A Taste of Bahrain

So many of the rewarding things about being a teacher are the often-lengthy holidays.  When you live in the middle of the world, your question is always: should I travel during this one or should I just take staycation with my sweatpants and my couch?  Since I am planning a trip to Vietnam in the spring, and since the only place I'd want to be during Christmas is with my family any-who, I chose the staycation and my sweatpants.  However, there's only so many days you can spend laying on your couch, and thus these are good times to explore the local things Bahrain has to offer.

It can be difficult sometimes when you live in such a small country, especially when you are used to living in such a huge country.  In the States, we could hop in a car, drive for hours, hike through some pretty stunning nature, etc when on vacation.  When in China, we could hope on a train and in a few short hours be in another part of the country.  There is a lot to do in Bahrain, but you do have to actively look for it...or have friends who do most of the looking for you. Thank you Amy!

Besides seeing Star Wars with the entire world, this year we took advantage of some local holiday promotions.  Many of the restaurants in a trendy little neighborhood in Bahrain did a promotion this year.  Participating restaurants advertised a Taste Tour at the yearly art instillation in the same neighborhood.  If you picked up a booklet, you could bring said booklet into each restaurant and for 3BD per restaurant, you got a sample platter of what each restaurant has to offer.

Look at this cute (and sometimes strange) art!

Basically, it was a good opportunity to try some of these restaurants (you know, the ones you think of maybe going to, but instead choose a tried-and-true favorite to guarantee a satisfying food experience) without committing to a full (and possibly disappointing) meal at an unknown venue.

Each restaurant stamped your booklet and at the end of the meal, you rated the restaurant on presentation, service, taste of food, ambiance, overall experience, and whether or not we would consider visiting again.  We ranked them on a 1-5 scale, with 1 being the worst and 5 being the best (except for the last question which was yes or no).

    


So naturally when we met up in 338 district in Adliya, we decided on a "Go Big or Go Home" approach and we were going to hit as many restaurants as we could before bursting.

Our first stop was Cafe Amsterdam and Barcelona.  These are two different restaurants but they share an outside seating space and we are pretty sure they are owned by the same people.  It is right on the edge of this neighborhood and directly across from the Gulf Hotel.  The best part of this neighborhood is that everything is within walking distance through little back streets and at this time of year, that art instillation makes these back alleys extra cute.  It's also never cold in Bahrain, so walking about in December can be something you do in sandals.

So we sat down and they passed out menus.  We slid out the booklet and told them we'd like to do the tasting from both Barcelona and Cafe Amsterdam.  We asked for just the one platter, despite their telling us (and this would happen repeatedly throughout the day) that the platter was best for just one. But knowing we planned on hitting several restaurants, we insisted that we would share the one platter.  This was a good decision, trust me.

We ordered drinks and while waiting for our platters, began to rate our restaurant's ambiance, which we gave full marks for because it was super cute--terraced outdoor seating, a stage (empty of performers because it was 2pm), lots of flowers and fairy lights.  We imagined it was quite adorable in the evenings.

Yummmmmmmm!

I would categorize Cafe Amsterdam as being like fancier comfort food; it was a lot fried and things came in creamy sauces.  We got fish and chips, salmon puffs with cream cheese, and muscles. I was in love with their french fries; they were like the think wedges, no seasoning, just some salt. 

Barcelona was...different.  One dish was seafood in what looked like a fish bowl with a martini glass in it.  The dry ice was in the fish bowl, under the martini glass, so our seafood was smoking.  Which is more than I need seafood to do.  In the jar was warm veggies and what I swear to god they said was tuna, but it tasted like chicken (it may have been chicken and we just misheard her).  We are not sure why it was served like it was pickled in a mason jar.  The little cups in the center none of us were sure what they were and I believe Christina described it best as a deconstructed french fry (again, not what I'm looking for in a french fry): it was a little potato cup that we believed, based on taste, was filled with a mixture of ketchup and mayo.  I will say this however, those sticks?  They are fried cheese...on a stick.  And they were pretty great.  It was like a fancy, social acceptable version of eating the crispy cheesy bits from a pizza pan.  

Cheese on a stick!  Could life get any better?!

Overall we were pleased with our first stop.  And it was really pretty.  And they had the literal cutest bathrooms. 

Look at this! And the toilets flushed by pulling a little ring at the end of a chain! It was everything I could want in a bathroom. 

Now we were quite pleased with this first stop, although man it did not hold a candle to our next stop: Passion.  Like so many restaurants in Bahrain, Passion is a fusion restaurant that combines select Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Thai, and American dishes.  But the stand-out for Passion is it's loose tea selection.  It also has iced tea, which is great because that does not seem to be a thing that has caught on throughout most of Bahrain.  

So we sat down and eagerly awaited our platter.  Passions is super cute, particularly it's outdoor seating.  Its got a half wall around the courtyard with plenty of trees giving you a good balance of closing  you off from the street and not making you feel too closed in.  So now that we were pretty much food critics, we gave it full marks for ambiance.  I don't have any pictures of the place...whoops. 

Then they brought out this adorable thing. 

I mean, look at all that loose tea!

When the server delivered this lovely tray, she also explained why Passion had paired it with a particular tea.  It took her like 2 minutes.  They had this stuff rehearsed.  I was impressed.  

We left Passions feeling pretty good, upon which we made a mistake.  We decided to check out something called Salad Boutique.  Now I'd originally crossed this off the list of possibilities because of the name, but Amy pointed out that the platter did not include jus salad and I was like, well may be it just has an unfortunate and misleading name?  So we went.   This is what greeted us. 

Keep in mind this experience, and our opinion, represents only what they decided to offer for the Taste Tour. 

Despite a really cute interior (if you like fluer de lis, mirrors, and lots of pink and silver) we were not particularly impressed with this restaurants platter.  Now it is important to note that this does not reflect the full menu of the Salad Boutique and it is possible that it's menu is fantastic, but it did not impress us with it's contribution to the Taste Tour. 

Our next stop was Amy's favorite by far, although I think we all had different favorites.  It is called Houseboat and like Passions, its another fusion restaurant. Its noodles were really good and the peanut sauce I would literally like to put on everything I eat for the rest of my life. 

I have also heard great things about their sushi. 

At this point we were feeling pretty full; we'd been to four restaurants.  But we felt we could power through a fifth, so we marched our way through Block 338, admiring more of that art, on our way to La Cuccina, an Italian restaurant.  Which I am glad I did because it was wonderful; it was like the best, most wonderful comfort food.  I would like a bucket of their mushroom risotto and I would like to eat it on my couch...maybe with some of Houseboat's peanut sauce? 

So at this point we were about to die.  Because we ate so much wonderful food.  We struggled (you know, with locomotion) back to our cars, casually viewing the art again, with a full appreciation for the culinary experince to be had a five new restaurant and gratitude (even through the pain of food baby) that we did not spend the day on our couches watching Netflix.   I was also reminded that it is important to make sure, when moving to a new country, that you make the effort to find things to do, even when your new home doesn't necessarily have the same things to offer that your previous homes have had.  The Taste Tour was fun and the get-out-and-explore attitude served us well as it encouraged us to find New Years plans, which I will blog about soon.  Happy 2016--do something new today!