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Food in the Middle East: Part 2 Now that I have my own apartment, I usually cook at home, though I do eat out once in a while, especially on Thursday nights to kick off the weekend. My favorite restaurant here is Shater Abbas, a fast-food restaurant where they serve Middle Eastern-style grilled meat, mostly on kebabs. They serve it with a large, flat chewy Middle Eastern bread that’s baked fresh from a hot, brick oven. The flat bread is something like a warm tortilla but is larger, thicker and much chewier, and is about the best bread I’ve ever eaten. I usually order two of them, along with my meat dish and a large order of hummus that I dip my grilled meat into. I’ve gotten hooked here on hummus.
I’ve also gotten hooked on dates – the kind you eat, not the kind you get dressed up for – and especially during Ramadan. Dates, with their sticky, caramel-like coating, are very popular here, in this land of dates. Every year during Ramadan I buy a few boxes of them, like the boxes of Girl Scout “Thin Mint” cookies that I buy every spring in the U.S.
Almost every American fast-food chain can be found here in Doha, including KFC: Kentucky Fried Chicken. In fact, of all the fast-food American restaurants in the Middle East, by far the most popular is KFC. Whether you’re in Dubai, Riyadh or Muscat, the most popular fast-food restaurant in town is KFC, and that’s true here in Doha, as well. There’s a KFC at the City Center Mall food court, among the 20 other restaurants there, and it always has the longest line. Arabs especially love KFC and there’s always a line of white-robed Arab men and black-robed Arab women waiting for their fried chicken, either Original Recipe or Extra Crispy.
I lived with a rotating mix of roommates at Asas apartments during my first few months in Qatar, before I got my own place at the Beverly Hills Tower, so I ate mostly takeout food then and didn’t cook at home much. But now that I have my own apartment (which I share with my roommate, Arul) and have unpacked my cookware, I cook at home almost every night – though I still buy a Little Burned Chicken with biriyani rice at Carrefour once in a while. Carrefour, being a huge grocery store, is pretty well stocked, but their clientele is from literally all around the world, so you see all kinds of exotic foods on the shelves there. At a Costco or Walmart back in the U.S., there might be a small section devoted to foreign or ethnic foods. Well, that’s what the entire store here is like, so you can be adventurous and try things from all over the world (and I have). Most of their food, though, is geared toward Arab, Indian and British palates.
Qatar’s incoming shipments of food are sporadic, so if you find something that you like at any grocery store here, you should buy a lot of it because you may not see it on the shelves again for several months, if ever. I hit the jackpot a few months ago when I spotted my favorite barbeque sauce, K.C. Masterpiece, on the Carrefour shelves one night. I bought eight bottles, which I cheerfully stuffed into my daypack at the checkout counter, feeling like I had just won the lottery. They were sold out a few days later when I checked again, but I’m content because I still have four bottles of my prized sauce left.
I couldn’t believe my eyes a couple months ago when I walked down the aisles of Carrefour one evening and saw a large shipment of Old El Paso Mexican food on the shelves: refried beans, taco shells and, best of all, real salsa. This wasn’t the thin and sickeningly-sweet salsa they sell here from an Arab company called “Dolly’s” (Dolly has apparently never been to Mexico). No, this was real Old El Paso salsa made with cilantro and big chunks of tomatoes. My eyes got large (and then covetous) when I spotted that treasure trove of Old El Paso goodies, so I bought as much as I could carry home with me. Then I went back the next night and bought another large stash: in total, 12 large cans of refried beans, several boxes of taco shells and 15 bottles of salsa, which should last me about a year. So long, Dolly!
I’ve been eating a lot of Arab and Indian food here – chicken tikka masala has become one of my favorites – while I carefully avoid most British food. There are many more Brits in Qatar than Americans, as I’ve said before, and while most of them are nice, their food, frankly, is an “acquired taste,” let’s say. Most British food is either extremely bland or is filled with fat and lard, or is just plain gross to us Americans (blood pudding, anyone?) British food is not my cup of tea, you could say, but I have gotten hooked on what the English call “tea bread.” These are pans of sweetened breads that I often eat for breakfast on weekend mornings as I watch my sporting events from America. My favorite weekend breakfast is chocolate tea bread (which is like unfrosted brownies) slathered with butter, which I eat with bananas and milk. There's nothing better in the morning.
By the way, there are no wells or streams in Qatar so all the drinking water here is desalinated from the ocean. It tastes fine, but is slightly metallic. Many large buildings have a water storage tank, usually near the top floor, and the tanks aren’t always cleaned as often as they should be. So while the public water system is totally safe to drink, I use a Brita filter to help purify my water. Many folks here opt instead to have five-gallon jugs of bottled water delivered to their doorstep, but you know me: I'm too cheap (there's that word again).
To summarize, it’s taken me a while but I’ve gotten used to the food (and water) situation in Qatar and have really grown to love some of the Indian and Arab dishes that are common here. The food situation, like everything else here, was an adjustment for me during my first few months in Qatar, but I survived because if you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat just about anything. I don’t have that problem anymore, however, and now I worry more about my waistline expanding than shrinking.
Above left: The grilled meat platter at Shater Abbas is awesome. The bread (left) is like a chewy tortilla and is delicious. Beware of the green peppers (right), though. They can burn your tongue off. Ooh, hurts so good! Above right: Enjoying a delicious breakfast on the weekend with chocolate tea bread and butter. I'm watching the volleyball match from Western Washington University, played a few hours earlier back in the States.
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