Category: Food & Drinks

Back in 2012 I posted that Alshaya wanted to bring the super popular American franchise Chick-fil-A to Kuwait. I wrote about how talks had failed since Chick-fil-A wanted Alshaya to close on Sundays (they’re a very Christian company) and Alshaya didn’t want to. Instead, Alshaya was trying to convince them to change that rule for the region but Chick-fil-A wasn’t backing down and the deal fell apart.

Then, a couple of years ago I posted that Al Sayer was in talks with Chick-fil-A. Al Sayer denied it but based on my sources at Al Sayer and the aggressive call I got from the Al Sayer Franchising team it felt like they were, in fact, talking with Chick-Fil-A.

I guess those talks failed because fast forward to today, I get an email from my source letting me know that Alshaya have finally signed with Chick-fil-A. No idea if Alshaya have agreed to close on Sundays or if Chick-fil-A have loosened up their policy for the region, but either way, I don’t care. With Chick-fil-A coming to Kuwait, the only other franchise left that we really need is In-N-Out.

Last night I was at The Avenues and decided to pass by the newly opened Pick. When I got there I walked up to the tiny 2 person line behind the cashier and waited for my turn. While waiting, I noticed a long queue on the left side of the place lined up behind another cashier. I realized it might be a one-line queue for two cashiers and that I might have been cutting the line. Or maybe the other people didn’t realize there was a second cashier?

I decided to leave Pick because the situation was confusing, but decided to message them on Instagram just out of curiosity to see if it was actually two separate lines, or one line with two cashiers. My exchange with them was so good I felt it was worth posting about.

Firstly, someone saw my DM right away, they then quickly responded to my question and were apologetic and admitted the situation was actually confusing. The whole conversation was so friendly and sincere, they made me an even bigger fan of the brand.

The situation made me realize again how amazing social media has become for communicating with brands, especially when you have a problem. I’ve DM’d brands a ton of times either to complain, give feedback, ask questions or even to try and cut through lines at clubs (Thank you @the.garten). Other than my internet provider I no longer contact brands any other way. When I had an issue with AVIS in the US I tried calling them on the phone and after spending an hour either on hold or trying to navigate their robotic call center, I decided to tweet them. I ended up getting a response back on twitter in less than 5 minutes! In Kuwait it’s been no different, other than the local Ikea and Jeep dealer (still waiting for a response guys), my experience with customer service on instagram has been pretty good so far. I love it.

For non-coffee drinkers out there, you’ll be interested to know that a new matcha place has opened up in the downtown area, specifically on Coffee Boulevard. The matcha place is called Cha Matchacha and they’re describing themselves as the first matcha bar in Kuwait.

I haven’t tried them since I prefer coffee over matcha, but if you’re looking for a new non-coffee shop to try out, they’re located at the start of Coffee Boulevard, near Koi and Little Purple Door. Here is their location on [Google Maps] and their instagram is @cha_kw.

We launched our PantryBee iOS app yesterday and Mark asked me to write about why we made that decision for our business. As a small business with limited cash reserves, it’s always hard to make the decision to invest in a new platform, and it was a year of back and forth before we decided to finally go ahead.

Why did we do it? Well, it’s obvious to everyone that mobile usage is super high in Kuwait, and that a lot of purchases are done through mobile. We knew that, but we also wanted to verify against our own traffic. So after a year of data collection, we did find that most of our users were indeed purchasing PantryBee meal kits from their phone and that the majority of those were iPhone users. Armed with that info we decided to go for it. The biggest hurdle, of course, was cost. We didn’t have thousands of KD to throw on something that might not be useful, so we went about it as economically as we could with the goal of making our customers experience better.

The first step to creating an app is setting up an account with the Apple Developer Program. This honestly wasn’t that difficult of a process, there’s just a bit of waiting time in order to be verified as a legitimate business. The second step for us was finding an appropriate third party to assist with the App creation process. Seeing as we already had an existing e-commerce backend (Shopify), we searched for companies that had an app that would integrate with the Shopify platform. The whole process from A-Z took about 3 months to get to the current app we have out right now.

Though our site is already mobile friendly, our new app allows a more seamless navigation of our offerings, including app-specific promos, notifications and more. It has all the info and products available on our site, just better suited to a mobile experience. So head to the app store and tell us what you think! You can download our app from this [Link]

If you have any specific comments or want to know more about the process for your own business, feel free to email us at [email protected] and we’ll try and help as much as we can.

Post by Hind
CoFounder of PantryBee where home cooking is made easy.

Have you guys been to the Tampopo ramen restaurant yet? I’ve been wanting to go back ever since I posted about them but I’ve just been waiting for the line to get smaller and it doesn’t look like that’s happening anytime soon.

The picture on top was taken by me last week while the picture above was taken by my brother yesterday. If you missed my post on the place, check it out [Here]

The Kind Ones is a local breakfast place located in Mangaf. I’ve never been to it because it’s so out of my way but I recently found out that they’re opening in LA. According to the website Eater LA, The Kind Ones is opening up in Beverly Hills this coming September. This would make them the second local restaurant after Rock House Sliders to open up in LA this year. Like RHS they’ll also have some pretty strong competition there so I’m curious to see how they’ll do.

Is there a place other than Boccini at The Avenues that serves deep dish pizzas which I’m not aware of? Please don’t say Pizza Hut.

After going viral yesterday they’ve now renamed the account to @closed292 and they’ve left the unapologetic message below.

Until just recently, if you wanted good ramen in Kuwait you were basically out of luck. There weren’t many places that had ramen and the places that did usually had a pretty average bowl. But, last week a new ramen place opened up in Kuwait called Tampopo and it’s great!

The chef behind Tampopo is Maryam Alnusif (or Mimi), many of you might have heard of her since she is behind Shakshooka and The Secret Garden project. Tampopo is actually right next to the Secret Garden, it’s a small place with a main seating area composed of a bar running along the kitchen counter, as well as a bar facing the opposite wall and another bar stretching across the main storefront window. The menu is extremely simple with just three ramen dishes to choose from: Chicken, duck and vegan ramen. They also have a few cocktails and surprisingly, really great tasting non-alcholic Japanese Asahi beer.

I was there with some friends and so we ordered one of everything. My favorite ramen bowl was the vegan one followed by the duck and then the chicken. Because we got there early at around 6:30PM, we managed to find seating, but by the time we were done with our bowls, the place was already packed with people waiting to be seated. I loved the food, the atmosphere and all the people behind Tampopo so I’m definitely going back again this week. Plus its walking distance from my home which is pretty convenient.

Because Tampopo is still in a soft launch phase, they’re only open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 6PM to 10PM. But, starting next week they might start opening on Mondays as well. They also right now only accept cash but should start accepting knet next week. For a map of the location and to stay up to date on their store timings, check out their instagram page @tampopo.ramenshop

So last week there was a case of mass food poisoning in Kuwait because of a falafel restaurant in Hawalli. Supposedly the former partner of the restaurant conspired with an employee to poison the falafel and today Kuwait Times mentions they found the food to be contaminated with salmonella and other types of bacteria. Around 300 customers got food poisoned and yet none of the newspapers or news outlets have mentioned which restaurant had their food contaminated (at least none of the English outlets). I really don’t understand why news media continue to shy away from posting the name of the restaurant especially in a case like this where many other people might be infected and not know they are.

When there was an E. coli outbreak at Chipotle in the States, all the news outlets wrote about it, but if the same outbreak had taken place in Kuwait they’d probably just describe Chipotle as an American franchise.

Not sure who’d want this but if you’re interested, they’re selling a box of 12 for KD63. I’m trying to get a hold of one to review just out of curiosity but here is the link to the local dealer’s [Website] if you can’t wait.

Last night I was showing my friend the wine app Vivino (its creepy good btw) when I noticed they had a list of best wines trending in Kuwait right now. The app is super useful when it comes to buying wines since you just take a picture of the bottle label and the app then pulls up information on the wine including ratings, reviews and price. You can even take a picture of a wine list and it will get you the ratings for every wine on the list.

I’m guessing their top chart is based on what people in Kuwait have been scanning and damn we’ve been buying some expensive wines here. If a bottle of wine costs $2,000 abroad, how much does it cost in Kuwait? I’m so curious.

If you want to check out the top 10 wines in Kuwait right now, click on the link below.

Last month Wendy’s opened up at the airport where Pinkberry used to be located, and a couple of weeks back, Pick opened up where Potbelly used to be. I especially like the fact that Pick opened up because at least we have a healthy option available at the airport now. Actually, the options for food now is pretty good with the addition of these two.

If you’re a long time reader of the blog you know about my obsession with seedless watermelons. A few years ago we started getting them in Kuwait but they were just too expensive ranging in price from KD1.4 to KD3 per kilo depending where you got them from. But, last week I noticed Sultan Center started getting Egyptian seedless watermelon and they’re pretty cheap at just 595 fils a kilo. They’re not easy to come by since they seem to sell out quickly, I actually had to visit three different Sultan Centers before I managed to find some.

If you’ve never tried seedless watermelon, they’re just like regular melons but without the black seeds!

A couple of weeks ago there was a very interesting discussion on Reddit called “What if I don’t want to fast?” about the laws that punish people for eating in public during Ramadan. Since Ramadan is nearly over, I wanted to ask my readers what their opinion about this is.

Personally, because I don’t cook, my biggest issue is with the law regarding restaurants having to be closed during the day. I actually don’t know if its a law, or just an unspoken rule, but whatever the case is, I don’t think restaurants should be forced to close, not unless you also want to close other sources of food like supermarkets and baqalas. I’ve basically spent most of this Ramadan having Chinese food since China Kitchen is one of the few places that deliver from noon and they’re located in Salmiya so the driver doesn’t get stuck in traffic. I actually don’t think I’m having Chinese food ever again once Ramadan is over.

Do you fast? Would you mind it if restaurants were open during the day? Do you mind if people drink water in front of you? I’m curious to know.