Category: Reviews

Two nights ago while sitting with friends for dinner I was told to try out the Iranian kebabs at Malak Sajj in Souk al Moubarakiya… the old souk in Kuwait City. So yesterday for lunch I went with 2 friends to try it and it turned out to be fairly decent.

The place is located in like the food court of the renovated old souk. There is only open air seating but the weather was really good so it wasn’t a problem. Once we sat down a waiter came and asked us what we wanted. They don’t have a menu so the guy just verbally tells you what they have. Everyone ordered something, I ordered a plate of kebabs, a plate of hummus and a coke. While we were waiting for our main course they gave us complimentary soup of the day. A few minutes later our food arrived with a lot of Iranian bread on the side.

The kebab was pretty good and filling. The hummus wasn’t bad either except a fly fell into it and drowned in the oil so we had to maneuver our bread around it. I didn’t like the soup but it was free so it really didn’t matter. Now I was told this was the best kebab in Kuwait so I was expecting it to be the best, but it wasn’t. The kebabs were good but not better then Baba Taher or Kebab 7ejat.

A ma3oon of kebab which is made of 3 kebabs cost only KD1. hummus cost 500fils and the Pepsi 100fils. Service also was good, fast and friendly. A nice combination.

Now for the final rating. I was having trouble deciding what to give it but in the end I decided I would give it a 3.5 out of 5. The kebab was nothing to write home about but the service, speed, friendliness and the price helped keep the score up. Also I tried a piece of chicken taouk from a friend and it tasted pretty good. I would probably visit Malak Sajj again but not before I try the fish and chips from Sha6er 3abbas which is also located in the same place.

I haven’t finished watching the movie, its currently still playing but I have already decided its getting a 5 out of 5. Do you like Jackass? Well Jackass is to Dirty Sanchez what WWF is to UFC. Dirty Sanchez is the real thing. I just watched one of the guys get a liposuction at some cheap ass unlicensed clinic in some run down neighborhood in Thailand which is bad enough by itself except the guy got the lipo suction while he was awake and no anesthesia! When he was done the doctor gave him the bottle of fat that was sucked out. Later in the night they played some Bangkok Roulette and at the end of the night one of the losers drank a glassful of the fat that was sucked out of the other guy! It can’t get any grosser then that. Thats a 5 out of 5, you have to watch this movie. [Link]

Its difficult to describe this movies genre. From the image above you can guess its leading towards horror but when you realize that the movies executive producers are Ben Affleck and Matt Damon you start to doubt it can be just a horror. Well it isn’t. Its more like a horror comedy but I don’t think thats a good description either because those things are usually funny not scary, like Shaun of the Dead. Feast is actually a real horror with A LOT of blood and gore but there is a lot of sense of humor through out the whole thing, like small touches here and there that don’t take away from the horror aspect. For example without giving a spoiler, in one scene one of the male hero’s of the movie has his pants ripped off. So, a girl tells the guy she has pants in her bag. You would think its her husbands pants or something but he comes back wearing pink tracksuit bottoms. He spends the rest of the movie battling out the monsters in a pink tracksuit bottom with a shirt and tie on top. Silly things like that. Oh and none of the people in the movie have names, they have descriptions. So you have Drunk Girl, Hero, Harely Mum, Beer Guy etc.. etc..

So whats the movie about? Its simply about a bunch of people stuck in a bar in the middle of no where who are put in a situation to fight off monsters. It’s a simple plot but really entertaining. I am not a big fan of horrors but this movie was really really fun to watch. You can check out the movie trailer on the official Feast website. I am giving this movie a 4 out of 5. [Link]

I don’t eat at home since I don’t know how to cook nor do I want to learn how to cook. I know how to make the basics which are sandwiches, omelets, burgers and cookies and I don’t see a need to learn how to make other dishes.

Since its ramadan all restaurants are closed till like 5:30PM, this means when I am done with work at 3 I have over 2 hours before I eat. The thing is I can’t go out to eat at 5:30 because my riding lessons are from like 5 to 6:30. Thats why I have to eat at home.

Yesterday while shopping at Sultan Center in Salmiya I decided to pick up 2 packs of Kobe Burger, I have been wanting to try it for a long time now but since I don’t eat at home I found no need to get it. After picking up the burgers I picked up a packet of sliced American white cheese loaves, 1 white onion, a bottle of Heinz Ketchup and some burger buns. Nat didn’t want Kobe Burgers since she doesn’t like thick burgers so I picked up a packet of regular frozen burgers for her.

I have a Kenwood grill at home and I use it mainly to grill my burgers on and this is how I do it:

– I grill the burger for 5 minutes, flip it, let it grill for another 5 minutes, flip it, let it grill for another 5 minutes and finally I flip it one last time for a final 5 minutes.

– Once I am done I put a slice of cheese on the burger, leave it on the grill for another minute then I take the burger with cheese and place it on the bottom half of my bun.

– I then place it in the microwave for 10 seconds so the cheese can melt.

– I then put some ketchup on the burger and top it off with diced white onions

– I cover my burger with the top half of the bun and my burger is ready to eat.

I am sure Gastronomica is better at making burgers then me since if you check out his website you will notice all his meals are very gourmet like. Hopefully he will be nice enough to share a tip or two in the comments below but until he does this is how I make my burgers.

How did the burgers come out? Fanfrigintastic! I like my burgers well done and I was expecting this burger to come out dry but it didn’t. It was soft, juicy and tasted like something you would find at a posh restaurant or hotel room service. It was surprisingly very good and it turned out to be the best burger I ever made.

Now the biggest problem with the Kobe Burger is the price. Each patty costs KD1.250 which isn’t cheap if you compare it to other frozen burgers. BUT without getting into the taste or quality of meat please look at the picture above of the burgers on the grill. Do you notice the 2 large patties on the left? Do you notice the tiny patty on the top right? Guess which patty is your average everyday frozen one? These kobe burgers are big and thick. Kobe beef also comes from Wagyu cattle which are “renowned for its flavor, tenderness, and fatty well-marbled texture”. So yes KD1.250 is worth it specially if you have a passion for burgers.

From now on if I ever need to make burgers at home this is the only burger I will get. I can no longer have those crappy frozen burgers that come 8 in a pack. I have been spoilt. Final score is a 4.5 out of 5. I would have given it a 5 but they are a lot messier to cook then the regular burgers because these are bigger and juicier so they spray more grease. This means more cleaning for me which always sucks.

I am a big shawerma fan and I really enjoy trying shawerma’s from new places. Shawerma is such a simple thing but its amazing how many different flavors and presentation styles there are. I rarely get disappointed when I have a shawerma because they are hard to fuck up. Somehow though the Mishref Coop Restaurant found the secret ingredient to making a crappy shawerma.

Tuesday night I had a recording in a studio in Mishref, once I was done I decided I would treat myself to a shawerma from the Mishref Coop Restaurant. The skewer looked very appetizing so I went ahead and ordered two chicken shawerma and a coke.

It sucked to summarize my experience. The chicken tasted weird, like nothing was added to it when cooked, no spices, no flavor no nothing. The chicken was also very oily and had a weird smell. The garlic was also non existent. I was very disappointed and I would never have shawerma there again.

Final score is a 1 out of 5. It gets a 1 because I ate it and didn’t die afterwards.

I got the Crest White Strips Premium earlier in the month so I could try them out and post my experience. Thing is I never took a before picture so I could compare the color of my teeth before I used the strips. I should have done it because I really can’t see a difference in the color of my teeth although Nat thinks they are whiter now. Maybe they are whiter but not as white as I expected them to be.

Since I don’t have a picture of how my teeth was before I really can’t make a fair review of the product. But if I was to use my memory I would have to say the Crest White Strips didn’t do as much as I expected them to do. Maybe my expectations too high since I was expecting my teeth to be a brilliant movie star white after just 7 days but the result turned out a lot less glamorous.

Putting on the strips was a bit of a pain and once you do get them on you need to leave them on for 30 minutes. I can imagine people with small mouths might have a hard time trying to fit their fingers and the strips into their mouth. Once you put both the upper and lower strip on you suddenly start building up saliva in your mouth. You can’t swallow because the swallowing action might move the strips off your teeth. You can’t spit out the saliva for the same reason. You can’t talk at all and after 30 minutes your lips get really really dry because you can’t moisten them. I spent most of the time lying down on the couch with my head tilted back watching 30 minute sitcoms. Once the 30 minutes are up removing the strips are really easy and you just wash out your mouth with water.

Would I recommend the strips? Yes I would because they are only KD12.5 which is a small fraction of the cost if you wanted to do it professionally at the dentist. You can either pay 100KD or something of the sort and whiten your teeth at the evil dentist or, pay KD12.5 and test your luck out with these Crest strips on the comfort of your couch while watching a rerun of Seinfeld. And hey, if it doesn’t get as white as you were expecting them to get you can always buy another pack and go through the whole process again. Final score is a 4 out of 5, anything beats going to the dentist.

I am a big chocolate spread fan and the most common brands I get are Nutella, Crumpy and Hazella but mostly I just get the large Nutella jar. I tried the Galaxy chocolate spread but I just found it tooo sweet. So the other week I was at Sultan Center in Salmiya and I found a new brand of chocolate spread, the famous Neuhaus from Belgium. I was like gourmet chocolate spread? I have to try it! So, I went and purchased a jar of Neuhaus Chocolate Spread with Nuts and went back home to try it.

Was it any good? No question about it, the Neuhaus chocolate spread was the most flavored chocolate spread I have ever tried. Its thick and smells nutty plus the presentation of it is very minimal and elegant. Its really delicious. I never doubted the fact that it would taste really good, the only question is… is it worth it?

The 750-grams Nutella jar costs 915fils. The 200-grams Neuhaus jar costs KD2,780. That means the Neuhaus chocolate spread costs more then 11 times the price of Nutella, but is it 11 times better?

Simply no, it isn’t.

I can’t even imagine what Nutella times 11 would taste like but I am pretty sure it must be close to orgasmic and although the Neuhaus spread is really fucking good its no where near orgasmic. So would I recommend it? Yes I would, at-least to try it once. But I wouldn’t recommend it as a replacement to Nutella, its just not feasible, what you get is something better then Nutella but not something that deserves to be eleven times as expensive. This is why for the final rating it gets a 3.5 out of 5.

Yesterday after work I decided I would pass by Bader Al Badoor for a quick bite to eat. Once I got their though I changed my mind and decided I would try the other shawerma place opposite to it. A friend of mine told me they had better shawermas so I figured I would give it a shot and see.

After trying Al-Ghader and Badar Al Badoor’s shawerma, Burgan was a disappointment. First the place seems to be the least clean out of the three. The interior was very small and even though it wasn’t that packed I still found it difficult to get to the cashier who was tucked away in a corner behind a Pepsi fridge. The employees also didn’t seem the cleanest or the most organized compared to Al-Ghader and Bader Al Badoor. There was a brief argument for example that broke out with the shawerma guy and one of the employees, the employee originally told the shawerma guy 2 shawermas but then gave him a paper saying 6 shawermas because the customer had requested more. The shawerma guy didn’t read the paper and just went and did 2 shawermas. So they were arguing for like 5 minutes on whose fault it was while the customer was outside waiting in his car for his order.

After a brief wait I picked up my shawermas and a can of coke and headed to the car to eat. Its not hard to make a good shawerma, as long as its not greasy, you use good bread and you make sure the garlic doesnt taste like mayonnaise then you have yourself a good shawerma. But, from a good shawerma to a great shawerma it takes a lot more then that and this is where Burgan fails to deliver. While Badar Al Badoor and Al-Ghader both had neutral tasting chicken in their shawerma’s, Burgan trys to be different by giving the chicken some flavor. If you actually look closely at the chicken shawerma skewer you will notice the chicken has what looks like red spice on it. This is what gives Burgan’s chicken this extra touch of flavor but with me at-least this addition of theirs backfired because I didn’t like it. Its not so bad that I wouldn’t eat it, I don’t think I have ever come across a shawerma that I wouldn’t eat but it does make me prefer Badar Al Badoor which is just across the street from them.

Burgan’s quantity of chicken is good, they are not stingy, their Pepsi was also freezing cold but the chicken just tasted strange and the garlic wasn’t strong enough to cover the taste. The shawerma costs 250fils which is standard for a place like this. The final score is a 3 out of 5.

Need directions? Follow Badar Al Badoor’s [Link]

Two years ago I read somewhere that Ewan McGregor was going to ride a bike around the world. I didn’t think much of it then and totally forgot about it until a few weeks ago Marzouq mentioned Long Way Round on his blog. Turns out Ewan McGregor took cameras with him on the trip and he turned his adventure into a documentary. So right after I read Marzouqs post I download the series from the Internet and I watched it none stop for 2 days.

Long Way Round is a documentary that is 7 episodes long and it takes you on an adventure with Ewan McGregor and his best friend Charley Boorman on a 151 day journey from London all the way to New York. They headed East from London through a couple of countries in Europe, then they headed into Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia then Russia again followed by Siberia where they then took a plane to Alaska. From Alaska they then rode down to Calgary and then down into the US until they reached New York. It was a really incredible and extremely exhausting journey. Mongolia for example has only 80 miles of tarmac so the majority of their ride was on gravel and offroad.

It was really fun to watch the documentary and by the end of it you just want to quit your job, go out and buy a bike and then travel the world on it. I was really disappointed when it finished and I really wished it was longer because it felt like I was with them on their adventure. My final rating is easily a 5 out of 5. The only other series I have given a full 5 stars to is Band of Brothers so its not a score I give out easily unless its really worth it.

You can buy Long Way Round on DVD from Amazon

On Thursday night k.thekuwaiti and Nibaq picked me up to go have dinner at Al-Ghader in Salwa. Many people were recommending I try Al-Ghader shawerma so I really was looking forward to it.

The place isn’t easy to locate but I will give it a shot. You know the street in Salwa where you have the Salwa co-op, police station and gas station? Well if all of those are on your right hand side and you are driving towards the Fahaheel Expressway, take the last right on this street just before the traffic light. Then, drive straight and take your 6th right. Then drive in a bit until you find Al-Ghader on your right hand side. Here it is on Google Maps.

The shawerma tasted very similar to Badar Al Badoor’s. It had the same taste which I liked except that Al-Ghader was much more stingier. The portion of chicken in the shawerma was half the amount of Badar Al Badoor’s. That kinda sucked since the taste of the bread was over powering the chicken. On a positive note though, Al-Ghader’s garlic tasted slightly better than Badar Al badoor’s but it wasn’t enough of a flavor difference to make the sandwich better. By default they put garlic, pickles and tomato in the shawerma but I had mine just with just garlic. The price of the shawerma is also 250fils. The place was very packed but it wasn’t all on the shawerma, they have a nice variety of food at the place and people were spread evenly across them.

Al-Ghader has good shawerma and if you are located near it then its worth the drive to have it. But, if you have a choice between Al-Ghader and Badar Al Badoor then I would recommend the later since you are basically getting the same shawerma just more of it for the same price. This is why the final score for Al-Ghader’s shawerma is 3.5 out of 5.

update: Since writing this review I’ve frequented Al-Ghader numerous of times and if I was to write the review today I would give it a 4 out of 5.

From the cast list I was expecting this movie to be great and after watching it I have to say it was. The Sentinel stars Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, Eva Longoria, Kim Basinger and David Rasche (Sledge Hammer). Its a really fucking cool cast and they all play cool roles, for example you have Jack Bauer playing an investigator in the secret service, David Rasche playing the president, Kim Basinger the presidents wife and Eva Longoria a secret service rookie. Last time I saw David Rasche play a president it was on the comedy show DAG along side one of my favorite comedians David Alan Grier (In Living Color). When I found out he was playing the president in this movie I was like how the fuck could he pull it off without making us laugh. It must be his more mature aged look now because David Rasche was just fucking amazing. Actually, everyone was, this movie brought out the best in everyone. Like Eva Longoria, no way on earth did I think she would ever be able to pull off the role of a secret service agent, but not only did she pull it off, the role actually suited her a lot. Jack Bauer was naturally incredible, he was born to play the role of a special agent. Kim Basinger was also the perfect presidents wife and Michael Douglas who I haven’t liked since his last good movie The Game, fit his part like a glove.

The movie is about an assassination attempt on the president which is always an exciting plot. The movie was fast paced and never dragged or felt slow or boring. The only thing I would change would be the ending, I felt it finished to quickly and was a bit on the weak side. The whole thing felt like an episode of 24, which is a very good thing. This is why I give this movie a 4 out 5. The reason I didn’t give it anything higher is because I don’t think this movie will be a classic in the same way Clint Eastwoods “In the Line of Fire” is. Although I prefer The Sentinel, the assassination plot isn’t as deep and important to the movie the same way as it was in In the Line of Fire. Never the less, this is a really fucking great movie to watch.

This past weekend I had chicken shawerma twice from Badar Al Badoor. Some people had told me the place had the best shawerma in Kuwait so I had to try it out and I wasn’t disappointed.

I passed by Thursday night around 8ish and the place was packed. I parked my car and went down and ordered 3 shawermas and a coke. By default they put garlic, tomato and chicken in the shawerma and I decided to try it like that. They use samoon bread (the hotdog bread) which is my favorite when it comes to shawermas. After 5 minutes of waiting I got my shawerma and went back to my car to eat. My first impression was a mixed one. The shawerma was good but something was off and I concluded it was the tomatoes, they just made the sandwich a bit too moist and ao I decided I would try it again the next night without them.

Friday night also around 8ish I went back to Badar Al Badoor. The place was even more packed then the previous night but I went ahead and ordered 2 shawermas without tomatoes. 5 minutes later I was back in my car eating my shawermas and realizing that the tomatoes definitely were the problem. The shawermas tasted much better without them and I could taste the garlic even better.

So how did they rate? Well I wouldn’t call them the best shawermas in Kuwait, so far my best experience has been with Sajj House. Badar Al Badoor shawermas are very normal which is a very good thing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them, the bread, the garlic, the chicken, it all tastes good but just lacks the tiny bit of extra oomph to make the shawerma extra special. From all the hole in the wall shawerma places I have tried Badar Al Badoor is the best so far, its just lacking a signature flavor. The shawermas cost 250 fils which is standard with shawerma places in this class so overall the final score is a 4 out of 5. Now I need to try the shawerma place in Salwa which many people were recommending.

Badar Al Badoor directions [Link]

update: Since I posted this review a few months ago I have been back to Badar Al Badoor numerous of times and I have to say the shawermas have gotten much better. If I was to review Badar Al Badoor today I would give it a 4.5 or even a 5. Its currently my favorite shawerma place.

So its been like 3 months now since I got my Motorola V3x. People ask me what I think about the phone and its hard to give them a direct answer. I personally love the phone but I don’t understand why. There are so many things that are wrong with it I don’t know why I haven’t gotten rid of it yet.

The phone is stupid. When I first got the phone and I tried sending a picture via bluetooth I couldn’t get it to work. I would select the image, click on “options” and then “send to” but it would only give me the option to send by MMS. I was like what the fuck is this crap and I just left it at that. Then one day I was telling a friend of mine who also owns a Motorola about how I can’t send pictures with bluetooth and he tells me I can. Basically what you have to do is select the image, click on “options” then click on “manage” and then click on “copy” and then choose the bluetooth device you want to send the picture to. I was like shocked, what idiot came up with this incredibly unnatural method of sending a picture by bluetooth? By default if people want to send a picture to another phone they will click on “send” not “manage” then “copy”.

The phone is riddled with strange shit like that. Sending an SMS is a pain because the T9 dictionary keeps forgetting words I teach it. The word “fuck” which I use a lot never even gets saved in the dictionary for some unknown reason. Other words, mostly names of people I know seem to be forgotten by the dictionary after a certain amount of time. Its just really weird.

The worst thing has to be that sometimes people on the other end of the line don’t hear me clearly. People have reported strange beeping sounds, crackles and white noise. It doesn’t happen when I am using the 3G network but sometimes when the 3G signal is low the phone swaps to the regular 2G and thats when the problems occur. I heard a firmware update solves this issue but I haven’t tried it.

With all this unlogical and unexplainable issues I still love the phone. Its fast, I hate it when machines can’t catch up to my needs. With the V3x in the 3 months I have owned the phone not once did I have to wait a single second for it to “think” or “act”. Everything is instant from canceling a call, to redialing, to exiting and entering menus. Never a lag, never a hiccup. The phone also has some nice features like if I don’t read a message or view a missed call, the phone vibrates and beeps once every 5 (or could be 10) minutes. The phone is also customizable, I can move menus around and assign every single button on the phone to perform an action different then what it was supposed to do. Its small little things like that which makes this phone a pleasure to use.

Overall though I wouldn’t recommend this phone to anyone, I wouldn’t recommend Motorola at all not just this phone. I love it and I am still not fully sure why, I mean it could be just because I think the phone looks cool but in general most people should hate it.

A week ago Z District reviewed the Seagate Portable HD and although I am a Seagate fan I thought the hard drive looked ugly and fragile. This is why I decided to put up a review of the drive that competes directly with the Seagate one, the Western Digital Passport.

I ordered the 120GB Western Digital Passport drive so I could use it to back my MP3s and personal work. I already have an external drive but I needed something much smaller and portable. Since I was going to use it for my most important data, the drive had to be reliable and durable. Thats why I went with the Passport drive, I have never had any problems with Western Digital hard drives and from the pictures the Passport drive looked like it could take a beating. Now that I have it sitting in front of me I can tell you that it can.

The Passport drive case is made from 2 materials, half of it is alluminum and the other half is rubber. The drive feels like its indestructable but still looks really slick and extremely cool. The other positive thing is you only need 1 USB slot to both power and run the drive unlike the Seagate which requires 2 USB slots.

I really am in love with the drive and can’t find a single flaw except for the fact that 120GB is the largest size available. I give it a 4.5 out of 5.

Buy the 40GB WD Passport drive from Amazon
Buy the 80GB WD Passport drive from Amazon
Buy the 120GB WD Passport drive from Amazon

Hard Candy was one of the movies I was looking forward to watch this year but sadly it disappointed me. Going into the movie I really didn’t know what it was about. All I knew was what I got from the trailer and that is a young girl meets an old guy over the Internet and then they meet up and things go wrong. Based on what I knew and what I was expecting, fifteen minutes into the movie and the whole thing takes a surprising 180 degree turn which was probably the coolest part in the movie. After that things just dragged for me.

One thing I have to say, the movie is visually stunning. The colors and styling in the house where most of the story takes place is really cool. The movie on the other-hand I felt was too long although the ending was very short. The movie finished and I was still trying to figure out what had happened and making sure I understood things correctly. Anyway I really can’t say much about the movie because I wouldn’t want to ruin any surprises. I am also going to advise you NOT to read the plot summary or ask questions about the movie and just watch it knowing very little. That way you will be in for a nice shock. For me the movie didn’t live up to my expectations and thats why I am giving it a 3.5 out of 5.