Cooking lessons

No, not the kind where you pay someone to teach you how to bake a cake, but the little ad hoc culinary tips one gets from rather unlikely sources while waiting at the butcher counter in Lulus. This week was no exception.

There I was, patiently waiting my turn so I could have some lamb ground up for kebabs (the general practice is that you pick your cut of beef/lamb/veal and ask the butcher to grind it for you), and I smiled nicely at the elderly gent in skullcap and dishdasha next to me. He seemed a little worried that I wasn't yet being attended to by the butchery folks, and decided to speed things up a bit by asking me what I needed. I told him -- ground lamb.

And then I said the magic words: For kebab.

When I say 'magic' I mean MAGIC. This brought forth a very detailed set of instructions and ingredients from the gent, starting with the advice that I should use a mixture of beef and lamb and ending with lots of finger-lip smacking gestures. In between, he decided that I needed help picking out a hunk of beast to be ground up and so examined all the per-kilo prices for me until he found a suitable one (the 40-Dhs-per-kilo-cut was quickly ruled out). Then came more ingredients that he had forgotten to list earlier -- onion and bqdwns. Yes, bqdwns (can someone buy these people a vowel please?). You know, greens. I think he must have sensed 1) that I didn't speak Arabic and 2) that there were, in fact, about 56 different types of greens available at the Lulus, so he decided it was time to take our carts together over to the herb section of the produce department and look for bqdwns together. I assumed it was coriander, but I was wrong, as he pointed to the coriander (cilantro, for you Yanks) and said "Not that one. Other one." Ok, got it. Parsley. I found the little parsley sign, complete with pictograph for the illiterati, and there was the Arabic translation:

بقدونس

You know -- bqdwns.

He seemed pretty impressed with my Arabic-reading ability, so decided it was time for another forgotten ingredient to be mentioned - 'small like onion, but not onion.' Oh great. Here we go again. It was like playing Password in the produce section. The first thing that came to mind was shallot, but I quickly remembered where I was. Yes, shallots are available at the French-owned Carrefour, at something like a million dirhams a kilo, but only the French actually buy them. So what else is 'small like onion but not onion'? It helped that he held up a finger to indicate how small 'small' was. It did not help that he kept saying 'thum', since I associated that with the finger and figured he just got confused about which one of the five was his thumb.

Then I got it.

Thum = garlic.

I spelled it out for him (tha - waw - mim, pronounced "thoom"), he confirmed my spelling, I thanked him for the help, and we returned to our solo grocery shopping tasks. The fat expats who were staring at us the entire time did the same.

I didn't really have the heart to tell him that I already knew how to make pretty damned good kebab, but I learned two words in Arabic that I'll probably never forget.

Cheap eats galore (if you can find them)

It's funny how many people I talk to about Abu Dhabi are surprised to hear how hopping the culinary scene is.  (If you one of those surprised people, check out the Gourmet Abu Dhabi 2009 festival site.)  Yes, it's a city in the middle of a desert, but so is Las Vegas, and I'm sure the latter has many decent eateries (I can't confirm this empirically, as I've never been to Las Vegas and am highly unlikely to set foot there).

Let's take just ONE of the umpteen posh hotels in the city, Le Royal Meridien (remember, this is not the same place as Le Meridien).  A quick look at their website reveals that this hotel alone has nine dining options:

1.  The Shuja Yacht dinner cruise (dinner on a boat)

2.  The Piano Lounge (rather what it sounds like)

3.  Al Fanar (the spaceship restaurant)

4.  Amalfi (de rigueur Italian place)

5.  Soba (Japanese)

6.  L'Opera Brasserie (I still haven't figured out what or where this is)

7.  PJ O'Reilly's (also rather what it sounds like)

8.  Oceans (overpriced, er, delicious seafood)

9.  Zari Zardozi (Indian)

You could stay there for a week and never eat at the same place twice, but you'll pay through the nose for the privilege.

So where to go for a good dinner that won't kill the budget?  Fortunately there are scads of little places - some dirt cheap, some just a hell of a lot more reasonable than what you'll find in a four-star hotel.  TimeOut Abu Dhabi recently published a list of 31 cheap eats, and if you add in the remaining 35 or so from the average-priced list, there's a wealth of places to choose from (I don't recommend 49ers The Gold Rush unless you happen to be a single male looking for, um, company).

There's just one tiny little wrinkle.

Most of the restaurant and café reviews don't actually provide essential information on location.  And even those that do include this minor detail do it in a pretty vague way.  Take, for example, the write up on my favourite Persian restaurant, Hatam al Tae, which offers this handy map:

Great!  Super!  Whoohoo!  A map showing where this restaurant is!  Except that Hatam al Tae is actually located on the other side of Hamdan Street, more like here:

I know what you're thinking:  "Big deal, so it's across the street.  Not a problem."  But Hamdan Street is fairly wide, noisy, and chock-a-block full of cars.  And Hatam al Tae is a wee place, tucked in a corner off the main road.  So you might miss it.

Note to TimeOut editorial staff:  A map that provides flawed information as to the location of a business is about as useful as a clock that's run down.  Except that a broken clock is right twice a day, whereas a bad map is never right.

Being the Pollyanna that I am, however, I see a bright side to all of this:

When you go looking for that elusive cheap eat in Abu Dhabi, I guarantee you'll burn more calories looking for the place than you'll consume once you're there.

Avoid the grape

Um, I don't actually follow this advice, as should be clear to anyone within view of our recycling bin.  But there's something we discovered over the course of our dining experience in Abu Dhabi, and it's interesting enough to mention here.

Of the seven emirates in the UAE, some of them are dry, some are not.  Abu Dhabi and Dubai are in that second category, which comes as a huge surprise to people I talk to (hey -- those of you who know us should know that the day we moved to a dry country would be the same day you saw pigs flying around overhead).

So yes, you can drink in Abu Dhabi.

Just not everywhere, and sometimes that's a good thing.

With very few exceptions, the only licensed restaurants and bars are to be found in hotels (although not all hotels are licensed, as my husband discovered when he ended up in one of the dry ones last summer and went looking for the bar).  The hotels that are able to sell liquor, however, are chock-a-block full of dining and drinking choices.  I'll get to that in another post.

It's those other places that I'm interested in just now:  The Persian Hatam al Tae nestled in little corner off Hamdan Street behind what used to be an internet café.  Lebanese Flower, with its conveniently-located branches around the city.  Hanoi, the only Vietnamese eatery (I think) in Abu Dhabi.  Just Falafel, which sells exactly what it says it does.  The international-themed Amassi, over in Khalidiya.  Gad Egyptian cuisine (admittedly not my favourite, but where else can you order a "Viagra Sandwich?").  And the sumptuously-decorated India Palace, whose only misfortune is to be located in the construction nightmare of Al Salaam Street.

There are more, and I'll write about them all in detail rather soon.  For the time being, there are two reasons to venture out of your isolated cocoon five-star hotel and head over to one of these independent places:

1. They're cheap.
   
2. I guarantee you'll drink your daily quota of water.
   

That second reason is a pretty damn good one when you're living in the desert.

Newsflash: Jones the Grocer coming to Abu Dhabi

I'm going to be completely honest here: I never heard of Jones the Grocer before this morning, but I think I'm in love already (sorry honey). While the Aussies are laughing, I think I best explain this to the Yanks and Brits:

Jones the Grocer (actually, "jones the grocer" a la e.e. cummings) is a gourmet food shop, bakery, fromagerie, and café, all rolled into one.  And it's coming to Abu Dhabi later this month, according to this article from The National.

Not that food shopping in Abu Dhabi currently leaves too much to be desired.  The Carrefour at Marina Mall is well-stocked with pretty much everything I would want, and the Spinneys in Al Khalidiya sells plenty of Waitrose-branded products, cheese, Welsh lamb, and even pork.  The first time I visited Carrefour I even took some pictures of the produce and spices:

Not bad, eh?

I have a feeling Jones the Grocer is going to be even better.

For one, it's going to have a 16 square-meter cheese room.  Truffle oil.  Wagyu beef.  (Is it time for lunch yet?).  And as an added bonus, it'll be within walking distance from our new home.

It's days like this when I think that living in Abu Dhabi really isn't going to be much of a hardship.

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