Officially, we can't eat pork. Kasi nga, Islam considers pigs dirty and their meat, therefore, not fit for eating. Unofficially? Let's just say that there are times when we can enjoy pork dishes, even if we're not in Manama. (Sa Manama kasi, as in Dubai, pork-lovers are allowed to eat pork where it is largely legally available.) Di ko na lang reveal how though, to serve and protect the environment. He he. Note however that one pays an arm and a leg for a kilo of pork. Let's just say that the riyals you'll pay for a kilo, will buy three kilos, perhaps more, back home.
Popular meat choices here are chicken, beef, and lamb. And for a while now, ostrich meat has began occupying shelf space in supermarkets although I am unsure how many actually buy and eat it. (More than ostrich meat, I am more inclined to buy the empty ostrich eggshells!) Ang sabi, camel meat is also eaten hereabouts pero I have yet to actually hear of people eating it. (I'm quite sure though that camel milk is in the markets.)
Siempre, these meats must be halal.
With the scarcity of pork, chicken or beef have become substitute meats for tocino, adobo and many other pork dishes.
I never cared for lamb while in the Philippines and this inclination did not change even here despite the country's fondness for the kordero ng Diyos. As a matter of fact, lamb seems to be the official meat of Saudi Arabia (rather than camel meat) ; it is definitely served at official receptions/functions, specially at weddings.
A year ago, we were invited to our first-ever Saudi wedding banquet. Immediately, I conjured up images of a thousand-and-one-Arabian-nights setting, replete with a buffet of exotic-looking and strong-smelling Arabic and Mediterranean food. But boy was my imagination wilder than the reality! After waiting for more than two hours in a huge welcoming wedding hall full only of men being served tea and gawa (Arabic "coffee" - it's not made of the usual coffee beans but of certain spicy roots), while the groom (or several grooms, as certain families share wedding banquets) greeted well-wishers, we were ushered into an adjoining huge hall with round tables and chairs in much the same way wedding receptions at Philippine hotels are arranged. What was different was that each of the round tables had a huge aluminum plate (actually, the size of a large Orocan basin) where lamb (apparently stewed in a variety of spices) sat on a bed of aromatic long-grained white rice. There were no plates nor spoons nor forks though. Each guest had to partake of the main dish with his bare hands. Stations for fruits, softdrinks and water were put up all around the hall. Unsurprisingly, the huge hall was also surrounded by several washing stations. Personally, it was a let-down as I imagined a more lavish reception. But I was so thankful that I finally had first-hand experience of this bit of Saudi/Arabic culture/tradition.
Because lamb is quite a staple at wedding banquets, most wedding halls seem to retain the smell of cooked lamb.
When my Bebe has a hankering for lamb, we usually dine out as I don't fancy cooking this meat myself. The Intercon's Mondo Restaurant, probably serves the best as far as our own Michelin Guide is concerned. Zee Noodles for a time also served great lamb chops but we were told that lately, it has become too pricey and so it will no longer be on the menu. Certainly, lamb chops and other variations of lamb recipes (including mandi which is a stew of lamb brains and innards), abound and are served in many eating places in the Kingdom but most of these are cooked with Arab eaters in mind and just may not be suited to the Filipino tongue. Don't most of us shy away from lamb since it is usually maanggo (pungent)?
Seafood is also popular pero quite expensive and usually parang food of the more well-off. Once nga when we were invited to a picnic in the desert, we brought along halabos na hipon to the potluck lunch. The Pakistanis with us were so pleasantly amazed since they said they could only afford to eat shrimps during celebratory feasts. You see, many expatriates here from East Asia seem to subsist only on a daily menu of bread and dairy such as yoghurt (called laban in Arabic) or white cheese. Seafood shops however seem to be the suki of many Filipinos. In fact, many seafood sellers (who are also predominantly East Asians) at these shops already know many Tagalog/Filipino words/phrases precisely because Filipinos form the bulk of these shops' clientele.
To be sure, there are a lot of different restaurants in the Kingdom, serving various cuisines. Seafood restaurants are a dime a dozen and indeed, they are mostly patronized by Saudis. But there are also Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Thai and Italian restaurants that do brisk business with both Saudis and expatriates, Filipinos included. For a time, there even was a Portuguese restaurant (Nando's) but its outlet here in Riyadh has since closed shop. With the proliferation of Filipinos in the Kingdom, there are also Filipino (truly Filipino or somehow Asian to include Thai or Chinese or Indonesian cuisines) restaurants but these tend to be where many Filipinos live or gather (such as at the old city center or near hospitals).
There are also a smattering of specialty restaurants such as those that serve only Tex-Mex food or steaks (there's a Tony Roma waiting to open in Oleya). What Saudi Arabia has a lot of are fast-food restaurants (McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Burger King, KFC, etc.), coffee shops (both home-grown or global chain franchises such as Starbucks and Seattle's Best), juice bars, sandwich shops (think Subway) and shawarma stalls. Hotels also boast of restaurant outlets (specialty or those that serve various kinds of cuisines on so-called theme nights -- seafood night, grill night, etc.). Certainly, the Kingdom also abounds in the derisively called rice-and-fly eateries that serve the usual kabsa (grilled chicken or lamb on a bed of rice served with vegetable salad and dips) or chicken broasted (deep-fried chicken portions).
Our favorite kabsa is from a restaurant called Cabrito's. It sounds Italian but it's actually a true-blue Saudi enterprise. Its kabsa is quite unique since the chicken (or if you wish, lamb or rabbit or pigeon) is freshly grilled. Cabrito's serves it on a bed of rice garnished with raisins (as well as caramelized onion strips until a few months back) and obviously steamed with a dash of olive oil and some spices (we see/taste traces of cardamom and anise). Kabsa at this eating place is also served with huge slices of fresh onions, pepper and wedges of lemon as garnishings. (Trivia: most of these kinds of eating places that serve Arabic fare usually have a section for those who prefer to eat food on the floor and another, albeit smaller section, for those who prefer to eat at dining tables.) On the side, there's also hot/spicy salsa of tomatoes and chili and a serving of tahina (I'm not sure what it's made of but it looks like diluted yoghurt to me). The salsa is great with the chicken and so very Filipino to my taste but the tahina is something I have yet to acquire the taste for. At Cabrito's, we also usually go for a dessert called kanufa, to end our meals. It is a freshly-baked sweet in a small round pan that looks like, and indeed cooked like, our native bibingka but instead of batter, it is filled with a custard-like concoction wrapped in what appears to be very wiry strands of dough and which resembles a thinner version of our pansit bijon.
Newly-arrived OFWs are sometimes served chicken kabsa immediately and most get shocked at the taste possibly because of the turmeric in the chicken or in the rice. Pretty soon, however, kabsa becomes a staple in an OFW's meal. It's relatively cheap (usually served as half-a- chicken) and filling.
Equally popular is chicken broasted (the word is quite a malaprop since the chicken is neither roasted nor broiled but deep-fried after being rolled in a bit of salt and flour and stored for a bit in a chiller). It's usually served consisting of four chicken portions - wing, breast, leg and thigh - thereby leaving out many other parts which the early OFWs simply asked from chicken shops for free, to turn into an adobo of chicken liver and balun-balunan or chicharong balat ng manok or even chicken chocolate (dinuguan using chicken blood). But the shopowners have since become wiser and now charge Filipinos anything between five and ten riyals per a small plastic bag of these discarded chicken parts.
Our favorite chicken broasted is by Green Hut (used to be called Green Chalet) which serves its chicken with a very appetizing humus (blended chick peas with olive oil and a pinch of lemon, with a small portion of garlic mayonnaise added for that tangy and garlikcy taste) and a fresh batch of potato chips. I usually say that one sure-fire indication that a business has thrived is longevity. Green Hut has been in its same location since I first set foot in Riyadh (in 2003) and it has been there even before. Besides, it has often been busy with take-outs.
Left to right: Blogger and guest (actually a Bell Labs scientist) with a long version of Assaraya's freshly-baked bread to go with your special humus and Assaraya Turkish Restaurant's facade at night.
Grilled fish swimming in a salad of vegetables.
On the matter of fruit juices, apart from our all-time favorite fruit cocktail, we also enjoy of late calorific avocado smoothie, a cold bottle of Rauch's apple juice or a combo of Nature's Best freshly-squeezed orange juice and a few ounces of 7-Up. We used to enjoy Rauch's peach juice but it has disappeared from the market shelves. We sometimes also have a thirst for the NABs (such as Holstein with its mango, peach, apple, and pineapple flavors) but it's just once-in-a-while. Ditto for softdrinks staples (Pepsi, Coke, etc.) except for root beer which my Bebe favors when he indulges his root beer float craving.
For OFWs like my Bebe and I who have no time to cook breakfast, our current breakfast fare would be a steaming cup of coffee with either donuts (from Dunkin Donuts), egg and cream cheese sandwiches or our favorite Kraft jubna (jubna is actually an Arabic word for cheese while Kraft refers to the brand of white cream cheese popular here). Jubna is akin to pizza although the round dough is pulled at two opposite directions which elongates the dough. It is topped with a generous dollop of Kraft and baked in the dome-shaped earthen oven fired not with wood (although I believe that in the olden times, this would be the requisite fuel) but with the more-modern LPG. We make sure we pick them up along the way before heading to the office.
People at the office go on a communal breakfast on Wednesdays (our last day of the work week) and feast on Turkish pizzas, all kinds of flat breads including tamis (flat bread sprinkled with sugar on top), all kinds of dhal (Indian sauces/dips) and foul (foul madama beans mashed and flavored with spices, with versions ranging from Pakistani to Sudanese). There's pickled grape leaves and yoghurt and cream cheese as well. It might be a feast shared by many but surprisingly, they don't really cost a feast's fortune.
The flat breads are cooked interestingly enough by mostly Pakistani bakers. Big round flat doughs are plastered inside ovens that look like giant urns on the ground, by tossing the dough against the oven's walls. Not a few minutes go by when they're done. The bakers simply hook up the now crisply-baked dough with a special long rod and takes it out of the urn-like oven. Ergo, it's now baked flat bread that is piping hot and ready to be served.
There are no bakeries (BreadTalk or even The French Baker come to mind; bakeries here are more like bread factories) in Riyadh but there are quite a few pastry shops with some combined with roasteries - or those that sell both sweets and nuts and spices of all kinds. This means that there are no stores (well, except the flat bread bakers which only sell flat breads and nothing else) that sell only bread. One has to go to the grocery or supermarket for that, to get your fill of pan de sal, or of sliced bread, or buns or rolls. Our favorite pastry shop treats are the chocolate mousse cake or the cherry cheesecake (though Cheesecake Factory and Ganache offer stiff competition) from King's Pastry and baclava and its variants invariably from Sa'adeddin or Diplomat, while hotels come a close second as sources for fresh cakes and pastries (the Riyadh Marriott's black forest cake is soft and sumptuous). I observe that apart from chocolate, pastry shops here are so enamored with pistacchio that they smear its powdered form, if not whole or halved nut pieces, on cakes, baclava and even on ice cream/gelato.
Which brings us to the topic of the proliferation of ice cream labels (both home-grown and foreign - think Haagen Dazs and Baskin-Robbins) and dairy and fruit juice companies. It could be that I have been away from home too long and have become unfamiliar with the variety of dairy and fruit juice products available in the Philippines, but barring this, I have never seen a wider range of products at the supermarkets - from fruit-flavored yoghurt to fruit-flavored milk, to Tropicana, to Nature's Best....
Indeed, the supermarkets are a best way of getting a handle on the food choices of Saudis and expatriates in the Kingdom for there you will find all the kinds of olives and cheeses and spices and pickles you can find, apart from the myriad vegetables (both home-grown and exotic), canned goods, bottled delights and other stuff I may only find at Rustan's in the Philippines. Imagine seeing the usual red and green bell peppers, in addition to orange and yellow ones. Imagine white cheese from Hungary and from France. Imagine olives (green, black, stuffed, giant) from Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Imagine mussels (frozen) from New Zealand, caviar from Siberia and Angus beef from the Land Down Under. Imagine mangoes from South Africa, bananas from Brazil, and kiwi from (again) New Zealand. Methinks, Saudi Arabia is the world's veritable supermarket.
And just as Filipino restaurants have sprouted in neighborhoods where Filipinos tend to live, so do Filipino supermarkets that sell not just Filipino stuff but also other Asian (Indonesian, Chinese and Thai) foodstuff.
Lunch nowadays (at least during the work week) is invariably fast-food fare from a nearby mall.
If you've not guessed it by now, I should point out that most of our fancy dining activities are confined to dinner.
Talks over coffee are best done at Starbuckla (the Starbucks along Oleya where so many gays, even Saudis, seem to gather) or at a nearby Dr. Cafe or Coffee Day or Java Cafe (it's not the coffee there for me but the iced tea) or Costa Cafe (where the best chocolate cupcake is, straight from Kuwait, or so we're told). The irony is, while my Bebe favors hot or cold cafe mocha, I almost always go for hot choco.
It goes without saying that more often than not, you will find us at our favorite Filipino turu-turo restos. Hacienda comes to mind although of late, we've also been frequenting La Paz Batchoy.
After all, pritong isda with sawsawan ng patis at suka and freshly-steamed white rice, are more than enough to make me forget I'm in Saudi and away, at least for some time, from their exotic gastronomic delights.
Home, it seems, is where your palate is.
