Category: Food

I finally managed to pass by Tatami Japanese restaurant for lunch today. Everything I had was really good and the owner of the place (who is also the chef) was there and she was very friendly and helpful when choosing the dishes. My only issue with the place is that the sushi rolls are extremely tiny. Like the tiniest rolls I’ve ever seen. But other than that it’s a great place and worth trying out. Here is the link to their website [Link]

Franklin Marshall opened up yesterday (I think) at the Avenues Phase II opposite Paul Smith.

I was also at Marina Mall last night and noticed SuperDry is opening up in place of where Diesel was located.

Finally some sad news, it seems my favorite Japanese restaurant in Kuwait Kei will not be reopening at Marina Crescent and instead Nestle Toll House will be opening in its place. Originally Kei closed down for renovation but they then gave half their shop to Columbus Cafe Caribou Coffe and it seems now they’ve given the other half to Nestle Toll House. They still have their JW Marriott location but I preferred the Marina Crescent branch since it was right next to my house.

Toll House picture by Mohammed

I just heard that Shake Shack is opening a second branch in Avenues Phase III. I could understand with a brand like Pinkberry or Starbucks why you would need multiple outlets in the same mall but Shake Shack?

This is the best thing to happen to the airport since they shutdown McDonalds. They’re opening them all in place of Costa right after immigration.

Kuwait Black Market spotted the Walls brand ice cream at Geant in 360 Mall. I remember someone telling me ages ago that Walls ice cream was banned in Kuwait because the Walls logo upside down read as “Allah” in Arabic. Kinda like those Nike Air shoes back in the 90’s that were also banned because the way “Air” was written also looked like “Allah”.

I guess the Walls thing was just an urban legend and now we can all enjoy our Magnum ice cream. [Link]

Fatburger is finally opening up their Burj Jassem branch in Kuwait City on the 25th of this month. Burj Jassem is located opposite the Ice Skating Rink.

A bagel place opened up in Kuwait City which I think is pretty cool I haven’t tried them yet but some friends at work did. Their website is horrible (slo-mo 90’s style flash) but they’ve got their full menu up there for you to download and order from.

Here is a link to their website [Link]
Here is the link to their menu bypassing their website [Link]
Finally here is their Facebook [Link]
Their phone number is: 55444303/313

Thanks A

As I mentioned in my previous post, Alghanim Electronics sent over an iPhone 4S for me to try out. I’ve been using it for a few hours and thought I would share my first impression on two of the most important new features.

The Camera
Thew camera on the iPhone 4S is a much better camera when compared to the regular iPhone 4. I saw some sample shots on the Apple website and they looked great but those shots were obviously taken in perfect lighting with an amazing photographer. I was curious to how the camera would fair in boring regular situation with random light and a not so great subject. Since the weather today is a mixture of humid, hot and dust, I decided to go to the roof and take a landscape shot.

On the left is the iPhone 4S shot and on the right the iPhone 4. Although it doesn’t look like that dramatic a difference when you zoom in at 100% it’s a complete different story as you can see below.

As you can see the iPhone 4S photo had a lot more details and a lot less artifacts. Another advantage of the iPhone 4S camera is that the lens is brighter which means better shots in low light situations. Below is a photo I took indoors.

Again zoomed out like this the details don’t show as much but once you zoom in at 100% (check below) you’ll see that the iPhone 4S shots are a lot less noisier and a lot more sharper.

One of the main reasons I purchased the iPhone 4S is because of the camera. I take a lot of shots for the blog and although I should, I don’t usually carry my good cameras with me all the time. Most of my shots are taken with an iPhone so the ability to take better shots is a great advantage for me. If like me, image quality is something you care about then the difference between the iPhone 4 and 4S is actually pretty major. You can download the full resolution images I shot and used above from these links:

Landscape with iPhone 4S
Landscape with iPhone 4
Low light with iPhone 4S
Low light with iPhone 4

Siri
Another reason I got the iPhone 4S is because of Siri. I’m a huge Stark Trek TNG fan and Siri reminded me a lot of the computer on the starship Enterprise. Even though Siri is limited when compared to the computer on Enterprise (it can’t prepare meals for example), it’s still very impressive and I love it. Siri is going to get even better in the future and I honestly can’t wait.

There are a few things that won’t work in Kuwait though. If you ask Siri for the best burger joints in Kuwait it will tell you it won’t know. Some of the Siri features are US only for now but it does do a whole bunch of other things. You could ask it to convert currency for you, find out the population of countries as well as other trivia. More importantly for me it can take notes and set reminders which is a big deal for me. I’m a very forgetful person and also very lazy so even when I usually remember something I never write it down or set a reminder. Now with Siri, once I remember something I can just tell it to write it down or remind me when I get home or work to do something. She’s really going to be my personal secretary/assistant.

Siri didn’t have that many problems understanding me. I do tend to mumble and I did have a few instances when Siri wouldn’t know what I was talking about but I also found Siri pretty forgiving. For example I might start saying “tell me” and then mid sentence change to “I mean what is the capital city of Kuwait” and Siri would still understand and tell me “Kuwait City”. Yes it does feel weird (ie stupid) talking to a phone but I’m sure I can get over that.

I ordered my iPhone 4S last week from the Apple UK store but for those of you who haven’t ordered yet and just want to walk into a store and pick one up Alghanim Electronics will have them in stock starting tomorrow. I asked about the price but as of this post they still hadn’t finalized it yet.

Update: The prices for the iPhones has been released by Alghanim and they are the following (don’t shoot the messenger):

iPhone 4S 16GB for KD350
iPhone 4S 32GB for KD390
iPhone 4S 64GB for KD420

Halloween is coming up and Dean & Deluca have some amazing looking pumpkins if you’re into pumpkin carving. But, it might be a good idea to sketch your designs first since at KD12 a pumpkin, any mistake is going to be an expensive one.

I just read about this in Arab Times and I’m kinda concerned since all I drink is mineral water and I drink a lot of it, around 6 liters a day.

KUWAIT CITY, Oct 5: The US Embassy in Kuwait has warned its citizens against drinking a certain kind of mineral water, reports Al-Shahed daily. The report could not be independently confirmed.

The embassy in a statement said this water contains contaminants and materials unfit for human consumption and harmful to public health.

The statement said random samples of mineral water, the type sold in the local market, were sent to a special lab in the United States and the results were not convincing.

Sources say the statement added it is surprising the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Kuwait Municipality laboratories have failed to warn citizens and residents against drinking this water.

Here is the link to the article [Link]

According to a reader SNOG is opening up this weekend at Souk Sharq. I’m not a fan of frozen yogurt but supposedly SNOG is good. I believe this will also be their first branch in Kuwait. This is their second branch, the first was in Muhallab.

Thanks Ahmed

I also noticed that Tche Tche is opening up in place of Nandos at The Avenues. Nandos was located outside in the area behind Chili’s but it closed down. Not sure if Tche Tche will manage to send traffic to that isolated area in the back but the weather is getting better now and there’s a pretty large outdoor seating area so they might be able to pull it off.

Both the Pizza Express and Pinkberry branches at the Marina Crescent are now open. The Pizza Express branch looks to have an updated new look compared to the Pizza Express branches at the airport and Avenues. The Pinkberry branch at the Crescent makes it the second Pinkberry branch there since there’s already another one near the fountain inside the mall.

Leila is my favorite Lebanese restaurant in Kuwait and I’m there usually on a daily basis for lunch since one of their locations is right next to my office. Last week they added a new “light” menu which includes some popular Lebanese dishes that are cooked in a healthier way for example their light taouk dish now uses a mustard based marination resulting in a final dish that contains only 430 calories. Yeah they actually have the calories listed next to the dishes, something I hadn’t seen at a Lebanese restaurant before.

They only have a few items on the light menu right now but they will be adding some more over time. The location I visit the most is the one next to Johnny Rockets outside Salhiya Complex but they have another one at The Avenues near the cinema as well.

It’s about time! The small LoFat canteen above is located at the American International School.

via PinkGirlQ8

Update: LoFat is also available at Al-Bayan Bilingual School