Last Day in Dubai...

So... Here I am, already on my last day in Dubai... It's so clichéd to talk about how time flies when you're having fun, but it really really does. Although, as much as it feels like I just got here, it also feels like my time Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand was months ago...

We spent my last weekend day here in relatively laid-back fashion, cooking up brunch (including Smoked Salmon Pizzas), watching a few classic episodes of The Simpsons, then doing a bit of prep for an awesome dinner. Our Seafood Extravaganza dinner feast was quite a success, I would say, and a nice way to celebrate my last night in Dubai. Alicia and Stanley are back at work today, and I'm packing up for my trip to Portland.

It's been such a great experience seeing Dubai and getting an idea of what life here is like for my big brother and his special lady friend. I still selfishly hope they'll wake up one day and say "Hey! We should totally move to Boston!" but I'm glad to have had the chance see how nice their life is over here and to get a better sense of why we may not be seeing them living back stateside any time too soon...

Good Times in the Desert...

Last night was our Desert Safari, and we were all quite pleasantly surprised by how awesome it was. Often these things can be a bit lame, so we came in with relatively low expectations and proceeded to be quite impressed by how well-run this tour is (arranged by FunTours Dubai: "We put the Fun in Tours"...). Our driver picked us up at the apartment and drove us about an hour outside of town where we met up with the rest of the safari-goers. When we piled back into the 4x4s to get things started, a super-cool chick (originally from Serbia but living in the US for 7 years now) joined us and definitely added to our enjoyment of the evening as we all hung out together for the rest of the safari. I'm feeling uncharacteristically short on words this fine morning, so hopefully Stanley and Alicia can help me out with their own account of what went down over at salazmeyer.

First up was the dune bashing portion of the safari, which is sort of like a roller coaster only with less idea of what's going to happen next. Totally awesome. I've posted a video below in an attempt to give a sense of it, but it's difficult to really convey the awesomeness. Stanley and Alicia are now more convinced than ever that they would like to get themselves a 4x4 for some desert exploration.

After the dune bashing came the camel rides (in which you sit on a camel's back while he is led in a small circle) as the sun began to set. When you'd had enough of looking at the camels, you could head down to the camp area where you had access to free shisha (aka Hubbllee Bubblee, apparently...), henna painting, sand skiing (seriously anti-climactic), arabic coffee, and soft drinks, along with a reasonably priced cash bar. I enjoyed my shisha-smoking much more this time (I think being surrounded by fresh air rather than in a closed room sitting 2 feet from a man chain-smoking cigarettes helped with that), and can now see why my brother is such a fan.

The buffet dinner was actually quite good as far as such things go, and was followed by a belly dancing performance. This was fairly entertaining, particularly at the end when a large portion of the audience joined the belly dancer on stage for a dancing free-for-all, including a few guys trying to break-dance on the carpeted stage. There is now a video of that, including Stanley shaking his groove thing with the always-lovely Alicia, over at salazmeyer.

We only signed on for the evening safari (as opposed to the overnight) in part because we lacked the minimum number of people for the overnight, but mostly because it sounded good to experience the desert for a while but then head home to sleep in our soft comfy beds... In summary: This was a really fun night and something I know I'll remember for a long time. I'm heading to the US tomorrow night, and this was a great way to celebrate my last weekend here... Today we'll be mostly staying close to home, cooking up some yummy brunch and then a bit of a Seafood Extravaganza for dinner... Hard to believe how fast my time here has gone. It still sort of feels like I just got here...

Shopping and Fine Dining on the Cheap...

As anticipated, Pashmina Fest continued a bit on Friday with a trip to the Old Souk. This shopping center is in yet another cool building – this one looking genuinely old and sort of like a fort, rather than new and fancy like most of the other cool buildings around here – and features shops selling trinkets, rugs, and pashminas for much lower prices than you find at the Blue Souk. After lots of fun with bargaining (my favorite being Alicia talking a guy down from 130AED to 30AED on a nice pashmina) we walked away with a couple more pashminas plus really cool antique-looking flasks for me and Stanley.

On Saturday we headed over to Café Chic, rumored to be one of the nicer French restaurants in town. They have a set lunch where you can have 3 courses with a glass of wine for US$30, so it seemed to be worth checking out. First impressions are that they seriously don’t eff around at this place. The service is ridiculously attentive (almost too attentive, if that’s possible) and the staff were definitely doing their best to bring us a fine-dining experience to remember. Things started off with a plate of canapés:
The shrimp one was fairly mediocre (to me), but the other two were quite nice. At this point they also brought over the house Viognier that Alicia and I had ordered to go with our meal (Stanley was the driver, which meant no wine at all for him since there is a zero-tolerance alcohol policy for drivers here). I’m fairly particular about how I like my Viognier (I think I only found one during my two years in Australia that was made the way I like it..), and this one turned out to be exactly the kind of Viognier that I love. The servers also brought over an adorable plate of salt, pepper, and good French butter to enjoy with the assortment of fresh-baked bread they were offering. (I think Alicia hurt the nice bread man’s feelings by not letting him give her a second mini-baguette…)
There were two options for the starter. Alicia and I ordered the Tomato Gazpacho with Roasted Tiger Prawns, while Stanley decided to try the Baby Asparagus Mille-Fuille with Fresh Goat Cheese. Both of these dishes were pretty darn tasty. The shrimp were extremely flavorful and complimented the gazpacho, which was much richer than I’m used to. The goat cheese in Stanley’s dish was seasoned with herbs to give it a really bright fresh flavor. Good stuff.
The options for the main course were a Braised Veal Shoulder with Vegetables or Pan-fried Halibut in Butter with Fennel Comfit and Vegetables. Both of these dishes were… “good.” Were we to go to a restaurant and see them on the menu, we would not likely order them, but they were perfectly fine. A bit of a let-down after the strong start, but it’s hard to complain too much when things are so reasonably priced…
Finally was the dessert, for which we all selected the Chocolate Variation with Vanilla Ice Cream. The cake thingy was pretty good and the homemade vanilla ice cream was awesome. I love me some homemade vanilla ice cream…
After dinner they brought over a few little petit fours, which were OK (nothing special for the most part, although the sesame-coated cornets with pistachio and chocolate inside were pretty tasty):
All in all, it was a really nice experience, even if some of the food was a bit underwhelming. I suspect they do some really nice things here at dinner, when any one meat dish costs more than our 3-courses-with-wine deal, but such things are not in the cards on our budget at the moment.

After lunch we went over to check out Mall of the Emirates so I could see the (in)famous Ski Dubai (adorable kids in winter coats in Dubai!) and do a bit more window shopping.
This mall is also home to Almaz by Momo, a restaurant that has a juice bar with amazing fruit cocktails and also a really pimp shisha-smoking room.
We ordered some hummus with lamb and pine nuts while waiting for our (non-alcoholic) cocktails and Stanley’s shisha. This was very very good but not quite as good as the version we ordered at the other juice bar in the other mall last weekend. The lamb-in-a-bowl-of-hummus concept is pretty awesome in general, really, and is something I'm going to have to start doing at home.
Alicia and I weren’t up to ordering our own shisha, so we just shared Stanley’s mango shisha. It was really quite tasty, but I think I need to practice before I would be ready to order my very own rather than just stealing a few puffs of somebody else’s… For beverages (from left to right), Stanley ordered a Strawberry-Lemon-Chili concoction that was really interesting and spicy, I ordered a Blackberry, Vanilla, and Faux-Champagne thingy (also super-tasty), and Alicia ordered some crazy thing with kiwis and cucumbers that was surprisingly delicious as well.
In summary, just another weekend in Dubai filled with good food, gorgeous buildings, fun shopping (I know… That’s a fairly strange concept to me, too…), and good relatively lazy times hanging around in this super-cool city… Next weekend: Desert Safari!

Pashmina Fest 2008 and Other Adventures

This weekend once again featured a fair bit of shopping coupled with some delicious food. On Friday we set out for the secret liquor store located about 30 minutes outside of Dubai, where you can stock up at reasonable prices without even having a liquor-purchasing license. On the way home we stopped at a really beautiful beach. The water is so gorgeous here, and is about body temperature. Note the women swimming in their abayas on the right of the picture…

After an epic grocery trip, we headed over to Wafi for lunch and a bit of window-shopping. This is one of the most beautiful malls I’ve ever seen, with stained glass everywhere. One large area of the mall called the Khan Murjan is located underground, but with stained glass ceilings giving you the feel of being in a really cool old-world shopping center.
We stopped at the restaurant in the Khan Murjan for lunch. This was a covered restaurant last time Stanley and Alicia visited, but the roof had been rolled back on Friday because it was such a lovely day. Don’t worry, though: They kept the A/C cranked so we didn’t have to be burdened by the 90-degree (Fahrenheit) heat while enjoying our unobstructed view of the clear blue skies. We ordered a ridiculously tasty hummus with lamb and pinenuts, as well as a Turkish spicy lamb sausage and some tabbouleh. The meal also featured seriously awesome flatbread. The puffed pita-looking bread in the picture had a flavor and texture almost like a ciabatta and was super-delicious. (By the way, I am SO building a wood-fired oven in my back yard when I buy a house. You just can’t cook amazing flatbreads like this with lame indoor ovens that only go up to 550 degrees Fahrenheit… )

Saturday brought a trip to the Blue Souk in Sharjah, a massive shopping center in yet another beautiful building.
On the lower level were jewelry shops to rival the Gold Souk in terms of the massive piles of gold on display, but on the second level was what we were looking for: pashminas! Stanley and Alicia had considerable experience with rug- and pashmina-shopping from their time in India, but this style of shopping was new to me. Basically at any pashmina or rug shop you enter you will be warmly greeted and often offered coffee, tea, and cookies to make you more comfortable. You are then presented with piles and piles of whatever it is you are shopping for. As I explained what I didn’t want (no pink, nothing sparkly, no flowers…) they would delve deeper and deeper into the collection until they found things more to my taste (although they never seemed to register the “no pink” thing very well…). One such item, pictured on the far left below, wasn’t right for me (too shiny) but was exactly the pashmina that Alicia (who not 5 minutes before had said she would not be purchasing any pashminas on this day) had been looking for. There were some absolutely gorgeous ones that were far too nice (read: “expensive”) for a kid like me, but there were some good bargains to be had as well.
The second pashmina from the left in the picture was the first one I bought (it has sparkly things on it, but they’re not too garish…). Stanley was in charge of bargaining on prices for me, and he did a bang-up job. The middle pashmina in the picture is actually the totally awesome one that Stanley and Alicia bought for me in India (not entirely part of Pashmina Fest, but I thought it looked nice in the picture…), and the two on the left came at our final stop. The guy helping us there was adorably enthusiastic and helpful. We stayed for a long time looking through pashminas, and as we were getting ready to go he asked if we were interested in bed covers. I actually was, now that he mentioned it, so we waited as he went through his stash of bedspreads (No big flowers! Too sparkly! Ew, pink!) and I ended up getting a fantastic deal on my new awesome bedspread (which isn't acutally as bright/shiny as it looks in the picture below) along with the pashminas. We totally made his day, apparently, because he then proceeded to give Stanley a free wool scarf (which he’d tried unsuccessfully to sell him earlier, and which is apparently what the kids in Dubai are wearing these days…) and to give Alicia and I free hideously tacky clear plastic models of the Burj Al Arab. Awesome.
After 90 minutes in traffic trying to get back to Dubai, we stopped at Nalukettu, a South Indian restaurant in the Grand Dubai Hotel near Stanley and Alicia’s apartment. This was a lot of fun, since I’d heard great things about this type of food from Stanley and Alicia after their trip and now had a chance to try it myself. (We forgot to take pictures before digging in, so pardon the messiness of the food pictures below…). We first ordered Appam with Vegetable Stew (one of the dishes they’d been craving pretty much since the moment they left India). This wasn’t at all what I expected, but was really delicious. The stew has accents of cinnamon in the spice profile that are quite nice. Next up was a Kerala-style duck and a beef dish, both of which were flavored with beautifully complex spice mixtures and had a nice amount of heat. Our final dish was a Chicken Korma (which is North Indian, but sounded too tasty not to order). This was so different from any versions I’ve had in the US, and I really loved it. Again it was nice and spicy, and was made with cashews (yay!) instead of the almonds I’m used to seeing in kormas. All in all it was a delicious meal, and I think Stanley and Alicia may have found a new favorite neighborhood restaurant…
After Stanley and I went on one last grocery quest (bok choy, star anise, sesame oil, boneless skinless chicken thighs, and chicken stock all turned out to be fairly elusive this weekend) we finally returned home for a laid-back evening. Dinner was a Chicken Meatball and Bok Choy Soup with Noodles (pictured below prior to the broth being ladled over the top) which was a refreshingly light and healthy dinner after gorging ourselves on delicious Indian food at lunch. The meatballs (which I usually make with turkey) turned out better than ever for reasons that are not entirely clear, and the bok choy (which we did finally track down) adds a nice fresh crunch. This is one of those recipes that I think of as “simple” and make for myself for lunches all the time, but which actually takes a little over an hour to throw together and leads my brother to say things like “This is why I would never cook lunches for myself…”
Pashmina Fest may continue next weekend when we head over to the Old Souk for a look around. In the meantime, I’m reading another fantastic book (Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth), still enjoying taking it easy, and looking forward to watching the Bucs beat up on the Cowboys tonight.

Out and About in Dubai

This weekend while Alicia was slaving away at work, Stanley took me out to see a bit more of the city. We started by driving out to check out a few souks, but ended up just hanging out for a bit in the gold souk. It’s pretty cool seeming so much gorgeous and/or hideously garish jewelry in one relatively small area. Being a bit poor, we mostly just window-shopped, although I did find a totally cute watch of high enough quality that I don’t seem to be allergic to it (as I am to the $20 watches I used to try to wear). I haven’t worn a watch in over 10 years, so I’d forgotten how awesome it is to be able to find out what time it is just by glancing at your wrist. Amazing!

After our time at the gold souk we decided the weather was more appropriate for hanging out in air-conditioned places, so we headed over to Souk Madinat Jumeirah, which is a gorgeous building housing a mall, residence, hotel, and restraurants. We wandered around a bit, took some pictures (including the obligatory touristy Burj Al Arab shot, and then stopped for lunch.
I thought it would be fun to try some “local” food, so we went to a restaurant in the building called Al Makan. This was definitely a mixed experience, with 3 really tasty dishes and one dish that led Stanley to comment “This is by far the worst thing I have ever ordered in a restaurant,” and me to wholeheartedly agree with him. First, the good… We started with an absolutely spectacular Greek salad (which I forgot to take a picture of). I’ve had many Greek salads in my day, and this was definitely one of the best. (I know, I know… Greek salad isn’t exactly “local” to the UAE, but we more than made up for that with the final item we ordered…) Next up was Manakeesh Lahm, a Lebanese pastry filled with “enhanced lamb” (we think “enhanced” just means “seasoned with delicious herbs and spices” rather than referring to any genetic enhancements, but you never know…). This was awesome, with the crispy toasty pastry wrapped around juicy flavorful ground lamb…
Next up was Shish Taouk Irani, which is chicken Tikka marinated in yogurt and saffron then grilled over charcoal to yummy charred perfection. The flatbread on top of the chicken in the picture is topped with a garlicky yogurt sauce that was great with the chicken. So far so good, right? We’re 3-for-3 with only one dish to go…
So, yeah… The menu had a section entitled “From the Heart of the UAE” and I thought it would be good to order one of those dishes to get a bit of local flavor. We ordered Al Harees Meat, which even the waitress seemed to think was a bad idea. She looked at us quizzically and then asked if we’d had it before (no) and if we understood that it was “puréed” (no, but that should be fine… thinking she just meant the meat was ground rather than being in steak form…). I have since learned on the interweb that Al Harees is “one of the most savoured dishes in the UAE kitchen and it involves a lengthy preparation,” and “is quite prominent during special occasions such as Ramadan, Eid and weddings,” so it seems like an OK thing to try, right? Right? So, here is a picture of the dish:
If you’re saying to yourself “Wait. That just looks like sticky puréed oatmeal with oil on top!” then you’re not far off on the final flavor profile... The first words to come to mind when tasting this were “glue” and “oatmeal”… After some discussion, we agreed it’s sort of like puréed oatmeal combined with paper maché paste and some meat juices. Apparently that’s not too far off, as I have since learned a bit more about this very special dish: “Al harees is made by cooking ground wheat in a pot with a pinch of salt, to which the meat is then added. The mixture is then left for long hours until it is fully cooked and the meat is completely dissolved into the wheat.” This is followed by several more long hours until the mixture reaches the “desired” consistency. Fantastic.

Restaurant learning experiences (e.g. If the waitress is horrified/concerned when you order something, maybe you should consider ordering a different menu item…) aside, it was a really nice day and I enjoyed seeing a bit more of Dubai. Stanley and Alicia are back at work today (thus leaving me with ample time for excessively long blog posts) and I should probably go get their dinner marinating so they can have a nice meal waiting for them when they come home… I’m still enjoying this time to myself during the work-week when I have nothing more pressing to do than to prepare some yummy food and mainline coffee…

Verre: Course by Course

As I’ve excitedly been telling many of you, we had a dinner reservation at Verre (Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at the Dubai Creek Hilton) on Thursday. Before I get into the details of the food, I want to start by saying that this place was totally awesome. The only bad reviews I’d read about Verre claimed that the attitude of the place was too stuffy and the food was pretentious. I was happy to discover that the exact opposite was true. The vibe in the dining room was relaxed (unlike in some other “fancy” restaurants where you feel like you should be whispering) and the staff were friendly and charming across the board, especially the sommelier. The food was delicious and far from pretentious, focusing on high-quality ingredients prepared well. We went with the 7-course “prestige” tasting menu, and here’s how it went down:

Vine Tomato Minestrone with Basil Pesto:
This was a fantastic way to start the meal. It’s really easy to make a soup laden with cream taste impressive, but it takes a bit more skill to make something this delicate and simple turn out this delicious. The soup was an intensely flavored tomato consommé with perfectly diced zucchini, carrot, and tomato and a few small white beans. This was finished off tableside with a spoonful of basil pesto. The individual flavors were simple, but they combined to make a really lovely, complex dish. A great way to get our palates excited for what was to follow.

Pressed Foie Gras des Landes with Air-dried Duck Breast, Fine French Beans, Shimeji Mushrooms, and Toasted Brioche:
I think we all agreed that this was the star of the show. It’s hard to even find words for how amazing this was. I’ve said this before, but sometimes with food the first bite or two has you saying “Wow! This is SO good!!!” but you sort of stop noticing after a few more bites… For me the sign of a great dish is that every single bite makes you stop and search for new way to communicate how truly fantastic the dish is (just in case it wasn’t clear from your excitement about it after each of the previous 5 bites). The balance of flavors in this dish was remarkable and, when the time inevitably came to take the final bite of this dish, we were all sad to see an empty plate in front of us. (By the way, if you think foie is cruel, feel free to let me know and I can send you my personal treatise on why only vegans have solid footing from which to make such claims.)

Roasted Sea Scallops Served with Caper and Raisin Dressing, Cauliflower Purée, and a Reduction of Port and Red Wine:
I think a perfectly cooked fresh scallop may be one of the greatest foods on earth. I remember a few months in Santa Barbara where the mussel lady at the farmers’ market brought in fresh diver scallops. Steph and I brought those home pretty much every Saturday they were there. One of life’s great tragedies (notwithstanding the big-ticket items like genocide and famine) is that frozen scallops are so very much less delicious than fresh, leaving fans of scallops who don’t live near a great fish market to enjoy them only in restaurant settings. That being said, these were damn good scallops, and perfectly cooked. The dish was a bit of a puzzle, I felt. For my palate, the cauliflower purée complimented the scallops beautifully, while the caper-raisin dressing overpowered the scallops yet worked well to reset your palate between bites (thus making each new bite of scallop just as amazing as the last). Once I figured that part out, this dish was totally awesome.

Pan-fried Monkfish Tail with Lobster and Herb Risotto with a Shellfish Reduction, Wild Asparagus, and Sauce Vierge:
We diverged a bit on choices with this course, with me and Alicia opting for seafood while Stanley went with the duck (below). The monkfish was good, but the risotto really stole the show in this one. I’ve never had a risotto so ridiculously creamy, and the big hunks of lobster meat in it certainly didn’t hurt. The monkfish was essentially just a nice compliment to this beautiful risotto. My one small gripe on this dish is that I didn’t particularly agree with the wine pairing (we were having wines paired with each course, but this is going to be overly long without going into that for every course, so I’m just pointing out this one). The sommelier went with an unoaked chardonnay with lots of acidity and minerality to balance the creaminess of the risotto (which it paired with quite well), but these qualities made it a bad match (for my palate) with the monkfish. As long as sips of wine only followed risotto bites and not monkfish bites, though, it was all good.

Castaing Duck Breast and Confit Duck Leg with Pearl Barley Risotto, Baby Carrots, Cepe Mushrooms, and Port Jus:
Stanley ordered this dish, so I only have two bites from which to judge and will just say that that was some seriously delicious duck cooked to perfection. Another great dish, as far as I could tell…

Selection of Fine Cheeses with Walnut Bread:
This is the course that always kicks Stanley's ass in tasting menus. You’re just starting to get full, and then they bring you three (delicious) hunks of fat to eat. I, however, love the cheese course. I don’t know the names of the cheeses, so I’ll just vaguely describe them. The first (on the left in the picture) I could smell as soon as the plates neared the table (which is my favorite kind of cheese). This cheese was ridiculously creamy and possessed that amazing flavor that only the stinkiest cheeses can deliver. The middle cheese was firmer and tasted a bit like a strong high-quality parmesan (though a bit softer in texture than that). Tasty, but the only one that none of us finished. The third cheese was a beautiful strong blue. The flavor reminded me a lot of Saint Agur (my favorite blue cheese on the planet) although the texture was somewhat firmer. So very very delicious…

"Pre-Dessert" – Strawberry-Basil Granita served over Panna Cotta:
This was a perfectly refreshing course after the heavy cheeses. I love the strawberry-basil combination, and the panna cotta was light enough to compliment it beautifully without detracting from the refreshing, palate-cleansing purpose of the dish.

Mint Crème Brûlée with Strawberry Sorbet:
This is another dish that was a bit of a puzzle for me. On its own with the strawberry sauce, I didn’t particularly care for this crème brûlée… Immediately follow a bite of the mint crème brûlée with a taste of the accompanying strawberry sorbet, however, and you’re in business. I’m not a huge fan of desserts, but I liked how light and fresh this was at the close of a heavy meal.

So, there you have it. Our dinner reservation was for 10pm (Stanley works late and we didn’t want to have to rush too much to get there on time) and we were at the restaurant until 2am. Verre is no French Laundry (where the three of us dined along with Steph a couple years ago), but that’s not entirely a negative statement. The food can’t compare (I’m not sure the food anywhere really can), but you also don’t have to make such a hard-core effort to acquire a reservation and the (rightfully) reverential vibe at the French Laundry is replaced at Verre by a more casual and welcoming feel. We had a wonderful time, and I’m sure I’ll remember this meal (especially that foie course…) for a long long time…