One of the great things about the town where we live is
that there are so many foreign workers who bring their delicious food to
Saudi Arabia. We love to eat bukhari from Afghanistan, and frequent the
Pakistani naan place at least once a month. There is also a delicious
Indian food place near our compound, which has better food than what we
ate in India!
This past weekend we went out for breakfast at a place called
Vitamin (or feetameen if you are sounding it out in Arabic), which sells Yemeni food. One of Brian's coworkers had taken him
to this restaurant a few weeks ago for breakfast after working the night shift.
Vitamin is a small shop on a busy street; most people passing by
probably wouldn't give it a second glance.
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| Apparently this says Vitamin! |
Many restaurants in Saudi Arabia are segregated--single men
sit on one side, and families or women without their husbands sit on
the other. They have separate entrances, and the two sections are
usually divided by a wall or they are on separate floors. It is always a
little unclear, however, what we're supposed to do when we try to eat
at a restaurant that does not have a designated family section. Once, we tried to go to an Arabic food place without a
family section, and I was stopped at the door by a man who wagged his
finger at me. We took our food to go. However, the last two times we've tried new places, I've
been (somewhat) welcomed in. This was the case for our Yemeni breakfast
place.
We walked into Vitamin and the men working saw Brian and
started screaming "Amreeki Amreeki!" which is the Arabic word for
American. We're not sure if they remembered him from the last time or if
they just assumed we were American, but either way they were really
excited to see us.
We walked up to the counter and were given an "English"
menu full of things like mexique shakshouka and Uou.S.A (no clue). Their lack of
English speaking ability combined with their intense desire to make sure
we enjoyed our meal led the men working to call in another man from off
the street, who knew key vocabulary words like eggs and spicy. He helped us order.
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| These scribbles mean we're getting something good! |
We ordered a number of different dishes, each more
delicious than the last. First up was a falafel sandwich. Though we
probably could have done without it (we ordered SO much other food), the
price was right at just about $0.50. I particularly enjoyed the
smattering of French fries on the sandwich, as is typical in this area
of the world. Not so typical was the entire sliced hard boiled egg, but
we were there at breakfast time...
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| A substantial falafel sandwich for only 50 cents! |
Next was fasoulia, which consisted of very finely chopped
scrambled eggs mixed with spicy beans, then baked until a nice crust
formed on top. It was served with an enormous warm flatbread, which
somehow managed to be both soft and crusty at the same time.
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| Eggs + Beans = Delicious Breakfast |
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| Biggest flatbread ever! |
Finally, we had masoub, which is one of the things Brian
raved about after going to Vitamin with his coworker. It is made up of
bananas, bread, honey, and probably a lot of other good stuff, and has the texture of oatmeal with a
taste similar to banana bread.
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| This was the bomb! So good! |
As we were eating, one of the workers came around and
brought us a cup of tea. Or was it coffee? He didn't know enough English
to tell us anything except that it was free. Remarkably, it tasted like
Louisiana sweet tea, only hot, and with a slight flavor of cardamom. I
shudder to think of how much sweetened condensed milk went into it to
turn it that color, but it was definitely worth the calories.
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| Coffee? Tea? It didn't matter, it was amazing |
Total cost of breakfast (including 2 bottles of water): $7
Sitting in a restaurant in Saudi NOT in the family section: priceless
Sitting in a restaurant in Saudi NOT in the family section: priceless
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| I do what I want |
