2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003We found 8,131 results for your search.
There is a Turkish restaurant in Avenues called Seyami Usta that now accepts cryptocurrency as a means of payment. They’re the first local business I’m aware of that accepts cryptocurrency and it’s odd that it’s a restaurant and a Turkish one at that. Payment is done through Binance Pay and is only available at their Avenues location.
If you’ve been there and paid with crypto, let us know how your experience went.
Thanks abalawadhi
@thedodo, the super popular animal stories and animal rights instagram account just posted a video of puppies in Kuwait that were rescued by @raf.kw. It’s a feel good video and in just 4 hours already gotten 800,000 views. Watch the video above and make sure you visit and support @raf.kw
Thanks Basmah
Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait was the first Sheraton to open outside of North America. It opened up in 1966 and I’ve always had a connection to it due to the fact my family used to have lunch there every Friday when I was a kid in the 80s. Sadly like all nostalgic places in Kuwait, they eventually get demolished or they get an ugly facelift. In Sheraton’s case, it’s the latter. I think the facelifted building has lost its charm and history and now looks too generic.
But the bigger story here is that the Sheraton Hotel will become the St. Regis Hotel. The rumor is that the main building pictured above will become St Regis while the hotel extension (back right of the building) which was built in 1979 will become Sheraton Hotel and have it’s own separate entrance. Sheraton Four Points behind that will remain as is. Here are some more tidbits taken from the Skyscraper City Forum:
The hotel renovation project was supposed to have the main wing done by the end of 2020, the 1971 extension done in 2021 and the 1979 wing renovated over the course of 2021 and handed over by 2022. Due to COVID, they are now two years behind schedule.
The renovation on the main building may look done, but they fast-tracked the exterior completion so that they could give the hotel a clean appearance instead of having torn green tarps hanging off the façade.
The interior of the main building is still very much under construction; due to COVID and Kuwait’s closed borders, the interior designers and foreign contractors are unable to come to the site and oversee the works, so whatever little the hotel can do locally, they’re doing it at a slow pace.
With the closed borders and no events taking place, the hotel’s occupancy is EXTREMELY low – I’m talking four or five rooms occupied, max.
Sheraton Hotel in the 1960s
Thanks ChaoticTranquility
Update: Here is a bit of random info. The first customer at the Kuwait Sheraton Hotel was Edmond Ghantous – June 26, 1966.
If you have Netflix and are feeling nostalgic, the popular and hilarious Kuwaiti play Bye Bye London is available on the platform to watch. Link
It looks like it’s been there for a year now but didn’t really notice until someone pointed it out. The quality of the video is the best I’ve come across yet and it even has English subtitles.
Searching for “Kuwait” on Netflix brings up some other local shows and movies but the only other one I recognized is Back to the Future inspired movie, Back to Q82.
Thanks Nidal
For people looking to get into making espresso coffee at home, the Gaggia Classic Pro machine is considered to be one of the best starter machines you can buy. It’s an affordable single boiler machine that allows you to pull an espresso shot and steam milk for your latte. Previously if you wanted a Gaggia the only option was to order it from abroad but now the brand is available locally at Xcite.
The Classic Pro machine is priced at 179KD in-store at Xcite but listed for 199KD on their website for some reason. On the Gaggia UK website, it sells for 177KD so 179KD is actually a great price for it.
So if you’re looking for a great affordable semi-automatic espresso machine you can now pick up a Gaggia in Kuwait.
Ceado grinders are pretty popular with coffee geeks especially their single-dose grinders. I didn’t know they were available locally and I have a friend actually who ordered one online and paid a ton for shipping so figured I’d put this info out there in case anyone googles “Ceado Kuwait”.
Turns out Mabrook are the dealers for Ceado in Kuwait as well as Slayer coffee machines. They had a number of Ceado grinders on display, one of them, the “E6P Filter Burrs” model had a price of KD367 on it. Online the same model sells for KD330 so the local price isn’t that far off especially if they give discounts (which they generally do).
Mabrook doesn’t have any Ceado grinders listed on their website but they do mention them a few times on their Instagram account. If you’re looking for Ceado grinders check out their showroom here.
A few years ago I sold my Nikon D800 and Sony RX1 and replaced them with the incredible Sony A7 III. I never regretted selling the Nikon but I did regret selling the RX1. There are only 3 cameras I’ve owned that I’ve felt very passionate about, The Panasonic GF1 and GX1, and the Sony RX1. They were compact cameras I carried with me everywhere and used extensively for the blog. I was hoping the A7 would replace the RX1 but due to its size that never happened.
Then a few weeks back I passed by the new Fujifilm store in Boulevard and it got me thinking about the new X100V. I’ve always loved the way the X100 series looked but I’ve only ever used the original one that was released back in 2011 and I didn’t like it. Since my original review, Fujifilm released the X100S followed by the X100T, X100F, and now the X100V. According to all the reviews I read online, the X100V was considerably better in every way over all the previous versions. On Amazon they sell for around KD422 without tax or shipping. In Kuwait they have a summer offer right now and are priced KD399 after discount, so I ended up picking one up. They were originally out of stock but they had a shipment coming in so I waited around a week before getting the call to pick it up. I also ended up getting a slightly better discount on the camera due to a blog reader so ended up saving quite a bit more over the Amazon price.
I’ll eventually post a detailed review on the camera but I wanted to post about it now since the offer might end soon if it hasn’t already. The camera so far has been fantastic, and I’m really loving it. It was between the X100V and the X-E4 but ended up with the X100V because of some extra features that I prefered like the larger viewfinder and slimmer body. If you were thinking about ordering the X100V online, check it out locally first. The local Fujifilm website shows it’s out of stock and priced at KD435, but it might not be updated so I’d check their store in Boulevard.
A local coffee shop called Blend launched a new campaign for a black-colored soft serve by using a visual of a guy in blackface. The guy in the photo is the local photographer @bonmr who is known for superimposing himself onto photos. Both Blend and Bonmr turned off comments on the photos after people started protesting their use of blackface.
As of this morning, Blend have completely removed the photo from their account while Bonmr still has the photo up with the comments disabled.
You’d think after the huge backlash last year after the popular Kuwaiti makeup up artist Ghadeer Sultan posted a photo of herself in blackface that people finally understood the negative connotation behind it. I guess not.
A reader shared some photos of an old Sinclair game he still had which he purchased from a computer store in Kuwait back in the early 80s. The store was called AL RUSHAID and the tape had the following info on it:
AL RUSHAID Trading & Contracting Co. (RTC)
P.O. Box 25443, Safat-Kuwait
Tel: 412404, Telex: 23721 KT
He also had this info to share (I’ve edited it slightly):
While I do remember the computer store at the Salhia complex and it was my favourite shop for a while (and my description on your website remains the way I remember it), I am not sure the branded cassette I’ve shared is from the store at Salhiha. There was another nearby computer store that I used to visit as well which also used to sell ZX Spectrums and games. I couldn’t tell you the street name, but I think it was on the main shopping street, somewhere between The Grand Stores, Salhia Complex, and Al Muthanna Complex. Definitely, it was not near Al-Sharq Tower because that was far away from the shopping area.
Another thing you probably know is when Al-the Khalejia department stores first opened, they used to have a small section that sold computers like the ZX Spectrum, they had some original games on sale. I think the computer section didn’t last long and it disappeared sometime later.
Later around 1985 I used to get games for my computer by visiting the Hilton Hotel, there was an international magazine shop inside the hotel that used to sell computer magazines from the UK, there were several ones for the ZX Spectrum (and the Commodore 64). Many of these magazines came with a free demo cassette with free games and previews of upcoming games.
best regards
SufianPS. My parents were expats in Kuwait, and I lived there until I was 18, then left abroad to the US to study, and then moved to Belgium as my mom is from Belgium. I still have lots of my school books from Kuwait in Arabic, and other things that I grabbed with me when I left Kuwait in 1988.
Since the game was branded RTC I thought it might be the same RTC as the electronics shop in Hawally since according to their about us page they’ve been around since 1983. But after talking to RTC Electronics I was told pre-1990 they were called Babel so they’re not the same place. If anyone remembers where Al Rushaid was or have any info on it, let me know!
Update: Found a news clipping and an ad in an old Kuwait Times newspaper
I’ve been using a 2013 iMac 27″ as my main computer since well, 2013. It was the entry-level 27″ at that time with a 3.2ghz quad-core i5 processor and I had upgraded the RAM to 24GB and the hard drive to a 1TB SSD. It was showing its age but it held up great over the years and honestly could have survived a couple of more if Apple hadn’t released the redesigned iMacs a few months ago.
As soon as I saw the new iMacs I realized I wanted one, in green, and ASAP. I ended up pre-ordering one from Apple online with 16GB of RAM and 1TB hard drive in addition to an Arabic English keyboard. When I had placed the order the iMacs hadn’t been shipped yet and so I basically ordered it blindly based on photos hoping it would look as good in real life. Well, it does. Now that I’ve been using the new iMac for a few weeks, here are some points:
The webcam on the new iMac is great, not only is it a lot sharper and higher resolution than all my other Mac webcams, but I used to have an issue when video calling on my previous iMac because I have a large window behind me. During calls, the camera tended to adjust the brightness based on the windows and so I’d end up really dark and barely visible. I no longer have that issue with the new iMac.
It’s fast, much faster than my older iMac and so far seems as fast or faster than my 16″ MacBook Pro.
Anyway if you’re considering getting one of these new iMacs and have any questions let me know in the comments. I’ve only seen two colors in Kuwait, blue and green. Gait in Avenues has a blue one on display and Xcite also in Avenues has a green and blue one. If you’ve seen any of the other colors anywhere mention it in the comments. The iMac upgraded with a 1TB hard drive and 16GB of RAM cost me around KD605 KD635 shipped to Kuwait.
Last week I found the old ad above from 1984 for a video game store that was located in Sharq Tower in Kuwait City. I actually visited that store back then specifically to check out the Intellivision gaming console advertised in the ad but ended up getting the ColecoVision instead.
But this reminded me of a computer store that was located in Salhiya back in the 80s on M2 opposite the Korean restaurant that used to be there. I don’t remember the name of the store I just remember they sold computers and they always had Dig Dug playing in the display as well as having computer chess boards.
If anyone remembers it or knew who the owner was please let me know!
Update: Found the Coleco ad below in a 1983 newspaper. I guess now I know where I bought it from!
Back when I visited the National Library in October you couldn’t access any of the books yourself due to COVID safety precautions, you needed to have someone fetch the books for you. But, things are back to normal now. Yesterday morning I passed by the National Library and I was allowed access to all the books and archives. I still had to book an appointment via the meta.e.gov.kw website and you also need to be vaccinated to be allowed in, but other than that things are back to normal.
The library is next to my office which means I can go back to randomly passing by in the mornings on the way to work. I usually love going through old newspapers to find gems similar to the Hardees ad above from 1988 featuring the Thunder Cats. If you want the full resolution version click here.
The library is open Sunday to Thurday from 9AM to 1PM and for more info on what’s inside, check out my old post here.
Back in the mid 90s we really only had two places to hang out as teenagers, a restaurant called Fuddruckers on the Gulf Road and Johnny Rockets in Salmiya. Both were pretty expensive for broke teenagers and we didn’t have malls or places like Starbucks where you can just go and chill for hours. But then McDonald’s came to Kuwait and they opened a location over Johnny Rockets and it became the go-to place for me and my friends to meet up at. The staff didn’t care if we just hung out without ordering anything and the street corner outside became a popular meeting point for teens. So when Mcdonald’s shut down and Shakir took over the location, I was kinda upset about it but also curious to see what Shakir would with the place.
Yesterday I passed by the new location to get a sneak peek and noticed they had removed the large hoarding that had covered the side of the building revealing a brand new facade. The old building no longer looks dodgy anymore and instead looks pretty great. As I walked into the space I was expecting to see some indoor seating since McDonalds had seating but there wasn’t any. The whole interior was designed and optimized around fast order pickups. Shakir is so popular that the whole indoor space is one large queuing system with a long railing that splits the interior in half. As you go in through the entrance, the railing leads you to the far end of the restaurant where the ordering windows are. After you’re done ordering the railing leads you back towards the pickup area which is near the exit doors.
Disappointingly, there won’t be V-Thru at this location which is what I currently use to pick up my orders at their Rai location. If you haven’t used V-Thru before it’s one of my favorite services, you order from a restaurant via their app and once you arrive outside the restaurant, they bring the food out to your car. I mostly use it for Arabica when I order beans and Shakir to avoid the long car lines.
Shawarma Shakir Salmiya is opening tomorrow, July 7th at 7PM. They’re on instagram @shawarmashakir
I was just organizing some photos on my Mac and was moving some images into my “Vintage” folder when I noticed one of the photos in the album had Pearl Marzouq written on it. It was a photo of my parents (pictured on the right) with my aunt and uncle having dinner at the restaurant in what I presume to be the early 70s.
I had forgotten I had this photo and then I remembered just a few weeks ago I had spotted an ad for the restaurant in a 1972 issue of The Daily News. I need another trip to Lebanon so I can go through all the photos and see what other treasures I could find.
Below is also a photo of Pearl Marzouq taken in 1971 after construction. It was designed by SSH, the same architects behind JACC. I’ve tried getting more photos from them but they’ve been unresponsive so if anyone can help me get access to their archive, please let me know! SSH were behind a lot of big projects in the 70s including Messilah Beach Hotel and half of the buildings in old Salem Mubarek Street.
Other than the Suzuki Jimny from a couple of years ago, I can’t really think of any other car in recent history that interested so many people. The hype and demand around the new Landcruiser is so huge that there were people selling their spots on the waiting list for up to 2,500KD! Last Wednesday I picked up a brand new Landcruiser to review, and after spending 24 hours with it I have mixed feelings about it. People really do love this car though, I don’t think I’ve gotten so much attention on the road or interest in a review car as much as I got with this Landcruiser. Since you guys left a lot of questions under my what do you want to know post, this review is going to be a combination of my opinion on the car as well as answers to all your questions.
The first thing I need to discuss is the looks of the new Landcruiser which I’m not a fan of yet. I kinda like the front of the car which now has a huge grill, but not a big fan of the side profile or the rear of the car yet. I think the wheels look too small in proportion to the car and I think the rear quarter window gives it a minivan feel. The rear of the car is also fairly boring, but so was the last generation so at least that’s consistent. I remember not being a fan of the last Landcruiser when it came out either. Sometimes it takes a bit of time for new designs to grow on you and I’m expecting the same with this new Landcruiser as well.
I had the fully loaded GX-R model which comes with a leather interior, electronic ventilated seats, a large 12.3″ center display and some safety features like lane assist, radar cruise control and collision detection. The Landcruiser finally has Apple CarPlay and Android Auto built-in which is great but also expected. Their digital side is still lagging behind the rest of the market. For example, we now have this gorgeous new super-large screen in the center console, but I still can’t control any of the car settings on it. If I want to change the settings for lane assist, or reset the tire pressures, adjust the sensitivity for collision detection or any other settings related to the actual car, I need to use the tiny black and white screen in the center of the gauge cluster. The only thing I can control with the large screen in the center console is the media center and climate control, that’s it. I don’t understand why there are two different systems in the car, I should be able to change all the settings from the main screen like in other cars. The technology side of the car makes it feel dated. Everything new on the new car should have already been on the last generation of the Landcruiser, but Toyota has always been like this. They’re one step behind in technology because they go for reliability and simplicity over having all the latest gizmos, and I think the majority of the people prefer that.
What are the differences between GX-R vs VX-R?
The model I drove was the fully loaded GX-R, but the VX-R is actually the top-of-the-line model and costs around 4,500KD more. The main differences between the two are the fact the VX-R uses better quality leather, has electronic suspension, 4 cameras vs just 1, electronically foldable third-row seats, memory seats in the front, front and rear locking diffs, blind-spot monitor, and a tailgate that opens by waving your foot.
How’s the handling and ride quality?
The first day I found the car too soft but that’s how Toyota’s generally are. My FJ Cruiser had soft suspension and one of the first things I did was replace them with stiffer ones. The soft suspension gives the car a soft ride but also makes the car feel heavier since there is a lot more sway on breaking and turning. When I drove the car the second day I enjoyed the ride a lot more since I was used to it by then. It’s comfortable, it’s quiet and definitely a car I wouldn’t mind taking a long trip in.
How is the AC?
I had the car parked under direct sunlight for 5 hours and it took less than 10 minutes of blasting all the AC’s on max for the car to turn into a freezer. So it’s great like it always is on Toyotas.
How is the entertainment system and JBL speakers?
As I mentioned, it has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Oddly you can’t have them occupy the full center screen, parts of the screen always has to show the climate controls. The speakers were fine, loud with boomy bass, they’re good enough for 99% of the buyers. There were a lot of USB-C and USB-A ports scattered around the car plus a wireless charging pad in the center console near the gear shift. There was also a home power socket in the trunk.
How did the 10-speed gearbox feel like?
Not that great actually. The gearbox never seemed to be in the right gear and shifting in the 1st and 2nd gear was always rough. Even putting the car in sport mode didn’t help much.
Can the car handle Kuwait roads?
I think Toyota has proven themselves over the decades that all their cars can handle the Kuwaiti climate and roads with no issues. One of the reasons the Landcruiser is so popular is because of how reliable they are and I don’t expect the new ones to be any different.
Is the steering wheel still heavy?
I haven’t driven the previous generation to compare, but I had two friends who own Landcruisers test drive the car and both said the new Landcruiser is an improvement over the previous one in every way. The steering is lighter, the car feels faster, the brakes better and the overall ride smoother.
What do you think about the price, is it worth it?
This is a difficult one to answer, personally, I think the new Landcruisers are too expensive. The model I drove costs 24,250KD after discount. I think if you’re paying over 20,000KD for a car you’re buying a premium or luxury brand but Toyota isn’t that. It’s a reliable brand that’s meant to be accessible to everyone and I don’t think thats the case with the Landcruiser. With every new generation of Landcruisers, the price has gone up and I think paying nearly 30,000KD for a Landcruiser is just too much.
Is the GR Sport edition getting released in Kuwait?
Yes, it’s coming and the price is around 28,000KD.
Obviously love or hate the new Landcruiser, there is no denying the fact that we all know they’re going to be extremely reliable and popular. I was at a traffic light on Wednesday in the Landcruiser and I looked around me and I was surrounded by 4 other white Landcruisers, one in front of me, two on my left and one behind me. People love them for good reason and anyone with a Landcruiser is going to feel right at home in the new one. If I forgot to answer any of your questions or if you have any more, let me know in the comment. For more details info on the car including the specs and features of the different models, check out the Landcruiser page on toyota.com.kw
