Omani Cuisine

I’m currently in Salalah attending a legal workshop for one week. I’m staying at Dhofar Hotel, a 3-star hotel near the city center. I hate my employer for giving me such a small allowance for this trip. I wish I could sue them. I know I can’t.

Dhofar Hotel is surprisingly so much better than what I expected, but this review is not about the hotel, it’s about their restaurant. The restaurant is on the ground floor of the hotel, it is relatively spacious, and it looks like the restaurant serves some sort of buffet at sometime, probably dinner or something, it was not open for lunch today.

The menu that I was offered at the restaurant was a stapled paper photocopy of the *room service* menu, the menu had cold starters such as salads, Lebanese cold starters, avocado with shrimps, and two hot starters, namely fried vegetarian Lebanese kebbeh and samosas. There are also several types of soups which I did not try. I had a season mixed salad for the starter, it was very simple (cucumber, lettece, and tomato) and felt very fresh.

There are several different main course categories in Dhofor Hotel’s restaurant, these include fried meals (breaded hammour fish, fried chicke, and crumbed shrimps), grilled meals (kababs, lamb chops, shish taouk, and arabic mixed grills), Asian and Indian dishes (biryani meals, friend rice, and noodles – meat, chicken, fish or prawn – the same menu as all the Indian/Chinese restaurants all over Oman.)

I had a chinese chili chicken dish with biryani rice. I also ordered a french fries sideline. I thought that the food was good, the rice, salad, and chips were all amazing, the chili chicken was just okay, it was well cooked, but not spicy enough (no schezwan sauce!) I really loved their french fries though, it was very thick and crunchy, something that you do not easily find in restaurants of this class.

No fresh juices are served at this restaurants, I ended up drinking the usual Mountain Dew. So in total I had one salad, a plate of french fries, chili chicken and biryani rice and all that came out for RO 3.600, for some reason, this included an arbitrary 17% tax. (Don’t know where it came from).

I thought that the service of the restaurant was quite slow even though I was the only customer in the restaurant (it looks like the khareer is already over), but I still think that overall I had a great experience at Dhofar Hotel’s restaurant, the place is very clean and the food was good. It is safe to try it out if you happen to come to this hotel.

Oman2day is currently gathering votes for its restaurants awards for the year 2007, I do not how authentic these awards are, but the mere idea of having such a thing is really amazing. I was asked to fill in the voting form at a couple of places, but I was surprised by the greater number of place that did not ask to vote for them even though I saw piles of the voting form at the cashier’s desk.

Is anybody else excited about these awards? Who will you be voting for?

You can vote online for your favourite restaurants in Oman here.

I apologise for not making an update last week, I do have several reviews in the pipelines with photographs and menus, but I got stuck thinking of what to write in my review of Darcy’s Kitchen. My first proper dine in visit was two weeks ago, I had to go to again a last week to collect enough material for my review.

For those that do not know the place, Darcy’s Kitchen is a cafe in Jawharat Al Shatti in Shatti Al Qurum. Though the place is considered by many as a breakfast cafe, it serves a lot of proper meal courses all day long. It differs from the majority of cafes and restaurants here with its laid back casual atmosphere. It has a distinct theme in its table design and colours, and it has a cute looking tabletop paper with a funky drawing of Omani customers.

There are loads of seats at Darcy’s, but the place seems to be constantly busy during all times of the day. I am not sure if there is a non-smoking section in the restaurant, we sat in the lobby of the mall where people were smoking, but we were not disturbed by the smoke, though it was noticeable. Space-wise the place is a bit crowded, I thought that tables were a bit too close to each other and that there wasn’t much personal space left. I guess that is why this is supposed to be more of a cafe and less of a restaurant.

I thought that the staff of Darcy’s were very friendly and talkative, we were served by Emy (pictured above). She remembered us from our first visit, helped us choose our meals and joked with us. (She thinks I’m a photographer).

The restaurant seems to be mostly known for its breakfast meals, which I did not try, but I know that these includes French toast, pancakes, several egg meals, and an English breakfast. The place also serves various soups, salads, burgers, pita bread sandwiches, roll-up sandwiches, pasta dishes, and grilled food dishes.

In my first visit, we had for the starter a plate of Fried Mozzarella Cheese (pictured above) that came a tomato dip which you could optionally add jalapeno to – a piece of information I did not know at the time. Yet regardless, I thought that it was really very good.

The starter we had in our second visit was the Chicken Fingers, those were long thick boneless chicken fingers that come with mashed potato, chunky chips, or french fries and a really good sauce that I cannot remember what it was made of, probably a mixture of mayo and some salad dressing. The quantity was pretty a lot and could easily be considered as a main course for one person. I thought that both starters were great, but if I had to pick between the two I would go for the Fried Mozzarella Cheese because it was a bit different from we have elsewhere.

The first main course I had was the Chicken BBQ Lamisso, a dish of chunky marinated chicken pieces served with a sauce made up of peanut butter, tomato, and onion. I thought that it was really good, the chicken was very well cooked and the sauce was a great addition to it. Acting like a silly kid, I did not touch the cooked vegetables that came with the meal only because I am not a great fan of cooked vegetables.

My friend had some California Friend Chicken – an item from the additional menu of new food. The dish looked like something from KFC, but my friend says that he liked the crunchiness of the chicken skin and the sour taste of the garlic mayo dip.

The main course I had on my second visit to Darcy’s Kitchen was the Chicken Melt Sandwich, a sandwich made of shredded chicken pieces with mayo. You can select to have white or brown bread for your sandwich. I did not think that the sandwich was very memorable, not that it tasted bad or anything, but at the same time I did not think that there was anything special about it.

My friend had his favourite cold Club Sandwich, he asked me to try some of his, but I was already really full. It looks like Club Sandwiches are his favourite and he recommends it strongly.

The average price of a snack (Darcy’s label for starters) is from RO 1 to RO 2.5, a main course costs around RO 2 to Ro 5 on average, drinks cost from RO0.3 (Soda) to RO1.5.

I really liked Darcy’s Kitchen even though place is a bit noise and can get crowded, however, their service is great , their food is good. I think that we need more of these places in town.