Search: “ace”

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.

I use Dictionary.com a lot but I think I just found a replacement, Ninja Words “A really fast dictionary… fast like a ninja.” [Link]

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.

This is a documentary that was uploaded to YouTube by NiceQ8i on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The documentary has tons and tons of footage taken after the war showing all the devastation that took place. Even if you don’t have time to view it all at least try to skim through it.

Documentary part 1
Documentary part 2
Documentary part 3
Documentary part 4
Documentary part 5

Image taken from GulfWar

Under my Beef Wellington post a reader asked where they could find a blooming onion in Kuwait. The only place I know that makes a blooming onion is Chili’s. They call it the Awesome Blossom.

note: yes it’s currently back on the menu and available

Since its my day off today I decided to go and change the tires on my Wrangler. After a bit of searching I landed at Dunlop and ended up getting my tires from there. I wasn’t planning to get Dunlops but they had a really great offer where if you buy 3 tires they give you the 4th for free. The offer is going on until mid September if anyone is interested and they are located opposite Ace Hardware.

Fans of the The Office, The IT Crowd and Office Space will like this. Buy an army of employees and have them work in their cubicles for 8 hours straight and if you are in a really bad mood force them to work overtime.

In this office, you’re the boss!

Each set costs around $13. [Link]

note: check out the job title generator

Wasn’t there a law that got released that says companies can not take the passports of their employees? I thought that there was but I could be mistaken. The place where a friend works now are demanding all employees hand in their passports or else they won’t get paid. Do they have a right to do this?

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.

So today morning I received an email telling me that PUMA and Nike were both opening stores in the next few days and two images of the interiors were attached. After corresponding with the sender some more it turns out the stores were actually opening today and that they were in fact individual stores inside the new Athlete’s Foot in The Avenues. So for lunch I decided to pass by and check it out.

The Athlete’s Foot store is located near Va Va Voom. The entrance is around two stores wide but the place is really deep. It’s not as big as GoSport which is humongous but its still around 3 to 4 times the size of Foot Locker. When you first walk in to the place its your typical Athlete’s Foot but after you climb a few steps the store gets divided into 3 smaller stores, a Nike store, a Puma store and an Adidas store (hey are separated by transparent plastic walls).

The Nike section sadly is nowhere as big as the Nike store in the Mall of the Emirates but it’s better then nothing I guess.

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.

BuzBerry, a blog run by a group of young Kuwaitis are trying to encourage people to read. To accomplish that they’ve set up a competition in which to enter you need to read and review one of the following four books:

1) A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
2) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
3) Night by Elie Wiesel
4) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Now here is where things get interesting, there will be three winners who will win one of the following prizes:

First place: Nokia 8600 Luna
Second place: Apple iPod
Third Place: Apple iPod Shuffle

If you are interested in participating in this competition you need to email them by August 8th informing them. The deadline for entering your review will be September 1st.

For more information on this competition check out the BuzBerry blog. [Link]

A user called Rakkan posted this picture on his Facebook account. He ordered KFC here in Kuwait and found what looks like a caterpillar on one of the chicken pieces. Check out the picture by clicking [Here]

Warning: After viewing the picture you will never want to eat KFC again.

Thanks Anas

I hate Nokia. I really really REALLY hate Nokia. I think I have hated Nokia ever since my first Nokia, the 2110. Back then I couldn’t understand how Nokia could have released something as large and bulky as the 2110 when Ericsson had the tiny 337. But, I just got a Nokia and guess what? I love it.

I needed a phone with Wifi and I needed a phone with a QWERTY keyboard. With my previous phone, the Sony Ericsson K800i, I could check my Gmail account using the Google Mobile app for example which was cool, but replying back to emails was a long painful experience. There also wasn’t much more I could do when it came to Internet connectivity.

With the E61i, I have a full keyboard, Wifi, a large wide screen and it works with Blackberry. Since its also based on the Symbian OS there are a ton of cool software available my favorite being Fring, a software that allows me to connect to Skype and call people internationally from my Nokia at cheap Skype rates. It basically renders my IPEVO Skype phone useless. Browsing the web is a lot more convenient with the large screen and QWERTY key pad.

On the downside the phone is pretty wide which I am still trying to get used to. The keypad is also pretty packed with both Arabic and English letters so I placed an order for an only English keypad. I think these two are the only problems I have with the phone so far. Battery life is incredible, typing on the keyboard is enjoyable, the included web browser displays pages accurately (no flash though), and the price, the price is a steal. I got the phone for only KD120 but a member in the forum mentioned I could have gotten it for as cheap as KD115. For the amount of features packed into this device (it also has a camera), the phone is extremely well priced. I love it.

Picture of the phone above is by tekgik, he also has a lot more good shots so check them out. [Link]