I took a walk during my holiday break to gather a few pictures of the signs that are amusing due to spelling or images or business name choice. First is the Exzotica Restaurant which is a Russian restaurant.
It had the ever present chef image. He is labeled “pectopah” and I had to do a little research to discover that is the transliteration for the Russian word for restaurant.
Here we have the Fast Food Restaurant and the Fast Meal Restaurant which are about two doors down from each other.
Below is the Generous Visitors Restaurant. I’m not sure if this means that they are generous to visitors or they expect visitors to be generous.
Archive for the ‘food’ Category
Restaurant Signs
December 11, 2009Cat comparisons
December 9, 2009We have another new favorite restaurant. This one is on Al Muteena street not far from our apartment. It is a Arabic food restaurant, but our waiter is Tunisian and loves to practice his English on us. He is very interesting and amusing. He gives us a hard time if we don’t come every few days. He counts and tells us if he knew where we lived he would have come to check on us. Our first time at the restaurant I tried to order “fool” which is a bean dish, but he told me “No, no good…Egyptian…you don’t want.” So, I guess I’ll never get to test it for myself. Not that I’ve had enough fool to know good from bad. I also ordered an avocado shake for my drink. He was taken aback by this and warned me that it is a “strong drink.” It turned out to be heavenly. It is an avocado smoothy with a dollup of cream and blanched almonds. Yummy! I finished it off and he was impressed by that. So, now I don’t have to tell him what drink I want. He knows.
Like all restaurants with outdoor seating, this one had a stray hanging around to clean up any scraps. This is the healthiest street cat we’ve seen. From a cursory examination, it appeared to be a female, although she must have been spade.
She had a sweet little voice, so we we dallied with the idea of exchanging Oliver for her. But, upon interviewing her, we found she lacked certain qualifications. She doesn’t play fetch. She probably wouldn’t let me cradle her like a baby.
When we got home, we gave Oliver the new toy we picked up at the pharmacy. (Yes, we get our cat toys at the pharmacy because he likes gel toe cushions.) He entertained us greatly reveling in his new toy. So, we’ll keep the noisy little knothead.
Dubai Tour 4
November 28, 2009
From the Deira side of the Creek we took an abra (small boat taxi) to the Dubai Heritage Village which is near the mouth of the Creek in an area of Dubai known as Shindhaga. This was a residential area and pearl diving area. By the time we arrived, most of the village was closed for the evening, but this one woman was still making traditional foods. She made a traditional flat bread and dessert balls that are simlar to plain donuts that are served with sesame seeds and a syrup. We enjoyed watching the technique and enjoyed tasting the breads.
More Manga Sushi
October 27, 2009Here are two news articles about Manga Sushi (five days apart and in the same newspaper – what’s that about? Slow news day?)
Sushi You – Khaleejtimes August 7, 2009
Emirati Serves Up a Taste of Japan – Khaleejtimes August 2, 2009
In a world of foreign franchises, it is nice to see a locally owned restaurant with a unique flavor. (Actually, if you’ve been reading this blog for very long, you know that prefer to eat at locally owned restaurants with unique flavor, as a rule. I didn’t mean to imply this was the only one. Sushi is unique in the locally owned realm, however. Some restaurants seem new to us, but they are just franchises from other countries. )
Bu Qtair
October 26, 2009Last week we met up with friends and completely new people we’ve never met before at Bu Qtair Cafeteria for lovely fried fish. There were about 18 people in our group. Tom Gara and Rami were having some kind of private hat contest. Tom is sporting a red fez these days. Rami wore a Russian army cap. Rami won the contest. Daddybird could have blown them both out of the water with his Viking hat, had he known. 
Rami is collecting money to pay for the meal, but it looks more like a Russian black market deal going down.
You might remember Bu Qtair from a post last June – https://livingthetravelchannel.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/buqtair/
Manga Sushi
October 23, 2009[Warning! Rachel, if you are reading this make sure you are sitting down and wearing flame retardant clothing. You might even want to have a fire extinguisher nearby. You might just burst into flame from pure envy.]
Manga Sushi
I stumbled upon an article in the online newspaper about a restaurant called Manga Sushi. We had to go check it out.
Manga Sushi chefs
Dragon Ball Z was playing on the big screen behind the sushi chefs.
The Menu
The menu included manga (Japanese comics, for the uninitiated) on each page. They also had a collection of manga novels on shelves and invited customers to read.
Green Tea Milkshake
This is Daddybird’s green tea milkshake dessert. Yummy! (I had a sip just to make sure.)
Stuffed Pear dessert
This is my stuffed pear dessert – Asian pear with blue berries, raspberries and black berries with a scoop of strawberry ice cream. Yummy, also, and you can even eat the dish, sort of.
The sushi was very tasty, too, but I did not take a picture. I was too busy eating it. (It took us a while to find the restaurant, so it was past dinner time and I was hungry!)
The Best Part – they play what seems to be their theme song and all the staff, including the chefs stop to dance. See for yourself:
Duck King
October 23, 2009
Duck King Restaurant
Safestway
October 15, 2009We went to the Safestway grocery store in order to buy cat litter that we think will actually clump (only time will tell). Here are a few things we saw.
Virtually lint free toilet paper
What exactly is virtually lint free toilet paper? Who among you has ever wondered about the amount of lint your toilet paper might give off?
Canadian style sour cream
If it is Canadian style sour cream, why is there a large Slavic man on the carton?
This is the subtle and cleverly disguised DIET FOOD section. The Air Freighted sign actually applies to the lunch meat and hot dogs on the other side of the aisle. It’s not a fat joke, or anything.
Special Ostadi
October 2, 2009We had dinner at Special Ostadi again last night. If you want a glimpse at the inside of the restaurant, view the video from last June. https://livingthetravelchannel.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/special-ostadi/
We met up with some of our favorite friends – Uzma and Rami. Rami brought his friend Khaled, who was a “Special Ostadi virgin” according to Rami. Rami wanted to share the delight that is wonderful food and friendly service with his friend.
It is kinda like the television show Cheers in that we walk in, they recognize us, welcome us warmly, they know approximately how long it has been since our last visit, and you just can’t beat that.
It is a family owned and run business. The father runs the cash register and the sons serve as waiters, but not just your run of the mill waiters. They are comical and always make us happy to be there. Khaled (the waiter, not our dinner companion Khaled) was wearing his Michael Jackson tribute t-shirt and graced us with a little “Who’s Bad” choreography.
We had a blast. We tipped about 40% and Paul had trouble convincing the father to keep the extra amount. We look forward to many, many meals at Special Ostadi.
The Green line of the Metro goes within a few blocks of the restaurant and it runs right by our apartment. I think this is an omen. I can’t wait for the line to open.
Living the Travel Channel 