Let's Talk About The Food (Prague)

Before flying out to Prague, I had heard from a good number of people who had previously been, that the food was no good. So let’s talk about the food…

On the first night, we had dinner at Uno Mediterranean Restaurant & Bar (located on the last level of Palladium Shopping Mall). I wanted to try out a traditional Czech meal so I ordered the beef Goulash, which is served with potato pancakes and red onions. I have to admit, it was quite good (a lot better than I expected)! We even ended up having dinner here again on our last night, where I had a fresh greek salad, mixed with balkan cheese, lettuce, cucumber, red onion, peppers, olives, tomatoes and olive oil. And as a main course, Gnocchi pasta, served with salmon, spinach and creamy sauce which was also delicious!

But as a Burger Addict, Burgers is what I was really into trying out! So on our first full day after the walking tour, we found ourselves back at Old Town Square, where the first food place to catch my eye was Meet Burger. And it was hands-down, the best burger I had in Prague, let alone in a very long time. What I loved most about this place was that their buns and sauces are homemade. And the meat, which I ordered medium-well, was just delicious! Oh, and another cool thing that I (being a banker) liked about the place was that they have a wall filled with bank notes from around the world where visitors sign and pin bank notes (of course in small denominations) from their country on the wall:

On the second day after coming downhill from Prague Castle, we decided to check out the eateries on Kampa Island in Mala Strana. The first place we came across was called U Zlatych Nuzek, which is actually a Hotel/Restaurant. I definitely wouldn’t classify it as a burger place, but a burger is what I ordered. 

On the third day, I wanted to go for Joy Burger Bar And Grill, which is located close to Powder Tower. It was quite packed at the time, but we managed to find a small table in the corner to chow. Their burgers were also good but out of the three burgers that I  had tried in those four days, I have to give Meet Burger the crown. Nonetheless, here’s my Joy Burger: 

As for the desserts, one of their most famous delectables in Prague is The Strudel. Though it’s sold in many spots across the city, one of the best places to try it at is Good Food Coffee & Bakery, located at Karlova 8 (not far from Charles Bridge). I’d been passing by the place almost every afternoon and seeing the long lineup outside the shop, I had to finally stop and check out what all the fuss was about. So on the last day, I got in line. Boy, was it worth the wait! I had this Chimney Strudel which is filled with warm molten apple, walnuts, raisins, and topped with soft ice-cream (or whipped cream, your choice). A must try in Prague!

Jordan Day III: Amman

Tonight was my last day in Jordan. Gosh, how quickly these three days have flown! We decided to stay in Amman today, to take a break from the past two days of adventure. We met up at Blue Fig with Mira for brunch, who couldn't stay for long because she had a job interview a couple of hours after that so she had to go get ready (fingers crossed for you, Mira!). Nadine then took me to Taj Mall, which wasn't open when I last visited Jordan in 2010. It's currently Amman's biggest mall, with great shops, diners, and entertainment. We walked around a bit before sitting at Starbucks for a drink…

Later that afternoon, Nadine's mum drove us to town so I could buy some famous Jordanian Za'atar for Mum and some souvenirs for some friends back home. I also got to know some other parts of the city before she drove us back to the house to get ready for my last dinner, an AUB reunion dinner with Nadine, Sari, Mira, Akram, and Yazan. We went to Seven Barrels, a gastro pub with some good food and drinks…

Jordanian hospitality never ceases to amaze me… 

100 Thank You's to a fun-filled adventure of a vacation, especially with Nadine, Sari, and Mira! 

Here's to 9 years of pure friendship & counting!

Jordan Day I: Jerash & Ajlun Castle

On my first Jordanian morning, I woke up at 8:00AM and Nadine made waffles which we gobbled up with a drink of orange juice in under 15 minutes before heading over to Sari's, who was our driver, tour guide, and of course best friend during the trip! The first direction on my Jordanian vacation was compass north, to the ancient city of Jerash, famous for its Roman ruins. We reached our destination in roughly an hour, with The Arch of Hadrian looming in front of us, indicating (especially to Nadine :-P) that we had arrived! I later found out that this arch was built to celebrate Emperor Hadrian's visit to Jerash in 129-130 AD...

When entering, the first thing you see is the Hippodrome, a partially restored Roman-era stadium. At only 245m long and 52m wide, it was the smallest hippodrome in the the Roman Empire... 

I took this cover picture with the background of The Oval Plaza, surrounded by a broad sidewalk and a colonnade of 1st century Ionic columns. This Cardo once lined with the city's major buildings, shops and residences. A complex drainage system lies below the stone paving, and chariot tracks can actually be seen in the stone!

Below is the South Theatre of Jerash, which seats more than 3,000 spectators and serves today as the primary venue in The Jerash Festivals. The brilliant design took all the factors in consideration, such as the sun's brightness and direction. For this reason, the theatre was built in a way so to allow the least amount of sunlight to disturb the audience. And the remarkable acoustics allows a speaker at the centre of the orchestra floor to be heard by the entire auditorium without raising his/her voice!

Daily features include bagpipers in traditional Jordanian military dress such as this friendly one we took a picture with!

Next up was The Temple of Artemis (daughter of Zeus and sister of Apollo), built on one of the highest points and dominated the whole city. It's an impressive temple ruin dedicated to the patron goddess of the city. The temple was designed to be earthquake-proof so some of the columns move and you can feel it if you insert your fingers between the section of the columns!

Below is the smaller second North Theater, which was planed to be either a small performance space or a city council chamber. If you looks close enough, you'll see that the group of tourists behind us have their arms outstretched like Nadine and me, what a funny British group they were!

By the time we had finished our tour, we were absolutely famished. So for lunch, we went to The Lebanese House. It's one of the oldest Lebanese food restaurant in Jordan, established in 1977 in Jerash by a Lebanese woman named Antoinette Rami, better known in Jordan as Umm Khalil. The food, especially the mezza, was scrumptious! I even tried the famous Labneh Jerashieh, a thick cheese-like yoghurt which also tasted incredible!

After lunch, Esper (Sari's Nokia GPS, which was surprisingly accurate!) lead us to Ajloun Castle, located on the top of a mountain just outside the small city of Ajloun, a mere 10 miles away from Jerash. It's an Islamic fortress, built during the period of the Crusades. The castle is an interesting maze of passages and levels, and offers a wonderful view of the surrounding area of northwestern Jordan... 

On Friends & Food

It's been since September 2012 that the four of us hung out. Last time I saw Nadine, Rola and Sura all together was during our trip to Marmaris! Luckily, Nadine was on a Business trip in Beirut this week and she stayed a few extra days to see us. So after work, Sura and I drove down to Beirut to catch up with her and Rola. And it just goes to show that when you drop the four of us together, be it in Marmaris or in Beirut, we'll catch up and laugh so hard like it was only yesterday! 

We had a late lunch/ early dinner at Lord of The Wings in Hamra. And if I can throw in a lil tip, try the Super-duper cheese nachos with guacamole, salsa, and sour cream, and the Boneless Wings with BBQ Honey or Garlic Parmesan. As for dessert, Nadine had earlier discovered Nutellissimo, a little dessert store also in Hamra, with scrumptious Nutella recipes! We ordered the Nutella Banoffee followed by Nutella Fondue. We would have ordered more except we were all still stuffed from LOTW less than an hour ago...

Here's the four of us after we had devoured our meals! Last three drawings of us are a courtesy of Rola, and the first drawing of Rola is courtesy of me. And as an inside joke, it's a good thing I can draw! :-P It's always the laughs with us four, and I love you all so much! :-)

Nadine in Tripoli

I just got back from Dubai two days ago, just in time to see Nadine visiting from Jordan! She was with her mum and so I invited them over to spend the day with my mum and I, and our friend Sura in Tripoli! I got my tourist on!

We took them on the traditional old souks of Tripoli trip, with of course the famous Khan El Saboun. And though I’ve taken many friends there before, this time I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were a lot more shapes and flavors of soaps than I’d ever seen before, including food shaped soaps! This is just amazing (keep in mind that this is soap!)

A Special Pancake Sunday!

This morning I woke up to a hilarious offline message from Ymn. I’d share it here but it’s one of our inside jokes so none of you would get it :-P Anyway, she ended up scolding me for not blogging much, and I concur, I've been offline. So, today being Sunday, I decided to refresh this blog with a special post about my traditional “Pancake Sunday”(dedicated to Ymn, of course!:-)

See from past “Pancake Sunday” posts (which I just realized were only two: here and here), I've always resorted to Betty Crocker’s Pancake Mix, and it hasn't failed me so far! But a couple of months ago, Mum’s students had a bake sale at school and she tried out one of her student’s pancakes and she loved them! She asked her for the recipe and sure enough, it was d-lish! BUT! Not to betray Betty, I’d classify the pancakes I had as “Crepes” not as “Pancakes”, because they’re a lot thinner and bigger, but they’re still little bites of heaven that give me Sunday boosts:

:-) What’s your favorite Sunday Breakfast?

You Know My Name

After I got off work yesterday, I went out for big family lunch at Baytna (ex-Chopstix). It’s the second time I’ve been there (the first time was during Eid-El-Fitr about a month ago). Grandma, Mum, my auntie and I were the first to arrive and we sat to wait for Reem, Cici (her daughter/my cousin), her mum, and her sister to arrive…

A little less than 10 minutes later, they arrived. I was sitting at the far end of the table when one of the waiters came in carrying Cici in her baby seat and placed her on the floor next to our table. I instantly jumped out of my seat and onto the floor and for the first time ever, Cici looked at me and exclaimed “Nou!” (it’s the best she can say my name right now) and she’s never said my name before but it was just such a magical feeling and she tried to jump out of her seat and into my arms. I untied her and picked her up and she kept singing my name in a song “Nou! Nou! Nou!”

I never thought hearing my name would feel so special. “Cici,” Reem said, “give Nour a kiss”. I turned my cheek to her and she leaned in and gave me the biggest slobbery wet kiss, which was the cutest thing ever! :-)

Iftar-ing

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been doing a little Ramadan experiment I like to call “Iftar-ing”. During this month, we usually have Iftar at my grandmother’s almost every evening…

“Nour, what should I make for Iftar today?” I get asked by my grandmother, and even some colleague mothers from work. So, I made a list. I made a list of all the different foods I could think of but I still couldn’t come up with 30 (one for each day of the month). So now that we’re in the last fasting days of the month, and now that we’ve made and eaten all the foods there are, is it time to repeat them?

That’s when I got the idea of taking pictures (with my iPhone) of what we have for Iftar everyday! I know I’m late in the idea, but here are 5 of gran’s scrumptious Iftars:

*I’ll do this again from day 1 next year Inshallah: -)

NERDS

Yesterday, I drove over to Spinneys for some summer prepping ingredients, namely sun and tanning lotion (I’m hopefully hitting the beach this Sunday for the first time this summer!) But that’s not the point. Point is, after I got my summer stuff, I headed over to the chocolate section to pick up a packet of Mars. Then, I thought I’d stroll into the candy section for old time’s sake. And that’s when I saw it...

Nerds*!!! I suddenly felt like I was ten years old again. I picked up the box that read:

“Greetings to you from Willy Wonka himself! Tremendous things are in store for you! Many tasty treats await you! Inside this Scumdiddlyumptious package you will find Mystic & Marvelous Surprises that will Entrance, Intrigue & Delight you BEYOND MEASURE. So don’t just STAND THERE with your mouth open. Feed Your Imagination!”

Now tell me, how can I resist not buying a bright pink and purple box with that written on it?

Yup, I got it. Nope, nothing’s left of it… SCRUMDIDDLYUMPTIOUS! :-)

*tiny, tangy crunchy candy!

2 Shawarmas Down!

I finally met Carly in real life this afternoon! It’s not the first time I meet a virtual person in real life, but it was a nice experience. She’s Australian, and (I didn’t tell her this but) I love Australian accents, and I find it hard to resist not talking to Australians/Brits in their accent. But, I kept my “generic” English accent (maybe I’ll show her my improvisations next time:-P)

Unfortunately though, I had some bad news for Carly’s Mr. Shawarma Man. See though he made quite a scrumptious shawarma sandwich, I couldn’t say it was as scrumptious as the one I’d had back at Reem’s in Amman…

We took a picture of us eating her favorite shawarma and she also posted an entry about our meeting on her blog (it’s a rather good thing that she decided to take the picture BEFORE I gave the verdict ;-)

1 Shawarma Down, 1 To Go!

Well Carly, I did it! It was around 11pm and I had been sleep deprived from the previous three days but a promise is a promise, I went to Shawarma Reem (thanks to Sari)!

There were around 10 people standing outside, waiting for their sandwiches and just as I was about to say “it’s quite crowded,” Sari smiled at me and said “good thing it’s not that crowded”. I laughed out loud, but Sari was serious, “Nour,” he said, “this place is usually so full, you have to wait at the end of the street before your turn comes!” We ended up waiting for a good 20 minutes before our turn arrived. We ordered 10 shawarma sandwiches and went back to Sari’s house for dinner…

Carly, what’s in a shawarma? I can’t be too sure but the stuff I had was made out of magic! I still have Mr. Shawarma to visit though, can he top Reem’s? Lets find out this Friday! :-)

Competition For (Best) Shawarma Man

This Thursday, I’m off to Amman, Jordan. It’s going to be my first personal vacation from work, so I’m excited as ever. I’m going to spend it with Dad and a couple of friends from university: Nadine, Sari, Akram, Mira, and Yazan. And what’s going to make it even more special is that Danny is going to be flying in from Kuwait as well, so the whole gang is going to be there!

From that gang, only 2 read this blog of mine on a regular basis: Danny and Nadine. So you two, I’ve been assigned a mission! Listen up,

Another blogger bud of mine, Carly, has recently been told that there’s some “Shawarma You Just Cant Beat” called Reem in Amman. But she begs to differ. The best tasting shawarma she’s ever had was right here in Tripoli (and she even pointed me in his direction). Now I haven’t had either, but I’m going to test them both, starting with Reem’s (who apparently sells more than 5,000 shawarmas a day!)

So add that to our list of things to do in Jordan, we’ve got a “Competition For (Best) Shawarma Man” to judge!

Nour's Perfect "Pancake Sunday"

If you’re a friend of mine, then odds are that you’ve heard of “Pancake Sunday”. But just in case you haven’t, here’s the idea: Every Sunday morning, I like to make pancakes for breakfast. Why? Just because!

It all started a couple of years ago when, for studying and exam related reasons, I was spending a weekend in Beirut. It was Sunday morning and one of my best friends Dan suggested we go have breakfast at Café Ristretto in Hamra. I remember I was starving that morning and he suggested I try “The Hungry Pete”. Wow, just thinking about it is getting my mouth to water! The meal is made up of scrambled eggs, hash browns, toast, and then it’s followed with pancakes and maple syrup; Mmm…

So ever since that Sunday, I have pancakes for breakfast each Sunday! Today though, I decided to let you know more about it. The most I’ve done was post a picture of the final product but now I’m going to tell you how to make a perfect pancake...

Because I’m still a beginner, I’m going to start with Betty Crocker. It’s quite simple really; all you have to do is read the instructions on the back of box…

Start by pouring 1 cup of pancake mix with ¾ cup of cold water in a mixing bowl and stir till its all liquid like:

Then, pour ½ cup of the pancake mix in a lightly oil greased pan, heat it, and wait. You’ll notice both the color and the texture of your pancake start to change from white liquid to half-liquid half-solid to off-white solid. When that happens, flip the pancake over till it turns golden brown:

And then, all that’s left to do is eat your hearts out (+ maple syrup):

The 1st PANCAKE SUNDAY Of 2010

It’s the 1st Sunday of 2010, but just the fact that its Sunday can only imply one thing: Pancake Sunday!

Chez Sami

Yesterday we went out for lunch at Chez Sami in Maameltein.

One word: Scrumptious.

I know I have a tendency of describing all good food as scrumptious, but this time, I mean SCRUMPTIOUS = delicious + mouthwatering + tasty + delightful + lip smacking + throw in any other synonym, and you’ve got what I’m talking about!

The place was also decorated in Christmas ornaments and big Christmas tree lit the entrance, giving me that winter season’s greetings feeling I’ve been look for…

Ah, I love this time of year!

Annual Dinner

BMAD

Last night, we had out annual dinner at BIEL. Micho was hosting the evening, giving out a bunch of presents from as little as $500 to as big a brand new car...

I had ticket number 1189, and I was feeling lucky...

But I didn't win. The closest winning number to my ticket was 1199. A ten digit difference… :-)