Category: Food & Drinks

Alghanim Industries acquired the rights to develop Wendy’s restaurants across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region from Alamar Foods, a Saudi-based company owned jointly by Al Jammaz Group and the Carlyle Group. The value of the deal remains undisclosed. Alghanim Industries has acquired all operational outlets in the UAE with plans to open additional stores across MENA over the next 10 years. Part of the expansion in the region includes opening stores in Alghanim Industries home market, Kuwait, which has among the highest consumption of fast food per capita in the MENA region. [Link]

It’s interesting that Alghanim are getting into the food industry, makes me wonder what they will be bringing next?

I was at Sanabil Tower yesterday and spotted a new little shop called Green Yummies. Two things caught my eye, first they had healthy sweet potato chips and baked hummos chips (both turned out to be delicious) and secondly they had a bunch of buy one get one free offers because some of their chips were expiring soon.

The price? They usually sell the bags of chips for 550fils each but the sweet potato was buy one get one free and the hummos was buy one get two free. They also had a bunch of other healthy super foods including cereals and energy bars. They’ve only been open for two months now and their instagram account is @greenyummies

I was at Sultan Center Shaab last night and spotted a pile of Valentine apples. The apple have “I Love You” written on them which is achieved during the growing process by wrapping the apples in a special bag.

Unlike the heart shaped watermelons Sultan was selling last year, these apples are actually affordable at just KD1.5 per KG.

Hungry Bunny is a popular burger franchise that used to be open back in Kuwait during the 80s pre Burger King and McDonalds days. When Al Homaizi got the Burger King franchise, they shutdown all the Hungry Bunny locations and killed the brand. But the original creator of Hungry Bunny ended up launching the brand in Saudi Arabia and then a few years ago brought the brand back to Kuwait. Al Homaizi Group sued them and it now seems Hungry Bunny has been told to stop using the bunny logo until a verdict is reached in the court case.

I passed by Hungry Bunny for a quick bite yesterday and the majority of the items had the Hungry Bunny logo without the bunny (like in the placemats pictured above). But, some items like the burger wrapper still had the bunny on them. According to the shop manager this is just a temporary issue and the bunny will be coming back soon. They’ve even removed the bunny from the shop signage as well so it’s a pretty awkward mess right now.

Update: Al Homaizi have commented with the following:

Dear Mark and Loyal Hungry Bunny Customers,

It is great to see Hungry Bunny still having that nostalgic feeling within Kuwait and we thank you for your post which we appreciate and are proud of as the founders of the Hungry Bunny brand.

With regards to your post, we would like to mention that Hungry Bunny was developed in 1982 by Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co. in Kuwait and is 100% Kuwaiti.

As the first local franchise in Kuwait, Hungry Bunny led the way and opened the doors to decades of innovative local concepts within Kuwait which we are very proud to see are still growing today.

The Hungry Bunny restaurants that launched in and outside of Kuwait following 1997 were not the original Hungry Bunny developed by Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our loyal Hungry Bunny customers! We would love to hear more about your experiences and memories that you, your family and your friends had in the 80’s and 90’s at the much-loved Hungry Bunny.

Please share your memories with us by sending us an email to [email protected]

Best Wishes,

Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co.
Member of Kout Food Group, Kuwait

Five Guys are opening in Dubai Mall soon which means they’ll most likely be opening up in Kuwait as well. Also according to The Avenues instagram account another burger joint opened up there yesterday called BGR so that’s two franchise burger places that have opened up this week. I think the only place left to open that I’d be excited for is Arby’s. Where you at Arby’s??

Thanks David

Caliburger is a burger joint from South California and they’re officially opening up this Wednesday at Miral Complex. I’m going to sound like a broken record but I have no clue why people think it still makes sense to open more burger joints. Anyway for more information checkout their instagram account @caliburgerkw

The Time isn’t a new place, it’s actually been open for just over a year now but I just found out about it two days ago. I don’t drink coffee and there aren’t that many places that make good tea so I when discovered The Time was located in KIPCO Tower which is down the street from my office, I went there the following day.

The Time is an elegant looking but cozy place with a large variety of teas to choose from. They also have food but I had already eaten and was just there with a friend for some tea. The place was quiet, nicely lit with natural daylight and since they’re located on M2, the view was fairly decent while sitting by the window. The tea prices are very reasonable at KD1.5 and I loved their chinaware. Naf Noof’s Blog has a ton of beautiful shots of the place so if you want to find out more about the The Time click [Here]

Photo by Naf Noof

I first heard about VOL.1 when I used to see their home made health bars at Circuit+. Now they’ve gone ahead and opened up a beautiful small coffee shop in Kuwait City in front of the fabrics market (blockat). They’re near Al Makan and are open from 12PM to 5PM except for Fridays. For more information check out their instagram account [Here]

I found out about Torch today by coincidence from a friend who’s taking part in the exhibition. It’s being held at the Kuwait International Fairground starting from today until the 17th. I passed by the exhibition awhile ago and I’m not really sure what to make of it.

The hall the exhibition is being held in is fairly large but the majority of the space is taken up by a fake green field which none of the vendors I spoke to seemed to know what it was for.

Most of the vendors at the exhibition were for healthy food products and most were selling their products at retail cost. I just didn’t understand the purpose of it since you could find the same products at Sultan Center and SaveCo instead of driving all the way to the fairgrounds. At events like this food vendors should consider running some kind of promotion in a bid to gain new customers.

If you’re into fitness and sports then pass by the event like I did just to check it out. Just don’t go with high expectations.

I had been wanting to try this dessert ever since I saw pictures of it floating around Instagram but I didn’t get the chance to until now. The dessert is called the Coma Chocolate Pudding and is served at the Dikakeen restaurant in Salhiya M2. It’s basically a chocolate pudding dessert with a KDD sandwich ice cream shoved in the middle.

The dessert takes 20 minutes to prepare which is a good sign since it means they bake it fresh. Sadly though the dessert looked better than it tasted since I thought it was flavorless. But, if you’re a fan of the KDD ice cream sandwich (who isn’t really) then it’s worth trying out.

Bilbayt is a new local website that just recently launched that makes it easy to discover and order catering online. The way it works is simple, you go to the website, pick the date and time you want catering and then you’ll get a list of available caterers. If you choose Johnny Rockets for example you get two options to choose from, a Johnny Rockets Live Station and a Johnny Rockets “Kids” Live Station. If you click the regular Live Station you get the details plus the price which is KD125 for 15 people. You can then proceed to increase the amount of people you want them to cater for and the price will update accordingly. You can then proceed to checkout and pay either by Knet, credit card or cash on delivery. It’s a fairly easy and simple to use website.

As of this post they have 16 caterers on the website including Magnolia Bakery, Upper Crust Pizza and even Shawerma Shuwaikh. You can check out the website by visiting bilbayt.com

Eight is a restaurant that is open across the street from Arraya Complex in Kuwait City. It opened up over a year ago but I never ate there because the design of the place looked so dark and gloomy. But, today while walking by it I noticed they’ve completely redecorated the place and it’s now so much more brighter and better looking. I still haven’t tried it out but I did quickly flip through the menu and I might end up going back for their sweet potato and brisket dish. For now I thought I’d just mention the facelift since it’s such a major improvement.

Last week I passed by Rice to Riches in Avenues to check the place out. It’s a New York based dessert place that serve a variety of flavored rice puddings. A friend of mine who is friends with the owner wanted me to try the place out and then write a positive review of it on the blog. Obviously that’s not how this blog works and I explained to him that I hadn’t even tried rice pudding before so I’m not sure I’ll even like it. And that’s actually what made me want to pass by the place. I get invited to a lot of places all the time but unless it’s something different, I’m not gonna find it interesting and so I’m honestly not going to go and try it out (sorry burger joints).

So Thursday after coming back from Qatar I headed to Avenues to see what Rice to Riches was all about. The owner and the operation manager were there so they ended up showing me around the place before taking me to their kitchen and showed me how their rice pudding was made. After the little tour they brought out I think like 12 different flavors and wanted me blind taste them. So I started going through the flavors one by one guessing the flavors while giving them feedback on what I thought. I wasn’t really sure how rice pudding was going to taste, I just imagined the rice I make at home mixed with chocolate and figured it would taste really gross. Luckily, it didn’t taste like rice at all. The rice pudding is served cold and the hazelnut flavor for example to me tasted like chocolate mousse and was my favorite flavor alongside the cheesecake flavor which was just as good. My least favorite flavor was the old fashioned which didn’t have any flavor added at all.

I wasn’t expecting to like rice pudding but I did (at least some of the flavors). If you’re calorie counting though you’re going to have to leave that at the door since this isn’t some frozen yogurt alternative. They have random humorous signs hanging proudly with messages like “Eat what you want, you’re already fat”, “Think with your stomach” or “If you want to look young and thin, hang out with old fat people”. Rice to Riches is officially opening on January 15th in Avenues Phase III on the top floor next to Elevation Burger. They’re going to be soft launching before that date so check their instagram to stay posted.

The Qatar Digital Library have published an article about a scandal in Kuwait in the 1930s when one restaurant was accused of using cat meat instead of mutton. It’s an interesting read and it also sounds like an incident that could take place today. Kuwait really hasn’t changed much. [Link]

Dairy Queen is returning to Kuwait a decade after the Edina-based ice cream chain left the Middle East country.

The company plans to open 20 DQs in Kuwait over the next five years, according to Bloomberg . A franchisee had operated restaurants there from 1979 to 2003, but then the franchisee decided to leave the business.

Kuwait Dairy Queens will have a similar menu to U.S. locations, but will also have some different items, like a spicy Gyro sandwich. [Source]

My memories of Dairy Queen goes back to the mid 80s since there was a branch near my place in old Salmiya. Not that big a fan anymore though, would rather A&W be making a comeback.