Experiencial eating

Turns out I have more to say about food. Excessive quantities of food in particular. A few months ago I experienced my first Friday Brunch, thought I'd wait until I finished digesting to write about it. Kidding.... mostly.

dubai landmarks in chocolate

Fridays here are like Sundays in Utah (and perhaps the whole of the south excepting New Orleans), many things are closed all morning and the devout are praying or visiting their place of worship. An enterprising hotelier spotted a market among the aimless non-Muslim expats- just add vodka and Brunch was born. This is Brunch with a capital B for Booze. Most brunches get started around noon and go until 4PM. It's not like in the US where you might make a reservation for 2PM while the brunch buffet is on offer, instead you make a reservation for brunch and it's assumed you'll arrive around noon and stay until they're rolling the carts away and rolling you out the door at 4. Brunch packages come in 2 or 3 sizes. There's brunch with soft drinks which, I think, has grown away from the original intention of having a little "forbidden" entertainment while the believers were stuck at mosque, but in any case, that's always one option. Then there's frequently a beer and wine and sometimes "house spirits", what might be called "well drinks" at bars in the US , package for a bit more. Lastly, some places have the "free flowing bubbly" package which, as the name suggests, includes champagne. We're typically talking about prices in the $70-$100 range for option 1, option 2 might run $85 -$150, option 3 rarely comes

in under $100 and could go to staggering heights at the truly swank and experiential places. (Experiential as in "you need to experience this at least once in your life".) It seems extravagant but then you start thinking about what a single glass of wine or mixed drink costs and multiply that time 4 hours worth and add food, a lot of food and...

The brunch I tried- at the Sheraton at the Mall of the Emirates- bragged about its chocolate room- and for good reason. You walk through the chocolate room on your way to being seated and the aroma was out of this world. They had chocolate sculptures, petite fours, bon bons, brownies, truffles, cake pops, a chocolate fountain, tiramisu... They also were pouring a pleasant lavender tea but with a floater of dry ice smoke that somehow smelled of chocolate. You'd "drink" the smell first as the smoke dissipated and then there was just tea. The non-chocolate food of the brunch was hit or miss: grilled lamb was tender and juicy but I was underwhelmed by the sushi selection, the tandoori chicken was a little dry but there was a nice calamari salad... it wasn't especially remarkable food, but solid. Except the chocolate. We went with the mid-range drinks selection- more than soda, less than champagne and I surely drank mojitos enough to justify the bill. Headed out around 4PM to float home on the metro but was sidetracked by a home store where I impulse bought a bedspread that I later returned. Note to self: don't make decorating decisions while under the influence of brunch with chocolate room. I'll brunch again, I'm sure, but I think not so often. Not healthy for waistline, liver or pocketbook!

Had another experience in indulgent eating just this past weekend. A co-worker and her family took me out for Egyptian food. They called it lunch but it was more like all three meals for one day rolled into one plus all of your needed caloric intake for half the next day. Oof. Tasty and interesting food!

We went to a restaurant call Hadoota Masreya not too far from my house. I let them order whatever they thought was best. We began with kaware soup which tasted a lot like a chicken noodle style broth but had stuff in it that might have been softened bones or cartilage? They described it as a gelatine soup good for joint pain and I've found one online reference to something similar where the bones are boiled and softened with vinegar. I don't actually know what precisely I ate, but it was pretty good if a little disconcerting. There was also a Karob juice drink that reminded me of tamarind but was different. Maybe my favorite was the pigeon stuffed with wheat (had the mouth feel of couscous) and herbs and spices then fried crisp. yum. there was also a green herby soup called molokheyyah served over a baked rice made with milk instead of water and with tender lamb chunks baked in it, little turkish style lamb sausages, puffy bread, yogurt dip, and 2 desserts. One, considered a national dish and described by Ahmed as more of a symphony than a dish, was Umm Ali (Ali's mother) and it was a kind of pistachio bread pudding-like concoction which was so wonderful, the only thing that could convince to eat one more bite, the flavor of that dessert! wow. my performance at cleaning my plate of all the dishes served was only mediocre. My hosts, even skinny little Shaimaa, ate as though this were a normal quantity of food, they described it as more of a taster menu, actually!