Still Eating

My husband has a tendency to work long hours and never seems to want to take me shopping for groceries.  As a result, I tend to do most of my shopping in the compound store.  And if you think the restaurant has gotten old, believe me, so has the market.  Anyway, the one good thing about this is that when he comes home at night and asks, "So, did you make anything for dinner?"  I just say "Nope." And then we get to go out to eat.  Again.  

So tonight, we went to a new restaurant that just opened up.  I know this because there is a sign out front that says,  Now Open!  I think this is officially my new favorite restaurant.  It is called the Al Bahsaly Palace Restaurant.  

It is two stories.  This is the second story.  We actually ate in the window on the left.  There were a lot of individual rooms up there but since I walked in not wearing a head covering, they put us in the window.  It was kind of nice.  

This was what the downstairs looked like.  It's the mens section.  The family section was way better.

We had to walk around the corner and up some stairs to find the entrance to the family section.  From there we took an elevator up to the next floor.  This was the lobby of the restaurant.  Looks all fancy.

This was where we were sitting.  I was super hungry so I ordered a lentil soup to start.  It was quite good.  I ate the whole thing.  The whole menu was in Arabic with no English, so our waiter was very helpful and answered all our questions. He said that it was mainly Syrian food and also Turkish and Arabic.  Luckily there were a lot of pictures so we picked a few pictures and asked him what they were and he explained them to us. 

I made the picture bigger so that you can see a little better.  Please keep in mind that these are all going to be spelled wrong because I can't read Arabic and I can only spell these things phonetically.  Now the front picture was actually round, but we had cut it in half already before I remembered to take a picture.  Also I had already taken a bite of my half.  The waiter said it was kafta with yogurt.  It was soooo good.  Above that on the left is something that at first he said was dooshka and then he changed it to something that sounded like maria.  (like the name)  He said if it was with cheese, then it is called dooshka but we ordered it with vegetable so it is maria.  Anyway, that was just the best thing that I ever tasted.  So good.  There was parsley and onion in the middle of the plate and that was good on top.  Best stuff ever.  On the right top was mixed grill with vegetables.  Also very good.  But by far, the best was the maria dooshka whatever it was.  I was so full when we finished, but evidently Matt wasn't because he ordered Om Ali.  I had tried that at the hotel when I first got here.

This is what it looked like here.  You can kind of see pistachios inside.  Now of course, if someone orders dessert, there is always room to taste it.  And so I did.  And it was soooo much better than the stuff that I ate at the hotel.  And I had really liked it at the hotel, but this was just so much better.  It was so good that I tasted it 4 times just to make sure.  Delicious.  Anyway, we ordered all that plus a Perrier and a mango juice and it came to about $45 US.  Not too bad.  Although, groceries would have probably been cheaper.  But since I have hardly any pots and pans and stuff either, there is not a whole heck of a lot that I could do with the groceries anyway.  My husband would like me to point out that it has been about a month since I wrote my "Odd Discovery" blog.  He thinks this is why I am being a bit crabby.  But did I happen to mention that in a few days he is going to Dubai and he isn't taking me?  If he thinks that I am crabby now... just wait!  

Anyway, tomorrow I am going to something called a souk.  I don't quite know what that is, but I am going on a bus from the compound.  I am thinking it may be kind of an outdoor market?  I'm not sure, but I will let you know! It's on the shopping bus schedule so there must be some kind of shopping.   I will find out soon enough!