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A 3 meters wide micro-apartment was just featured in the popular design and lifestyle publication Wallpaper*. The duplex apartment was designed by Studio Madouh and looks pretty cool in the photos. Sadly, there strangely aren’t any photos of the rooms but you can check out some exterior shots and some other interior shots on the Wallpaper* website here.

via @zaydoun

I have such a long to-do list of places to try but honestly, just haven’t been in the mood to pass by and try most of them. Since my list isn’t getting any smaller, I’m just going to share it here in case anyone else is looking for a new place to try:

Bakehaus – They just opened up at The View Mall
Bob’s Drive-In – Burger place with branding thats a bit too similar to Big Boy
Bonjiri – A yakitori spot by the chef behind Tampopo
Deep Dish – A deep dish pizza place (might be an alternative to Boccini)
Its Hidden – A secret restaurant that seems over priced
Koto – New Japanese delivery concept
Madeleine – A brunch concept thats open only on weekends
Pb – Just opened and serving both pizza and burgers
PETE’S – Another pizza place but this one serves NY style
Phet Phet – A thai food concept thats delivery only and the only place on the list that I’ve actually tried. I like it and think they might have the best Pad Thai ever.
Top Notch – Another burger place, this one near AUK in Salmiya

Anything else new? Let me know in the comments.

A couple of months back the Grand Mosque tours were reactivated again and this time they have a new permanent calligraphy exhibition featuring work by calligraphers from all over the world.

The tours are available by booking only for Saturdays at 10AM while walk-in tours are available on weekdays from 9AM to 11AM and then again 4PM to 6PM. UPDATED CHECK BELOW

In addition to regular Covid health instructions, there is also a dress code: no sleeveless shirts nor short shorts for men, and full-length cloaks and headscarves for women. If you’d like to book a tour you can contact Jenan on 22342367 or just head there during the middle of the week for the walk-in tours.

Here is the location on Google Maps.

Update: Saturday tours no longer require pre-booking, walk-in tours are now available on Saturdays as well.

Last month I posted about a restaurant in Avenues that accept cryptocurrency as payment and now there are two more shops that accept crypto.

Outwest: The local lifestyle shop now accepts Bitcoin as payment

VI BY VOGULARITY: The local fashion label now accepts Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum as payment

Better Books: They have over 10,000 books including some really old ones and they accept Bitcoin as payment.

If you know of any other local shops that accept crypto let me know in the comments.

China Great Wall is my go-to hole in the wall for hot pot. Hot pot if you don’t know is a way of cooking at your table using a boiling pot of soup stock that you throw your raw ingredients into. You can order the pot in different flavors like spicy or none spicy or order a two-way pot which is a pot split in half and containing two different flavors of stock. You then have two pages worth of items you can order to cook ranging from different proteins like beef or lamb, to veggies like mushrooms and greens. It’s a lot of fun and the hot pot at China Great Wall is pretty good.

The price is also great costing just 2.5KD for a single flavored pot or 3.5KD if you want a two-way. In addition to the pot you then pay per ingredient, so a dish of raw beef for example is 2.250KD, pakchoi is 1KD, morning glory 750fils etc.. The place is fairly small with just 5 tables so it tends to get busy really quickly.

If you’re interested in trying China Great Wall, their instagram is @chinagreatwallrestaurant and here is their location on Google Maps.

One of our company employees has been stuck in the US for months due to the restriction on expats coming into Kuwait and while there she got her vaccination. When the airports reopened she uploaded her vaccination paperwork to the MOH website to be validated but it still hasn’t gotten approved even though it’s been nearly a month.

She ended up missing her flight back to Kuwait so instead, she applied for a Saudi visa online since we have an office there, and in contrast, it took just 3 minutes to get her vaccination validated and visa issued!

Based on the responses under my previous post, I know a lot of you are still waiting for your vaccinations to get approved, but for those of you who already got it approved, how long did you have to wait??

Layla is a new Lebanese gourmet grocery store that opened up in Salmiya opposite Marks & Spencer. They carry a lot of imported Lebanese products ranging from Bonjous and Master Chips (Lebanese equivalent to Sunkist and Kitco), to Lebanese dairy products, fruits, bread, pickles and more.

It’s actually very similar to the other Lebanese store Lama, except instead of the Lama branded products Layla carries their own brand. If you want to check the place out they’re on Instagram @laylalbkw and here is their location on Google Maps.

Is it me or does anyone else find it weird that the first activity listed on the Kuwait Tourism website are the smart toilets? It’s even more apparent on mobile phones since the first activity that comes up when scrolling down are the toilets.

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

Friday night I was in my car leaving my street when a white pickup truck stopped in front of me and started talking to some Egyptian workers on the street. The guy in the pickup then suddenly slammed the door open on one of the workers, went down, and started shoving him and yelling at him.

Not an unusual scene but things do get a bit odd. The guy in the white shirt then goes back into his car and grabs a lanyard with an ID on it and then comes back out and grabs the Egyptian guy and starts flashing the lanyard in his face and yelling at him to give him his Civil ID card. I was out of my car at this point and I tried to get a clear look at the ID card and couldn’t, but I assume he was some sort of cop. The guy in the white shirt then pushed the worker to the floor and started punching him.

We managed to separate the two and I held on to the guy in the white shirt to calm him down since he didn’t seem to be in the right state of mind. The guy in the white shirt then went back to his car and got handcuffs and was shoving and threatening the worker that he was gonna handcuff him. He then put his handcuffs away and went opened the backdoor to take out his police baton so he could beat the guy with it. The whole time I’m trying to hold the guy back and calm him down. He eventually did, enough to get back in his car and speed off.

My dashcam captured the incident including the license plate of the white pickup. The video above is two very short clips I stitched together but the actual full video is in 4K and around 3-minutes long. I cropped the video just for this post so I could hide the license plate number but I’m wondering if I should send the full video to one of the MOI Instagram accounts because obviously this situation was messed up especially if the guy was cop or pretending to be one. Actually, now that I’ve written out my thoughts I’m thinking I should probably drop the whole thing and not risk getting deported or something. So not worth it.

Oogoo is an app that was recently launched that allows you to calculate the value of your car with just a few clicks. It could be a very useful tool when trying to figure out how much you should sell your car for. Depending on your car Oogoo will give you the option to either sell your right away or to list it for sale. I valuated a Lexus and got the option to sell the car on the spot, then I valuated an Audi and it only gave the option to place an ad for it so I guess it depends on if it’s a fast-moving car or not.

Oogoo also has a number of other features including a used car section and a section for checking out prices of new cars at the dealerships. The app is still new but shows potential. I used to like exploring used cars on Q8car but with their last redesign, the site has become a navigation disaster so really hoping a good alternative pops up. If you want to download and try oogoo, click here.

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.

Yesterday I read a story about a guy who drove his 1982 Mitsubishi Galant from Kuwait to Delhi, India during the 1990 invasion. The family still owns the car today and the son is now trying to restore it. If that wasn’t interesting enough, there is a similar story of another guy who drove his 1984 Mitsubishi Galant from Kuwait but to Kerala, India, and also still has his car today. Both cars seem to be the same color and they both might have been in the same convoy of cars that left Kuwait to India by road during the escape.

The journey from Kuwait to India took around 110 days and involved driving through Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan before finally reaching India.

You can read the story on the 1982 Galant journey here.
You can read the story on the 1984 Galant journey here.

The 1984 Galant and the owner Mathunny Mathew seem to have gotten more coverage online. There is a video interview with the owner on YouTube but it’s in Malayalam so I couldn’t watch it. But, there is another very cool video on YouTube where the Petrolhead Motor Garage guys attempt to start the car. It’s not in English but there is very little talking, it’s mostly them taking apart the engine to try and start the car which is a total rust bucket. It’s a chill video and I’ve embedded it above.

I love stories like this so if you know of anymore, let me know!

Thanks Fahad

A lot of you might have noticed some issues in the food industry over the past year or so. Maybe your food is taking longer to arrive, maybe you’ve noticed more errors with your orders, or maybe you no longer see your favorite staff at a restaurant anymore. What a lot of people might not know is that the local restaurant industry is currently going through a crisis and here is why:

When the pandemic hit last year, restaurants were forced to shut down so a lot of staff left the country and a lot got fired and left as well.

When Covid restrictions were eased and restaurants started to reopen, many had fired their employees and needed to rehire. But, no new employees could be brought into Kuwait, and old employees with valid visas couldn’t come back to Kuwait either.

This caused a major scarcity of employees and meant that whatever employees were left in Kuwait were now much more valuable.

One large company for example started offering double the salaries to poach employees from other smaller companies. A lot of employees also started jumping ship to any restaurant that offered them more money causing high turnovers in the industry.

Many businesses couldn’t afford to pay the new higher salaries or even if they could, couldn’t find the right staff or the number of staff they needed. So a lot are currently understaffed and some companies are being forced to temporarily (or permanently) close some of their weaker performing locations or concepts so that they can move their staff to their more successful ones.

A lot of restaurants went out of business over the past year because of the pandemic and it’s sad. The above are just some of the issues from the restaurants’ side but delivery platforms also have their own set of issues as well.

Platforms have fewer drivers due to many leaving but also have more orders than before due to people being home more. The result is slower delivery times and slower customer service.

I know nobody wants to get their food cold or find pickles in their burger when they specifically asked for no pickles. But hopefully, this post explains why things aren’t perfect right now, and people can be a bit more patient with restaurants and delivery drivers.

I was going through some of my old bookmarks and found an article I had saved years ago on the backstory of how Elevation Burger came to be in Kuwait. It was written by Ali Ashkanani, one of the local owners of Elevation and it gives an interesting behind the scenes look into the opening of the brand in Kuwait. It’s worth reading and it’s not too long so check it out here.