Category: Reviews

Its been a while since I last posted a review of a microwave meal and since Nats in Lebanon I figured this would be a good time to start again. Tonight for dinner I had the Chicken Fingers meal by Banquet and I really liked it.

I was at Sultan Center checking out the frozen foods section when I spotted this meal. What grabbed my attention was the fact it came with a fudge brownie! I thought that was fucking cool since I never tried a microwave meal that came with cake before. I grabbed two packs plus two packs of the Fried Chicken Meal and headed towards the cashier.

Cooking the Chicken Fingers was very easy, pop it into the microwave for two and a half minutes and its done. While cooking my kitchen started smelling of brownies.. which is a good thing of course since I love the smell of freshly baked brownies. When it was done cooking I took it out of the microwave and grabbed a coke and headed to the living room.

It fucking rocked. Keep in mind I am comparing it to other microwave meals and not some fancy gourmet dinner. The chicken fingers tasted pretty good and the fries wasn’t bad either but the biggest surprise was the brownie, it was eatable! I was having doubts about trying it once I was done cooking it because it just looked.. weird. But, I took the first bite and then had another after another. Its not the best brownie in the world but it tasted pretty good for something that came with a microwave meal.

Now the biggest problem I have with this meal is the portion, its tiny. Three chicken fingers and a spoonful of fries isn’t very filling. But I guess thats why its cheap, the meal costs only 850 fils which is a bargain compared to some other microwave meals. So, for the final score I will have to give it a 3.5 out of 5. If the portion was just a bit bigger it could have easily gotten four stars. Be sure to check out my other reviews in the review section.

Shopaholic Q8eya just posted a review of the Al-Corniche Club Spa. Seems she had a terrible experience starting with an obnoxious receptionist all the way to a smelly therapist. A very fun read. [Link]

update: she got a call-back from upper management [Link]

It’s hard to write this review because whatever positive thing I will say people will assume its because I got it for free or I am just kissing ass to get more free stuff. This is not true and I will tell you why…

Usually someone emails me or calls me asking for my office address so they can send me stuff. It could be anything from Donuts like today or vouchers for dinner like last week. The first thing I tell these people is that if I end up not liking your product then I won’t post about it. If your product turns out crap I will just not mention it at all on the site. On the other hand if its good I will post about it and try to encourage people to try it. The reason I don’t post negative reviews of items I get for free is simply to keep getting more stuff for free. I wouldn’t want to scare away people and I want to continue trying new stuff so that I could share it with my readers.

Now the reason I said all the above is to prepare you for what I am about to say now. I am a big fan of Dunkin Donuts and my favorite two donuts there are the glazed and the cholcolate. Today I had the “Choco Mallow Frost” from Go Nuts Donuts which is pictured above and its basically a chocolate donut with marshmallow and nuts on top. I have to say this donut was better then the chocolate donut at Dunkin. Its that fucking good. I never tried Krispy Kreme so I can’t compare to that but I have tried Planet Donuts, Donut King and La Baguette’s donuts and I can easily say they suck compared to Go Nuts.

Usually I have one donut and feel like I overdosed on sugar but today I had two of those Choco Mallow Frost and I didn’t feel sick at all. At first I thought maybe its me, maybe I have a bizzaro donut taste issue, but every time someone took a bite out of their donuts in the office all you would hear is hmmmm. So its not just me, the donuts are actually really good.

I was really not expecting these donuts to be good or for me to even end up posting about them. But, the donuts are good and the only thing lacking I think is a location in Salmiya near Starbucks and Johnny Rockets. The thing is people don’t just go to Dunkin Donuts for the food, they go there to chill out and waste time. Currently Go Nuts is located in Hawalli in the new Al-Bahr Center that just opened. Take it I haven’t been to that mall yet but I have been to Hawalli and I don’t want to go there unless its an emergency. Now the good thing is they deliver.. wherever you are. If you want to have a dozen donuts for breakfast and you work in Kuwait City, just call them up and they will deliver it to you. As a final score I am going to give them a 4 out of 5. Give them a call and try them out. Their telephone number is 2670671 or 72.

When I first found out about the movie the first thing I read was that it was the same style as the movie Crash (not David Cronenbergs CRASH). The movie talks about guns in America and their effects on people and since Crash was a good movie I was looking forward to watching American Gun.

I watched the movie last night and the best thing about the movie is Donald Sutherland. If you use a bit of your imagination and squint your eyes a bit you could pretend Donald Sutherland was Jack Bauer pretending to be an old guy trying to infiltrate a terrorist group. Thats the only thing that kept me going till the end of the movie. It started off slow but I was cool with that, nothing happened in the middle, I was cool with that too, but then the movie finished and nothing had happened. I was expecting for all the different stories in the movie to interweave for a big final but they didn’t. From the couple of stories that were taking place only one of them had something happen. It was extremely disappointing since they build you up for nothing.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone watch this movie, and I am scoring it a 2 out of 5. I would have given it a 1 but because Donald Sutherland had a role in bringing Jack Bauer to life he gets an extra star.

It really works. Any questions?

Order it now from Amazon.

Back in February of last year I published a post titled “Mac & Small” and in it I talked about how small their branch at Galleria 2000 was and how over priced their items were. Well yesterday I passed by Mac & More’s new branch in Marina Mall and I have to say they are no longer small. The place looks really cool and huge.. and thats the only positive thing I can say. It seems when they moved from Mac & Small to Marina Mall they didn’t get any new merchandise. The place is empty and I mean empty. When you first walk in there is one MacBook Pro on display and one MacMini connected to a generic brand of LCD screen.. imagine not even an Apple Display! Once you walk into the rest of the shop you will realize that was it, no more Apple products.. the rest of the store is just a large shelf full of iPods and a wall full of generic iPod skins which you can find at any other Mac store in Kuwait including Mac City which is located in Virgin at the other end of Marina Mall. Even the tiny zMacShop have brands like Marware and Foof how come Mac & More don’t have anything cool?

Price wise… Mac & More is the most expensive Apple dealer in Kuwait.

The store is visually very impressive which misleads you to believe you will find many great things there, but once you go in and look around and can’t find anything, you wonder what the hell are these guys selling… iPod covers?

update: If I was to review the store again now I would have to say they have improved things a lot. Firstly they have a lot more products and a lot more brands, their prices have also decreased, maybe not as cheap as US prices but they are closer to UAE prices. I would probably give them a 3.5 out of 5 now.

I was supposed to watch Lucky Number Slevin but the downloaded copy I had turned out to be corrupted so I decided to watch Stay. I had downloaded it a while back but wasn’t very keen in watching it but since I didn’t have anything else I went ahead and did.

The movie stars Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, where Ewan plays the role of a psychiatrist who is trying to stop one of his patients from committing suicide. Things start to go weird and confusing and he tries to get a grip on what is real and what isn’t.

The movie wasn’t only weird and confusing to Ewan but also to me. I don’t mind “strange” movies and I don’t mind being puzzled trying to figure out whats going on, but the problem with Stay is that in the end when everything finally comes together and all the questions answered, you realize that the past 90 minutes were really not worth the ending. I am not going to ruin the the movie and tell you what happens in the end but I can tell you that it didn’t leave me shocked but more like “huh this is it? How lame.”

The movie felt slow at some points but the acting was great and visually the movie looked cool. In general I like Ewan McGregor as long as he isn’t singing and Naomi Watts when she isn’t running around the jungle looking for King Kong. It could be the movie wasn’t weird enough to make the ending good or maybe its the other way around, but whatever the case, I didn’t have high expectations of the movie to begin with and so wasn’t left too disappointed.

Yesterday evening two large bags filled with food were delivered to my home. A new place opened up called LoFat and they wanted me and Nat to try out their food and maybe post about it on the blog so they could get some publicity. I don’t think I have ever refused free food and I wasn’t going to begin now so I agreed and a few hours later their delivery guy delivered 2 large brown bags filled with goodies.

They sent us a lot of food which was really cool, they sent us beef wraps, veggie wraps, turkey wraps, a grilled chicken sandwich with cheese, unfried fries, 2 Tiramisu’s, 2 brownies, 2 chocolate chip cookies and 2 oatmeal cookies.

The first thing I did when I set the food on the table was to take a look at the prices in the menu. I was expecting to see some ridiculously high prices for food items of very small quantity but surprisingly everything cost under KD1.750. Nat came into the room and the first thing she noticed was how good everything smelled. Even though the delivery guy had lost his way to my apartment the food still arrived warm and fresh.

The biggest delima now was where to start from, so many choices to choose from but in the end I decided to start off with the unfried fries. 30 minutes later and more then half way through Desperate Housewives (Season 2 Episode 22) we had finished eating. I think we overate, you know you hear low fat food and you just can’t stop eating. I loved their fries, I don’t know how they are made, I think they are steamed and then grilled or something, they tasted really good and the best part about them is they are not fried. The grilled chicken sandwich was also really good and Hard Rock Cafe should take their recipe since they can’t seem to make a simple thing like a grilled sandwich taste good. I really didn’t like the veggie wrap since I am not into this weird stuff, I don’t even know what it was, I think it tasted a bit like falafel or something. I also didn’t like the low carb turkey wrap since it was wrapped in lettuce, a concept I don’t believe in. I think lettuce wraps should be banned. The beef wrap was ok, Nat liked them more then me but the deserts were the best. I didn’t try the Tiramisu since I don’t like coffee but the brownies.. wow… thats some really good stuff. I really loved their brownies and I can’t believe they are low fat. Their cookies were also good but the oatmeal cookie costs 500fils which I find too expensive.

I really wasn’t expecting the food to turn out good because when I think healthy and low fat I think of stuff like the veggie wrap and lettuce wrapped sandwiches which I don’t find appetizing at all. But the grilled chicken sandwich with the hot melted cheese is definitely the thing I would order the next time. The brownies I think are the best I have had and knowing that they were low fat doesn’t make me feel guilty for having them. The cookies… well you know where my heart is on that one. I think Nat enjoyed the food more since she ate more then me (a first). I always get pissed at her since she doesn’t eat much and now I know her secret, just add the word low fat to her meal and watch it all disappear.

I will scan their menu later on and upload it to the blog but for now I just have their delivery number which is 7666733. I will try to have the menu up tonight. (check below)

For the final score I will have to give them 3.5 out of 5. The grilled chicken sandwich and the Brownies were really good and the unfried fries should be available in more places. I really didn’t like neither the veggie wrap nor the lettuce wrapped turkey wrap, but I won’t include them in the review since I hate them in general and not only in this restaurant. If anyone decides to order from them make sure to order the fries and the brownies. Finally their prices are also very decent.. except for the 500fils oatmeal cookie, I still don’t get that.

The menu is available [Here]. Their delivery number is 7666733

update: I droped the score down to 3.5 because as some people brought it to my attention, they don’t mention any kind of nutritional information nor the amount of calories in the food. Something that is important for their target customers.

When I saw the new ads for Hardees advertising the Chili Lava I fell in love. I haven’t had Hardees since I started my no fast food diet late last year, but I love Chili and I really love the Chili Hot Dog at Hardees so to have a Chili Burger was like wow! Sadly though the Chili Lava was a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong here, there was nothing wrong with the burger, just don’t expect to get what you see in the picture. The burger looked pretty boring but I liked how they presented it to me.. in a plastic basket covered with a sheet of paper with my curly fries and burger on top. It looked like something you would get at Fuddruckers or TGIF. Taste wise I was expecting it to be wilder but it was pretty normal. I would most probably have the burger again its just that I think their ads over hyped it so I was expecting more flavor. My biggest issue with the burger is the price, the single lave combo costs KD1.550 while the double lava combo costs KD1.750. When did the combos get so expensive? Even the regular Mushroom & Swiss or Roast Beef N’ Chedder combos cost like KD1.400 and I remember the Roast Beef used to always be cheaper then the burgers. Because of the expensive price and the lack of shock and awe I give the Chili Lava a 3.5 out of 5. [Chili Lava Poster]

Two days ago I watched the movie Waiting… which stars a few of my favorite actors including Ryan Reynolds (Two Guys and a Girl), Anna Faris (Scary Movie) and Luis Guzmán (Pachanga in Carlito’s Way). The movie talks about a group of friends working at a restaurant who are all bored and want something better in their lives, may it be a girl, a promotion or a better career. Its one of those movies thats very entertaining to watch but just doesn’t really have a beginning or an end. It reminded me a lot of the movie Empire Records except those guys were working at a music store and these guys at a restaurant.

This movie in a way is also educational, you learn for example never to piss off your waiter. Seriously, once you see this movie you might never eat at a restaurant again so be warned. Its a funny movie with a lot of silly moments but with a pace that is calm and peaceful like The Station Agent. It was fun to watch and thats why I am giving it a 4 out of 5.

My favorite sushi place in Kuwait is Kei but honestly I hadn’t tried sushi anywhere else here until yesterday night. Once you get used to a sushi place its difficult to eat sushi somewhere else because the dishes differ and your favorites in one place might be a completely different experience in another. Thats mainly the reason I have been hesitant to try any other place. Another advantage of eating at the same sushi place all the time is the fact that you make friends with the people who work there and if you are like me and only sit at the bar then you get to make friends with the most important person at the sushi place.. the sushi chef or “my bartender” as I like to call him. Our bartender is always creating new and exciting dishes for us to try including my favorites so far a sushi pizza and most recently maki desert which involves banana, mango, crab and some other ingredients wrapped in rice and seaweed. Yesterday night though I was invited to Maki and I wasn’t expecting it to be any good since Nat had been there before and given it a rating of 1.5 out of 5. My own experience last night was on the other hand a very good one.

Maki is a very trendy looking place that feels like a pub minus the beer taps and whisky bottles. From the minute you walk in you forget you are in Kuwait, which is a good thing when you want to get away from things. The interior is very cozy and the tables are closely packed together, not as close as Al-Boom but still very close. We sat next to the door, which is probably the best location since you could see the people coming in. Our host was a regular at Maki and he ordered a very large assortment of appetizers for us. My favorites were the Negimayaki, which consists of sliced beef rolled with spring onions surrounded by teriyaki sauce. I think it looked very appetizing and interesting, kinda like tiny potted plants.. My other favorite was the deep friend chicken with plum sauce. For main course our host also ordered a wide range of dishes including a maki dish that was named after him called the Issa. My favorite dishes from the main course were the Fusion, the Fusion 2, Issa and Ghandour. They were all REALLY incredible dishes. The Fusion’s were sushi wraps, but the wrapping paper is their own creation and tasted really good. The Issa and Ghandour were maki dishes and they were really superb, maybe the best maki dishes I have ever had.

The service was good and very friendly. The owner of Maki is Lebanese and the manager and main waiters are also all Lebanese which is similar to how Casper&Gambini and Waterlemon are. The problem I had with the place is that near the end of our evening they started playing Arabic music really loud which I didn’t find cool at all. If it was a pub I would have finished my drink and walked out and down to the next pub, but in reality its a Sushi place and there is no pub anywhere near.

The pricing is decent and compared to Kei, Maki is more expensive but just by a tiny bit. You can check out their prices yourself and compare it to your favorite place by downloading the menu from their website. I also noticed that Maki isn’t what I would call an authentic Japanese experience. They do have your regular maki’s and sushi’s but the regular dish I tried which was the Crazy Maki tasted normal and bland. Its their special dishes with their secret sauces and ingredients that are exceptional but they are what I call modern sushi.

Maki is located in Salmiya behind Diva’s. Its easy to find and if you want to pass by make sure you reserve since I went there on a Sunday night and the place was fully packed. At the end of the month they are opening a new location in Marina World in that thing I don’t know what you call it.. you know when you stand outside at Marina Crescent and you look right you see that large structure with colorful lights? Its the thing located between Marina Crescent and Hard Rock Cafe. Anyway they were opening there which should be cool.

I really enjoyed Maki and I would definitely start going there but I also won’t be ditching Kei anytime soon. Both places offer completely different experiences and dishes and I would rather have both then to choose either one of them. I am going to give Maki a 4.5 out of 5. It lost points on the Arabic music. You can check out more pictures and details on Maki by visiting their website olivermaki.com. Next week I will try Edo since they tell me its really good and will post a review once I do.

Late last month I placed an order for the IPEVO free.1 Skpe Phone and I just received it yesterday. I have to say its just the coolest accessory for my Mac, even cooler then my CueCat!

I ordered the white version while my sister ordered the black one and they are honestly both great looking. I prefer the white since all my furniture in my computer room is white plus white is more Apple like. The phone works really great with the Mac, all you need to do is install this application which runs in the background and whenever you want to use Skype you just pick up the phone and click on the Skype button which will then launch the Skype application. You can then use the up and down controller on the phone to move up and down in your Skypes contact list, once you highlight a contact you just click the call button and you are suddenly calling your contact all without even touching your computer. Say you want to dial a number that isn’t on the contact list then you just input the numbers on the phone and press the call button. Very very easy to use just like a regular phone. The build quality of the phone is just superb and combined with its looks its hard to believe it costs only $30.

I couldn’t wait to try the phone so I quickly called my brother up in Lebanon and spoke to him a bit, even when we ran out of things to talk about I tried to stay on the phone as long as I could since it felt great using it. After I was done with my brother I tried to find someone else to call just so I could use the phone again. I really love it.

In conclusion, I would definitely recommend this phone. It looks great, the sound quality is great and the phone feels much more expensive then it actually costs. Its integration with the Mac and PC makes it really easy to work and use which makes it very user friendly. The only downside I could think of is that the USB cable is too long, 2.5 meters to be exact which I guess could be a good thing for some people but not if you are planning on using it with your laptop. Another downside is expect your Skype bill to go up because you really just want to call more because of it. I hated the headphone+mic combination, it just didn’t feel natural but since this looks like and feels like a phone I am more comfortable using it. The final score is a 4.5 out of 5.

Buy the white IPEVO phone from Amazon
Buy the black IPEVO phone from Amazon
Visit the IPEVO website

I had heard a lot about Johnny Cash but I only really heard his music for the first time back in January. The first song I had heard by him was Hurt which was a remake of a Nine Inch Nails song and it just gave me goosebumps. When I heard about Walk the Line which was based on his life story I had to watch it, even though I had only been listening to his music for just over a month now there was something about him.. his voice.. it just wanted me to find out more about him. In the video for Hurt it looked like Johnny Cash had been through a lot in his life and if this movie was all about him then I was eager to watch it.

Well there is good news and bad news. The good news is this movie was really beautiful. Joaquin Phoenix was just incredible, I have never seen him act this well before, he really shines in this movie and the same goes for Reese Witherspoon, whoever cast her to play Johnny’s wife is very gifted because after watching this movie and seeing pictures of Cash’s wife I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing her in the movie.

Now the bad news, I was expecting this movie to focus on Johnny Cash’s career from the beginning till the end but sadly it only focuses on his early days up till the late 60’s. I wanted to know more about Cash, I wanted so much more and this movie just left me hanging. Its still a great movie but it just kept me wanting more. I don’t know if I would recommend this movie to someone who isn’t into Cash, Nat for example found the movie just “OK” but I think she liked it a bit more after I made her watch the video for Hurt.

If you don’t know who Johnny Cash is then this movie won’t mean much to you. Me, personally, I give it a 4 out of 5.

Introduction
In January I posted about my home theater setup and I mentioned I wanted to upgrade my aging old Kenwood receiver with something newer and better. Well a few days ago I passed by the Denon dealer in Salmiya to check out some AV Receivers and I ended up buying one. I did a lot of research online before I decided to upgrade my receiver and I came to the conclusion that for my budget and my needs, the Denon AVR-2106 fit the bill perfectly. I had previously seen the receiver when I tagged along with K.TheKuwaiti when he was getting a Denon for his living room and I remember the price was around KD175 since they were having discounts. So I passed by the Salmiya dealer and I looked around and I couldn’t find the Denon AVR-2106. I asked the salesman about it and he told me they were out of stock but he would check to see on the computer if any of the other branches had any left. Two minutes later he tells me he found one more piece left, but its the display model in the Hawalli branch. I am not good at price haggling at all, in-fact there is only one person I have ever met that was worse then me and thats TivoGuy, but I went ahead and asked the guy how much discount extra would he give me since it was the display model. He checked on his computer and told me the lowest he could give me the amp was for KD161. I was like stunned, I wasn’t planning on getting the receiver, I was just checking on the price, but now with this special price it was just soo fucking tempting to resist. So I tell the guy OK and he was like give me a minute to call the Hawalli branch and make sure they still have it. Five minutes later he comes back to me and tells me that the receiver they have in stock is actually not displayed and is still brand new in the box. I was like thats great but I still just want to pay KD161. The salesman laughed and said that wouldn’t be a problem since I was a good customer. I couldn’t believe what a good deal I was getting, I quickly paid the money and went and picked up the receiver from the Hawalli branch.

Thursday afternoon I drove all the way to Ahmadi so that I could take Geo our pet dog to the International Veterinary Hospital. I read from peoples comments on my site that IVH was the best veterinary hospital in Kuwait and I now believe that to be true.

I used to take our previous family dog to the vet in Shuwaikh near the Friday Market. That place was really dirty and I never felt comfortable there neither did my dog. But then again my dog never felt comfortable leaving the house and he “hated” strangers. Still, when my dog got sick that hospital really didn’t do anything and we finally had to put our dog to sleep. Since I didn’t want the same thing to happen to Geo I decided to take him to the best vet in Kuwait and all signs pointed to IVH.

Driving out to Ahmadi from my home in Salmiya took 30 minutes. The map on their website was very easy to follow and we never got lost. When we arrived to the hospital it was like arriving to a ranch in Arizona or somewhere in the Australian outback, it didn’t look anything like your usual Kuwait. To get to the hospital you have to drive off the main road down a paved path surrounded by desert bushes on the side and very little if any buildings around. You then come in through a large gate where you find two signs, one pointing to the emergency entrance and the other towards the visitors parking. We parked in the very clean and very spaced out parking lot and walked towards the main hospital building. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous the place was, there was green grass everywhere, large palm trees, no trash and everything looked really good, better then our hospitals!

We walked into the hospital and told the employees that we had an appointment and then we took a seat while we waited for our turn. The waiting room was very cozy, the benches had cushions on them and their were tons of magazines to read. Their were 4 other dogs in the waiting room with us, 3 labrador puppies and one Japanese breed. Geo spent most of his time playing with the Japanese dog which was very cute. When Geo finally got bored we took him back outside to play on the grass where he met another dog and started to play with him. Finally around 15 minutes later it was our turn to go in.

The vet was a very nice friendly guy and Geo ended up liking him a lot. When the vet asked us what we were feeding the dog, we told him raw meat… to our surprise the vet didn’t try to convince us it was not good for him like most vets would do. Instead, he turned out to know about the raw meat diet and how its the best diet for Geo. He started asking us if Geo was getting all his vitamins and proteins and what else we were feeding him. We told him we were also giving Geo raw eggs twice a week, One large yogurt spoon twice a week and brown toast with honey once a week. We also told him Geo wasn’t getting any Vitamin A or B since he wasn’t eating any of his vegetables, so he gave us some vitamins to give to Geo once a day until he started eating his vegetables. The vet then started asking us questions about how we were treating him and how the toilet training was going and he started giving us advice and tips which we already new about. And thats what I liked about the vet, he was telling me stuff I already knew, but the thing is I had to research my ass off to find out and learn all this stuff from various websites, breeders and people with different opinions. Its not stuff you learn at vet school but stuff you learn with experience after years of raising dogs yourself and this vet knew all the best methods and techniques and that gave me a lot of confidence in him. My previous dogs vet never asked me any thing and never gave me any kind of tips. This vet on the other hand was giving me a lot of tips and telling me all the right stuff. He’s amazing, he knows what he is talking about and I could have a decent conversation with him about my dog. We told the vet we wanted to start Geo on worming and he agreed and gave him the medicine. Finally we were done and we walked out thanking the vet. Our bill? KD12.500 and that included KD7 for the visit, KD1 for the worming medicine and KD4.5 for the vitamins. Not bad at all. I scanned the full price list and I have it linked at the end of this post for those of you that are interested.

Once we left the vets office we decided to walk around outside and discover the hospital more. We past by their pet shop which was pretty cool and had a ton of stuff. We also past by the agility course which looked like something Geo would really enjoy once he grows up. Finally we let Geo run around a bit on the grass before we decided to head back home.

I was really impressed with the hospital and I feel a lot more better knowing something like that exists in Kuwait. The only downside to the place is the location but I couldn’t find anything else and thats why I am going to give this hospital a 4.5 out of 5.

Click here to view pictures of the hospital
Click here to view the prices at the hospital
Click here for the IVH website