Jello shots. Rated safe for Kuwait. [Link]

Baskin Robbins have a new milkshake called the Crunchy Shake. What makes it different from the regular shakes is that they blend a waffle cone with it so that while you are sipping your drink you get to taste the tiny bits of waffles. In theory it sounds good but my experience wasn’t.

First you get to choose three different flavors of ice cream for your shake. That is the fun part since you have a large variety to choose from but I went with the safe route and just chose chocolate mousse for my drink. The employee then took my scoops, dropped them into a blender with milk and a large waffle cone and then turned it on.

The flavor of the drink wasn’t that bad, the waffle cone bits actually do make a difference. The problem I had with my drink was that it was too liquidi, it was as if the employee put too much milk and not enough ice cream. That ruined the shake for me and after drinking half of the cup it just became really gross. I don’t know if this is how the shake was meant to be but I didn’t like it. Final score is a 2 out of 5.