The other night we ended up going out for dinner at a place near the hotel. Crossing the street in Saudi reminded me a lot of Macau because, well... the cars just don't always stop. There was a crossing signal but it really didn't seem to mean all that much. Anyway, we decided to go to an Arabic restaurant that Matt had been to before. The thing about restaurants here though is that there are two sections. There is a men's section and a family section. It seems as though the men's section is generally in the front where the people from the street can see, and the family section is in the back or upstairs... away from prying eyes. If you are a man eating alone, or with other men, you must eat in the men's section. If you are a man eating with your wife, or a group of women eating together, then you eat in the family section.
The restaurant that we went to had a big glass storefront and inside was the men's section. You could see some stairs at the back of the restaurant so we thought that this may be where the family section was. Since Matt has been in Saudi by himself for the last three months, he has yet to sit in or see the family section of a restaurant. When we got to the restaurant, Matt walked in and asked them where the family section was and the waiter there told him that it was outside and around the corner. He must have looked confused because the waiter walked us outside and down the block a bit to the corner and then pointed to a neon sign.
It's kind of hard to see but the neon sign says Family section. So you go in that door and then up the stairs and you are in the family section of the restaurant without having to ever set so much as one foot in the men's section. Now the family section has all of these tables that are partitioned off so that women can remove their head wraps (I really need to look up what the actual word is for that) and eat without being seen. They sat us in a corner table that was all partitioned off and there was a curtain covering where you enter.
This is the view from the table. Basically the "walls" are partitions that can be moved around. They put us in a room with a curtain, probably because I wasn't wearing my head scarf. (I still don't like to wear it.) The whole point of the separate room is so that you can take your headscarf off while you eat and not be seen. For a while, we were the only ones up there but eventually they sat a family in the room next to us and they had another partition (not a curtain) blocking the entrance. Apparently the waiter has to knock when they are coming in so that the woman can cover back up again. It was kind of a pain for the waiters to keep dealing with pushing aside the curtain so he eventually asked if he could just leave it open, did we mind? We said that was fine so he opened it back up again. It looked like this.
Now I am a big fan of hummus and baba ganoush and tabouli,(not sure if I am spelling these correctly so please forgive me) all of which I generally used to buy at the local Trader Joe's. I thought they were really good. I was wrong. The stuff that they have here is INCREDIBLE! I'm telling you I could live off this stuff, and once I get back to the compound, I am probably going to try and do that. We bought two very large containers of the stuff at the local market and they lasted maybe a day and a half before we inhaled them both. Once I leave here, I will be forever ruined for anything we have back home. Kind of like the mango we used to get in Macau. There is no comparison. Anyway, here is some of the food.
Starting from the back is the baba ganoush, then there is assorted pickles (love those) and in the front there is the hummus. It came with pita and a bowl of assorted veggies and mint leaves.
For dinner Matt ordered the lamb. I tasted it... very good.
I can't remember what this was called but it was some sort of ground meat with eggplant. Very good.
After all that food we were pretty full and we did not order dessert... but apparently it came with it anyway.
And look at how much dessert they brought out! But of course if they bring it... well, I am going to try it. The two white things were some kind of a milk custard. Very yummy. Definitely had some of that rose water in it. The square things were some kind of an almond sponge cake. It was good but very sweet. I took one look at the little round things and I knew they were not for me. I could see that they were loaded with honey. But I did break one open with my fork and as predicted, tons of honey came out. Too sweet for me.
Not sure if you can tell here... just take my word for it. Would I lie to you? Of course not. Lastly, the long stick things that look like eggrolls. Those were very good. They had some sort of a custard inside. Yummy!
I think I need a manicure! Anyway... that was what I had for dinner, in the privacy of my own little partitioned off table. Tonight we are going to a party at the US embassy. I actually get to wear something that someone will actually see! Just have to figure out what Embassy Casual is....
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