2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

A friend of mine just told me that P. F. Chang’s China Bistro is opening up in Kuwait soon. P.F. Chang is a popular American Chinese restaurant chain in the US and the Kuwait branch would be the first outside the US. I don’t have an idea on the location or the opening date, I just know that the employees are currently getting training so if anyone has more details please share them.

Update: 4th Ring Road already posted about this [Here]

Justine Orme from Innovative Foods in New Zealand is one of the suppliers for the Dean & Deluca store in Kuwait and he just posted a comment under one of my Dean & Deluca posts. Basically he’s been asked by Dean & Deluca to supply them with more products and he wants to know what you guys think is missing or what you would want to see more of? For example he is already looking for Salami, Venison and other cold cuts in New Zealand to supply to Dean & Deluca along with Brie and a wine substitute to use in cooking like the one served on Emirates. Is there any other gourmet item you are interested in or want but can’t find? Just leave a comment below.

Personally I would like to see Camembert cheese (not prepacked), more choices of black olives, a good premium chocolate spread and some good Turkey salami.

A forum user (q8enviro) posted about new double sided speed cameras and yesterday I noticed three on highway 40. I couldn’t take any picture because it was dark but I just noticed Some Contrast posted pictures of the new double sided camera which you can see [Here]

I think they’ve also added new cameras on highway 40 since I passed by maybe 6 on the same stretch.

Someone with a lot free time created this amazing stop motion video. [YouTube]

Aramex dropped off my Konia Auto S3 rangefinder today. It turned out to be a lot smaller then I expected, maybe around half the size of the Yashica Electro 35 GSN which I got last week. I actually bought this camera because it was going to be small since Nat will be using it and its small enough to fit into her hand bag. Now we just need to find something to shoot!

Looks like the new police Dodge Chargers are getting ready to go into service. Someone shot a video of a bunch of police Chargers parked outside the Mulla Behbahani service center in Al Rai. I first posted about the Dodge Charger back when the MOI were still deciding between which car make to go with so it’s interesting to see the progression in time from testing to the final release stage. [YouTube]

January 2008 – MOI testing new police cars
July 2008 – Dodge Charger is finalist
September 2008 – Kuwait orders 150 Dodge Chargers

Video by 8YuKoN8

Found out about this app from Gizmodo and paid $1 to buy it from the iTunes store hoping to do a cool 2:48AM thing with it. It didn’t work as expected or should I say I ran out of patience after playing with it for like 10 minutes.

The way the app works is you type out your message on the phone, choose the color of the text and then if you wave it in front of your camera the app should be able to write out the message. The fact I tried to do this shooting and waving thing alone probably didn’t help so if you want to try this out make sure you’ve got a friend with you.

Here is a link to Light Writer in the iTunes store. [Link]

A reader commented under one of my posts that one of my favorite shawerma places in Kuwait, Badar Al Badoor changed their name to Bazar Al Bazoor. According to the reader, when it came to renewing their license their sponsor wanted them to pay KD10,000 just for the name “Badar Al Badoor”. They told him no way and decided to change the name. Everything is still the same except the place is now called Bazar Al Bazoor. It sounds really funny now but in Arabic if you remove the dots over the letter “za” you get Badar Al Badoor again.

Smoke House is a place I heard about recently from a friend. They opened up just two months ago in Mahboula and I posted about them a few days ago. Everyone who visited the place had good things to say about it so I got there with high expectations only to feel let down once I saw the place.

Smoke House is a very tiny restaurant with a very lame looking exterior and a pretty uninspiring interior. There is no love at first sight here more like what the frak brought me to this place! I passed by with a friend of mine and when we arrived 2 out of the 4 tables were occupied. We sat down and were greeted by a very friendly waitress and were given the menus to look over. I quickly decided to go with a chili cheese fries for starters, a Smoke House Burger (medium well) with cheese for my main dish and a side order of mashed potatoes with gravy. My friend ordered the lamb chops with a side order of coleslaw and sweet corn and butter. For drinks I decided to order root beer since I noticed one of the other diners was drinking root beer out of an A&W root beer jug so I decided I would have one also.

My burger arrived awhile later and I was totally shocked. It had to be the best burger presentation I had ever seen and I don’t mean just in Kuwait. The plate had a very gourmet like presentation to it and the burger looked very appetizing, I quickly took my shots before I bit into the burger. The burger didn’t come with any lettuce or tomatoes just a bit of thinly sliced onions and cheese. I think I’ve mentioned this before but I don’t think lettuce or tomatoes belong in a good burger, it takes away from the flavor which in this case was great. The patty was thick (not too thick) and very juicy. The bun was soft, looked wonderful and although was surrounded by some juice when it arrived it wasn’t soggy. The only negative thing about my burger was the fact the cheese wasn’t melted properly.

I went to Smoke House expecting a good burger but I didn’t expect this. I’ve decided to give this burger a 4.5 out of 5 making it the highest rated burger in my burger challenge so far. The root beer I ordered by the way tasted like crap. Turns out they weren’t using A&W root beer just their mugs but the waitress was nice enough to swap it with a regular coke and I wasn’t charged for the root beer. Other than that issue the sweet corn and butter was great, the coleslaw was very good, my friend’s lamb chops were supposedly also delicious and the quantity was huge. For dessert I had an apple pie and I ended up really liking that too. They really need a nicer and much larger place but according to the waitress if they do good for 6 months then they will be opening up a bigger place which makes good sense. The prices are also very affordable if anything maybe a bit under priced and I liked the way they dealt with my complaint, very professional. I’m actually going back there tomorrow with another friend and I am going to try and convince myself to have something other than the burger, maybe their Philly cheese steak. Good stuff.

Smokehouse is located in Mahboula
The cost of the Smokehouse Cheeseburger is KD1.950

Update: It seems they’ve changed their burger! Not sure why anyone would do this but their new burger doesn’t taste the same as the one in the review.

I finally got to pass by the new Sultan Center branch in Hawalli. First I have to say the location is crap since its located in traffic hell Hawalli, also if there is anything going on at the stadium next door don’t even think about passing by this branch since the stadium and Sultan Center share the same parking lot.

On the other hand the supermarket itself has really wide aisles and everything is nicely spread out. They seem to have more varied products compared to the main Salmiya branch but thats probably because they can fit more stuff. I think I’m going to do all my shopping at this branch from now on. Here is a link with a map and more info. [Link]

A reader emailed me a link to a Kuwaiti online sex shop. I spent a bit of time on the site trying to find something PG rated I could attach to this post but had problems finding something. They have vibrators, S&M stuff, costumes, creams and a ton of other random stuff. I am guessing this stuff is illegal in Kuwait and that someone is going to get into a bit of trouble now… [Link]

Thanks yaki-CHAN!

I really hate how trees are not given enough importance in Kuwait. Everywhere else in the world the planting and growing of trees is encouraged but here in Kuwait we cut them down, dig them out or landscape the hell out of them until they look “cute”. Yesterday a friend of mine living in Salwa told me about how the authorities came into Salwa and started destroying trees planted on government property. I thought that was very sad until I saw some pictures a forum user posted and now I’m furious!

I’ve seen the same thing happen near my place in Salmiya. There was a parking lot that had planted trees on the pavement around the lot and the authorities came and cut the trees and left. The square sand boxes where the trees used to be are still there just without the trees. Whats so bad about planting trees on government property? Why can’t the trees be left alone?

Thanks Ramez for the pictures!

Verity Cridland who I posted about before here has been uploading some more old photos of Kuwait from the early 60’s. One of the pictures that grabbed my attention was the one above of a car flipped over which I found interesting since it could very well be the oldest picture of a car accident in Kuwait. Here is a link to the picture [Link]

Thanks Verity!

My brother dropped his MacBook on the floor and broke the screen.

So i was working on a project in the computer lab and listening to music from my macbook with my headphones, i got up to get something, and the headphone cable was wrapped around my leg, and the macbook fell to the ground, hitting the top part of the screen and the bottom part of the keyboard against the ground, it didn’t fall that far, and i kind of cushioned it by putting a leg out, it was too far to reach to catch. But it was enough to fuck up the screen. So now I’m screenless.

Surprisingly a new screen costs only $80 on eBay!

I am going to divide this post into two, in the first half I will talk about Cinemagic’s weekly movie screenings and in the second about Oldboy.

Last time I posted about Cinemagic was a year ago and a lot of you might not know about them. They are a local organization that focuses on helping and establishing local film makers in the region. They have courses, trainings, connections, everything that’s film related. One of the things they also try and do is increase the public’s interest in the beauty and art of the moving image and one of the ways they go about doing this is holding movie screenings every week. They hold these screenings in the old Salmiya, on the roof on top of Alghanim Electronics and LG. Anyone can go and watch a screening for free and they even provide snacks and refreshments.

Now the best part about all of this is the type of movies they play. They don’t play any of the mainstream stuff which Cinescape plays, instead they share a lot of small indie and foreign movies. This week they will be screening one of my favorite foreign movies called Oldboy which I reviewed here back in 2005. It’s a Korean movie about a guy who got locked up in a studio apartment for 15 years by some unknown assailants. Then one day, he gets released and decides to seek revenge and find out who locked him up and why. Its a violent movie which never gets boring and has a really messed up ending.

So if you’re interested, they’re screening this movie on Thursday March 19 at 7PM. I find out about their movies via a weekly newsletter and I have no idea how you could sign up to it but they do have a website which I believe is updated weekly and you can visit it by clicking [Here]

Update: Here is a link to their facebook group. [Link]