Category: Personal

I have decided to no longer listen to my friends when it comes to shawerma places. First I got sent to Happy Duck which turned out to be a disaster and then I got sent to Weekend which also turned out to be as bad. Weekend is located opposite AUK in Salmiya and although I’ve passed by it numerous of times before, I never thought about trying it until recently when a friend recommended I give it a shot.

I ordered two chicken shawermas and a coke. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity I got the sandwiches, drove a bit further down the road parked my car and started eating. Its always best to have the shawerma while its hot and fresh but in Weekend’s, case I don’t think that really matters. The sandwich wasn’t greasy but that’s the only thing positive I have to say about it. The garlic was too liquid like and didn’t really taste like garlic although it smelled like garlic. The chicken was too moist and tasted terrible. The quantity of the chicken in the sandwich was also little although thinking about it now, that might be a good thing since the chicken was really bad anyway.

The cost of the chicken shawerma is 250fils which is normal. My advice? Drive down a further 20 meters to Malek al 3aseer (King of Juice) who make a much better shawerma. Final score 1.5 out of 5.

A friend recommended I try shawerma from a place in Salmiya called Happy Duck. At first I was hesitant but then I thought to myself, what if this back alley place with a stupid name turns out to have really good shawermas? I decided not to discriminate and give the place a shot.

I passed by the place late in the evening, it wasn’t too hard to find, I just took the exit on the Gulf Road right before were Crepaway (now called Divas) used to be located. The location wasn’t bad, they had ample parking space and no traffic around them. I went down, ordered two shawermas and a coke, came back to the car and started eating them.

My first impression was that the shawerma was really greasy. I munched away and went through the first shawerma without encountering anything out of the ordinary but when I hit the second sandwich something tasted really weird. Kinda like the chicken was under cooked or something which grossed me out so I threw it awat. I didn’t like their shawerma at all.

The price of their shawerma is 250 fils which competes with my two favorite shawerma places at the moment, Badar Al Badoor and Al Ghader, but Happy Duck is not even in the same league as them. Final score is a 1.5 out of 5.

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.

I was sitting at home watching TV when I heard sirens outside. They were getting louder and louder so I looked out the window and saw a bunch of fire trucks coming towards my building. I figured they must have taken a wrong turn but to my surprise the trucks started parking under my building and a crowd started to gather. I was thinking WTF? Their were 8 trucks, a cop car and an ambulance parked under my building so I figured something must be wrong. I took my camera and headed downstairs to see what all the commotion was about.

Once I got downstairs I saw the building keeper (haress) and asked him what was going on. He told me a store inside the mall (I live over a shopping mall) must have had a short circuit but there wasn’t anything to worry about. Fire fighters were running into the building with full gear on so I decided to take a few shots. Luckily the fire was put out quickly before any other stores caught fire.

War Stories by UNKLE is the album of the year. My favorite song is number 7, Burn My Shadow. It fucking rocks. This album is wayyy better then anything I have recently heard including Smashing Pumpkin’s Zeitgeist. [Amazon]

Late May I purchased two tickets to the Nine Inch Nails and Foo Fighters concert in Dublin and surprisingly today I received the tickets in regular mail! I had emailed Ticketmaster telling them specifically NOT to mail me the tickets because I was sure they would get lost in the mail. Magically they arrived to my mailbox and not only that, the tickets arrived before the concert date. The Kuwait postal service must have gotten a makeover.

update: My tickets were mailed out on June 12, they arrived to my PO Box on June 20th. One week from Ireland to Kuwait, thats really good.

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 have a passion for vintage toys and video games and recently I realized if I had a lot of extra cash lying around what I would love to start collecting is vintage Matchbox cars like the one pictured above and currently currently going for $330 on eBay!. Thats one expensive little toy car…

I was watching two items on eBay today, the first was a brand new boxed Popeye Game & Watch, the second was a brand new boxed Oil Panic Game & Watch. I was willing to pay max $200 which I figured was a pretty good chunk of change but I just got home and checked to find out that I lost both bids. Both items got sold for around $270 each!

update: Just lost another bid this time on a boxed Simon, but whats messed up is I lost by 50 cents only!

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.

Found this Wrangler today and its exactly how I want my Wrangler to look like. Now I just need to find out how much this lift is going to cost me. I should have left a note on the guys car and asked him to call me.

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.

The funniest show I am watching at the moment is called Extras. The show stars Ricky Gervais from The Office and Ashley Jensen from Ugly Betty who both play the role of extras on the show. Extras are the people who play very minor roles in movies or commercials usually with no speaking lines and located in the background. One of the cool things about the show is that each episode features a famous star; Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Stewert, Orlando Bloom and David Bowie for example have all appeared on the show.

Extras is a typical British comedy so the style might not appeal to everyone but I personally find it hilarious. Its a really silly show and I couldn’t imagine anyone else other then Gervais playing the lead role except for maybe Simon Pegg. You can find out more about the show by checking out the Extras page on HBO’s website. [Link]