Search: “salmiya”

There are a number of collaborative workspaces in Kuwait like Niu and Reyada, but Wejha is the first one to target artists and musicians. The collaborative space opened up a few weeks ago at Pearl Marzouq in Salmiya, and I got a small tour of it last week while checking out the F160 exhibition.

The space is pretty big, if you attended Qout Market when it was being held at Pearl Marzouq a few years ago, then you’ll most likely recognize it. It’s the area where the kids section used to be. The space is divided up pretty nicely with a large collaborative space overlooking the Pearl Marzouq garden, and then various small studios spread out all around. They offer a number of benefits to artists including offering them exhibition space, both public and private, meeting rooms, workshops and the possibility to meet and interact with other artists that are based there.

The only downside is their prices which might not be in reach for a lot of young artists and musicians who may just be starting up. If you want access to just the coworking space the cost is KD150 a month, but if you’re looking for your own private studio, then the prices start at KD250 and go all the way up to KD450. Actually, KD250 might not be bad for a studio since I’ve seen dodgy spaces in basements in Hawalli going for as much.

If you’re interested to find out more, check out wejha.com and also their instagram page @wejha.arts

Last week I passed by the vintage radios shop Moqtanayaty and ended up picking up a 1960’s Dynatron Mazurka record player for myself. I didn’t have any music records, nor did the store so I needed to buy some and didn’t want to resort to ordering them online since they would have taken at least two weeks to arrive. Instead, I decided I’d over to the antique shops basement in Salmiya to check and see if they had any for sale there.

The first shop I went into had a large pile of records piled up in the corner of the shop. So I sat down on the floor and started going through them one by one. Anything that was remotely interesting I put on the side. By the time I was done I had found around 14 potential records which I ended up reducing down to 10. The 10 records I decided to go with were actually pretty great and included the likes of Simon & Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Cat Stevens, Marvin Gaye, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, Fats Domino and more. The buying process though wasn’t so easy. The shop was originally closed (it’s always closed whenever I visit) but the basement janitor has the key. So I had him open up the shop for me and after I chose the records I wanted, he had to take pictures of each one and send them to the owner. Originally I was quoted KD30 for the 10 records but managed to haggle the price down to KD25 which is pretty reasonable considering the stuff I got.

There are a couple of other shops that had records for sale as well but I wasn’t in the mood to go through their piles so there could be more treasures waiting to be found. So if you’re looking for records, I’d head over to the basement as soon as possible before anybody else does (including me). For directions and more information on the basement, check out my previous post [Here]

Update: Kuwait now has a local online record store! vinyldestination.com

You’ve probably noticed by now that for the past couple of weeks I’ve been posting a lot of food posts. That probably has to do with the fact that I’ve been hanging around @chefkb and so we’ve both been going through our long list of places we’ve been meaning to try. Dampa Feast was one of those places we both had on our list so we decided to pass by last week along with another friend of ours @chefbasmah to try it out.

Dampa Feast is a seafood restaurant thats located in Souk Salmiya. It opened up around 3 months back and I didn’t think a lot of people knew about it so I was completely shocked when I got there to find a large crowd waiting outside and a two page long waiting list. Keep in mind this was a Monday night and not a weekend. We put our name down on the list and headed to Daiso to kill some time. Finally just over an hour later we managed to get our table and sat down to order our food.

Their menu is made up various seafood dishes that include shrimp, lobster, mussels, crab, squid and salmon, all cooked in a variety of spices. We decided to go with their signature Dampa Feast menu which included shrimp, crab, mussels, clams, corn and unlimited rice. You also get to choose the kind of sauce its mixed with like cajun, soya, chipotle butter, hot garlic etc.. The Dampa Feast is meant to be enough for 2 to 4 people yet for some reason we decided to order two Dampa Feast menus, one using their hot garlic sauce and the other using their schezwan sauce. We also ordered some cajun mussels on the side. With the Dampa Feast menu you also get 2-liters of mocktails, we went with their Sex Appeal mocktail and their Lindsay Lohan one. Yeah it’s hilarious I know.

At Dampa Feast you don’t get any cutlery or tableware, all the food is served to you on the table itself and you have to use your hands to eat. If you don’t want to get your hands dirty you can wear disposable gloves which they provide but I think that takes the fun out of it. The food is poured out into the center of the table then the rice is placed along the sides to capture all the sauce. We kinda destroyed it that night and barely left any food on the table even though one Dampa Feast was definitely enough for the three of us. My favorite flavors were the hot garlic and cajun sauces with the schezwan sauce being the blandest of the three. The food was pretty good but really its the total experience that sold us on the place, it’s a lot of fun. The waiters had Hawaiian shirts on, the place was blasting good 80s music and the company was the best.

Their pricing is pretty reasonable, you can check out the whole menu [Front] and [Back] but for example the Dampa Feast cost KD13 which is really good value. The only negative thing about the place is the fact that there is a waiting list and they don’t take your phone number down or hand you a buzzer. You basically have to hover around the area and keep checking on your status every 15 minutes or so. It’s definitly worth trying and we’re for sure going back with more friends the next time. Dampa Feast is located on the top floor of Souk Salmiya near the food court and they’re open from 12PM to 11PM. You can also check them out on instagram @dampafeast

Kenny Rogers Roasters the chicken chain used to be open in Kuwait next to Scientific Center but then ended up closing down back in 1996. Their location next to Scientific Center is still there but abandoned, you can actually check photos of it [Here]. Now it looks like it’s reopening again in Souk Salmiya next to Dampa Feast (that post is coming next).

If you’re wondering where you might know Kenny Rogers Roasters from, it could be from an episode of Seinfeld when they opened up across the street from Kramer. That’s at least how I found out about them. You can check out some clips from that episode on YouTube [Here]

Digits(an Apple Authorized Reseller) will have the the iPhone X available to purchase at all their stores this coming Friday, November 3 at 8AM. They’ll be selling the iPhone X at the following prices:

iPhone X 64GB – 352.9KD
iPhone X 256GB – 404.9KD

The phones will be sold at their following locations:

Marina Mall – Salmiya
The Avenues – Rai
Yaal Mall – Fahaheel

They have a limited number so it’s first come first served.

Bowl’d opened up a couple of weeks ago and although I had heard mixed reviews, I decided to pass by and try one of their açaí bowls myself. The shop is located in the newly opened Argan Square next to Symphony Mall in Salmiya. It’s a tiny store with just a single bench for seating so it’s more of a takeaway place. They’ve got a few different bowls on the menu and the one I tried wasn’t that bad. I mean the one I had the other day at Be Cafe was better, but this wasn’t bad for a small takeaway shop. They had two sizes of the bowl, the small one was for KD2 while the larger one for KD3.5. So if you’re looking for an açaí bowl place it’s worth checking Bowl’d out. They’re on instagram @getbowld

Kane Mochi as you can guess from the name is a mochi ice cream place. They’ve been open for awhile now but since they’re located in what basically is an empty mall, I only found out about it yesterday. Kane is located on the top floor of Dalal Complex in Salmiya, the same mall that has Sky Cinemas. The place is cute and they’ve got 21 flavors of mochi ice cream. I had a chocolate and banana and it was pretty good. Don’t know if I’d go back specifically for it, but if I was a mochi fan I probably would. It costs 750fils per mochi and if you want to find out more, check out their instagram @kanemochi.kw

Khaled Al Baker, or KB for short is the brand manager and head chef at Meem Cafe. He’s also a good friend of mine and I’ve been wanting to post about him and his transformation of Meem Cafe since I’ve been watching it happen from the very beginning. Just over a year ago, Khaled moved back to Kuwait after studying culinary arts at the Johnson & Wales University in Miami. He started looking for work and decided he wanted to join MMC Catering who had a bunch of popular restaurants including LeNotre, Meem Cafe, Over Jar and Three & Barista. When he applied, one of the tasks they gave him was to pass by Meem Cafe, try their food out and let them know what he thought of it. So he invited me along with a bunch of our other foodie friends (including Hind from PantryBee) and we passed by Meem Cafe and tried out as much food as we could. My overall impression wasn’t that positive with items on the menu that didn’t make sense to be there, and what was there wasn’t that great either. But Khaled was busy taking down notes, he saw a lot of potential and so he went back to MMC with his feedback and they hired him, giving him the task to revamp and upgrade the Meem Cafe menu.

Khaled wasn’t always a chef. He originally studied accounting and finance at the University of Central Florida and then worked 6 years as an accountant in the oil and gas industry. Things started to change right after his cousin opened up the upscale butcher shop Prime Cuts. They started grilling non-stop 5-6 times a week and Khaled would have his home cook put together the sides while he did all the grilling. But his cook kept making the same sides all the time which eventually got boring, so Khaled decided he’d also do the sides himself. He started reading up a lot and experimenting and the more and more he cooked the more and more he was loving it. So he started taking cooking lessons whenever he found any and he cooked for his friends whenever he could before he eventually decided to go back to university to study culinary arts.

Over the past year Khaled has been super busy reorganizing and reinventing the Meem Cafe menu. Because I keep popping over to Meem Cafe to see him whenever I can, the whole thing to me has felt like I’ve been watching a food reality show where the chef goes into a restaurant and just overhauls the menu. The first thing Khaled did was remove all the items that didn’t fit in with the theme of Middle Eastern comfort food. After refocusing the menu under the main theme, he started experimenting with modernizing Arabic classics while also fusing others with different cuisines. He loves cooking and he’s been generally just having fun trying to come up with new dishes like zaatar fries, Lebanese nachos, burrata mana’eesh and braised short ribs hummus. The end result is a lot of good food with a lot of unique flavors. Even his chef coat is infused with Arabic by being designed like a dishdasha while incorporating the shemagh pattern.

While sitting with Khaled and interviewing him for this post I realized where all this passion with Arabic food was stemming from. He thinks that as Arabs we’re losing the food marketing war with items like hummus and pita being considered Israeli and not Arab, while Greek yogurt becoming trendy but not labneh. He thinks that if we don’t start modernizing and refining Arabic cuisine, we’re going to eventually lose it all. I never thought about it in that way but now that I do I’ve started appreciating what his doing a lot more.

If you haven’t been to Meem Cafe for awhile now then I’d recommend you pass by and try it out again. They’ve got four locations, one at the Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Center, another in Hamra Tower, another in 360 Mall and the last one in The View in Salmiya. You can also follow Khaled on his instagram account @chefkb

Jarir Bookstore just opened their new location at the Boulevard project in Salmiya. Their new location is pretty big consisting of two floors and surrounded by floor to ceiling windows which bring in a ton of daylight. The top floor is dedicated just for books along with some seating area for reading, while the bottom floor contains the rest of their items ranging from electronics to arts and craft supplies.

I wasn’t really a fan of their Hawalli location, parking was always problematic and I personally don’t like heading into Hawalli unless I really have to. Boulevard is a much more chill location and the Jarir store is in a standalone building outside the main mall. So you don’t even have to enter the mall if you don’t want to and parking is plentiful.

Their opening hours are from 9AM to 11PM daily except for Fridays when they open from 4PM to 11PM. If you don’t know where Boulevard is, here is Jarir’s location on [Google Maps]. Their phone number is 22610111.

The Untitled Deli is a new deli that recently opened up in Kuwait. The place belongs to two close friends of mine and I also worked on the branding for it so I might be a tiny bit biased when I say… they make the best ridiculously delicious amazing sandwiches in Kuwait. Seriously the sandwiches are really good. Originally my friend started making them for us during Game of Thrones nights and then at shakshooka a couple of times before deciding to open up this place. So its been in the making for some time now.

So if you’ve been craving salt beef and pastrami sandwiches then you definitely need to check them out. They don’t have delivery yet but the deli itself is located inside the Pearl Marzouq complex in Salmiya. You can also check out all their sandwiches on their instagram account @theuntitleddeli as well their full menu on theuntitleddeli.com

I can’t believe this is actually happening, they’re finally turning Salem Al Mubarak Street into a pedestrian only street. When I posted about this proposal back in February, I was very adamant that it would never happen and looks like I was wrong, kinda (more on that in a bit). So far they’ve closed down and dug up half of the old Salmiya street. For those of you who aren’t very familiar with this area and the street, Salem Al Mubarak Street starts off at the end of the 4th Ring Road and goes all the way down past Al Fanar Complex and down past AUK and Symphony Mall. “Old Salmiya” which is turning into pedestrian only starts at the end of the 4th Ring Road and ends at Al Salam Mall where LuLu Supermarket is. I’m very passionate about this street because I’ve lived on it (literally) all my life. So I’ve experienced it during its heydays in the 80s, I experienced it during the invasion and after in the 90s, and I’m still experiencing it now on a daily basis since I live on top of one of the shopping complexes on that street. I care about this area a lot so lets start with the good things about all this, and then I’ll mention some negative stuff which are as important.

The Good
– Back in February when I mentioned this project I called it a joke. Mostly because if they were to follow the renderings that were shared with the public (like the one above), it would have meant demolishing the whole street with all the buildings and starting from scratch. So when I spoke to the engineer behind the project yesterday, I asked him about all these modern buildings in the renderings and turns out they were just placed there as inspiration to the current building owners. Phew! That means neither my building nor all the classic two-story buildings (pictured below) on the street will be demolished. For now at least…

– Work is going to be completed pretty soon, they’re aiming to have the street ready by Q1 of next year

– My building is going to be located on a pedestrian only commercial street, how cool is that? I mean its not Carnaby Street or Liverpool ONE, but it’s still cool. Might finally have a reason to buy a Boosted Board.

The Bad
– The street has currently been dug up but no consideration has been made for pedestrians and shop owners. Yesterday I walked down the street to LuLu and in a number of spots I was forced to walk in deep sand which is very difficult to walk in. There are a whole line of shops who just have sand right outside their door because the sidewalks were dug up and no temporary path were put in its place. From what I was told by my buildings landlord, foot traffic has decreased considerably and shop owners in my building have started to feel the effect. Temporary paths should be created to keep the area and shops alive. I’m meeting with the engineer behind the project next week and I’m going to bring this important point up.

– The parking situation in old Salmiya is a mess as it is and now by shutting down the main street which included a lot of parking spots, parking is even a bigger mess. The municipality has already placed signs pointing people to parking locations in the area, but as a resident of the area myself, I found these signs hard to understand, hard to see and they don’t seem to point anywhere. I’m curious to see what parking solutions they’ve come up with to go along with this project.

– Finally, they’ve killed a lot of trees. This is probably the saddest thing about the project. They’ve so far uprooted and killed I would say around 10 large trees, maybe more. These are trees that have been there from the very start of the street (pictured above) and have survived and endured so much. The first question I asked the engineer when he contacted me on Twitter yesterday was if they were removing the trees. He responded saying “Only some .. coz i try hard to keep it but it’s need a lot of work but I kept some coz in my idea that is the land mark of this street”. In my opinion ALL the trees should have stayed and it’s sad to see them being chopped up and bulldozed away. No idea if I can convince him to stop chopping down trees but will see when I pass by their offices next week.

Overall I’m excited my area is finally getting the attention it deserves. But now I’m just hoping the project is done right. Once I pass by the project’s office next and get more details, I’ll post and update.

Over the weekend I updated my old post which listed the majority of speciality coffee shops around Kuwait by adding some new spots. While updating the list I realized it had grown to the point of becoming difficult to go through and so wasn’t very useful. Thats why I decided to painstakingly go through the list and divide up the coffee shops based on location. This should make the list easier to explore so check it out below:

Abu Al Hasania
Dose Cafe
Tripple A Cafe
V60 Coffee Bar

Al Zahra’a
BRW

Jabriya
RumorZ Cafe
Wing Cafe

Kuwait City
7 Grams
20 Grams
33 Cafe
Alpha Café
Arabica
Ark Coffee Co.
ASPRO + PRO Coffee Bar
Awake Coffee
BLAKK Coffee
Bon Coffee
But First Coffee
CAF
Caffeine
Caveman Coffee
Coffea
Commons
Cova Specialty Coffee
CRL Bar
Dose Cafe
Drip Cafe
East
Grace
His Majesty
Jumo
Kaffa Kuwait
Kôfē – Espresso Bar
Let’s Coffee
Mood Coffee Bar
Muse Coffeesphere
Muse Espresso Bar
Not Just Coffee
OIA Coffee
OZ Coffee
Pause Coffee
Perhaps Some Coffee
Pirate Cafe
P R E S S
Richard’s Coffee
Savage Coffees
Sisters & Co
Street Cafe
The Breeze Cafe
Three and Barista
Toby’s Estate
ÜSHK
Vol 1
Volta
Wish Cafe

Mahboula
Ace Coffee
Made Caffe
OROMO Coffee Bar
Swing Coffee House

Mangaf
Mug
Vibes Coffee

Messila
Majnoon Qahwa

Rai
Amo Cafe

Salmiya
Magnet
Muse Lounge
Mr Koobs
New Brew Coffee

Shuwaikh
Arabica
Boost Cafe
Caffeine
Car Wash Cafe
Days*Cafe
Force Bar
Keys Coffee Shop
Shuwaikh Coffee
Ves Vas
Vol 1

In case I missed a place let me know.

A reader sent me the picture above this morning and I didn’t think of it much since I hadn’t heard of Shakey’s before, but later during the day I drove by one here in L.A. so decided to google it now. Turns out Shakey’s was the first franchise pizza chain in the United States and now they’re opening up in Kuwait. Their first location will be in Salmiya, right on top of Five Guys.

Thanks Mohamed