Omani Cuisine

Fellow Blogger Kishor Cariappa posted his review of the Indian buffet restaurant The Great Kabab Factory in Al Khuwair. Kishor says that you “really need to have a king size appetite to do justice the food on offer” and that the “best part is they make the guests feel pampered”. Check out his entire review through this link.

Pavo Real is a Mexican restaurant in MQ (Madinat Qaboos), it is located in Al Madina Plaza right next to Starbucks. We realised that the place is known for being more of a bar than actually a restaurant as it is licensed to serve alcohol. Pavo Real also has a dance floor and live music. Due to some government regulations, all restaurants in town have currently suspended all their dancing until future notice.

We went to Pavo Real for dinner around 7.30, we were told at the door that the place is almost fully reserved for later in the evening so they told us that we can only get in if we do not plan on staying for too long. We said OK and got in. At 7.30 the place was already quite crowded with mostly of Caucasian expats of all ages. Pavo Real is kinda large from the inside, but the lighting was pretty dim, the image above looks the way it does because of the camera flash. It was nothing like the picture.

We were seated right next to the dance floor and directly in front of the band that was playing real load. We practically were shouting at each other to speak. The live band was made up of Asians and were covering all sorts of random songs from Kylie Minogue all the way to One Republic - it sounded weird and was more disturbing than entertaining.

Once we were seatined we were instantly given the drinks menu, and it was the real drinks menu, but none of us drinks alcohol, so we ended up having just coke (not pictured, each coke glass costs RO 0.800 - not refillable). All tables get a free complimentary basket of corn tortillas and a tomatoe tip. It was quite spicy and nice.

The menu of Pavo Real is quite big with about 55 items. We had a tough time choosing what to have. We ended up having a Chicken Fiesta Classica (Pictured above - RO 6.400) which was made up of chicken wings, some chicken rolls, quesadilla, and some nice potato skins deep fried and topped with chicken. The starter did not take a long time to arrive and it was delicious. We all really liked it. The potato skins and the rolls were my favourite among the others in the collection.

For the main course I had a “Pollo Ala Mexicana” (pictured above - RO 6.700) which was a rice and carry sort of dish made up of spicy chicken cubes cooked with onions and capsicum in spicy tomato sauce. It came with rice and a bean/tortilla syrup. I liked the chicken and the rice, the bean thing not so much. But overall I enjoyed it.

My friend had a Fajita Burrito Beef (pictured above - RO 5.750) , which was a beef strips dish cooked with onions, mushrooms, bell peppers and tomatoes - all wrapped in flour tortilla. It comes served with guacamole, sour cream, and the pico de gallo sauce. My friend said that he thought he enjoyed its unique taste at the start but got bored of it half way through.

My other friend had a Beef & Chicken Fajita (pictured above - RO 7.900) which came with rice, a side platter of beans, guacamole, and hot flour tortillas. My friend said that it was ‘OK’ ~ but I saw his plate wiped clean!

In total we ordered 4 soft drinks, 1 starter and 3 main courses, our bill was RO 35.000.

I thought that the food at Pavo Real was really good, I enjoyed it. I did not like the service that much, our main course took so long to get to us we had to ask them about it. The place also has a proper bar on the side and pints keep on coming back and forth no matter where you sit. I am not sure if there is a non-smoking area, but we were not offered to sit in one and people were smoking right next to us. The place was also too dark and the music too loud.

There are a lot of people who would enjoy their time at Pavo Real, but it is surely not for everyone.

Cafe Ceramique is a new cafe/art-workshop that opened a couple of months ago in Al Araimi Complex in Qurum Commercial Area. What I mean by a cafe/art-workshop is that the cafe serves food and also offers you ceramic pieces which you can purchase and paint at the cafe as well. Visiting the place was an awesome experience, the food was great and we had so much fun with the painting.

Ceramique Cafe is located on the ground floor of Al Araimi Complex right next to where Baskin Robins is. We came around 6.30pm and the place was almost empty, but by the time we left (around 9.30pm) the place was almost full. The crowd seemed to be mostly families with their children with a very few groups of mature people with no kids.

The food menu of Ceramique Cafe is half way between Darcy’s Kitchen and Cafe Barbera with hot and cold coffee drinks, juices, soft drinks, breakfasts dishes, bagels, sandwiches, quick bites, desserts and some other speciality dishes. We started our course from the drinks menu where we had a Cafe Latte (pictured above - RO 1.5), a Minty Lemon Juice (RO 2.2) and a couple of Mix n’ Match Juices (you mix two fresh juices - not pictured - RO 1.9). I had a Mix n’ Match Orange and Mango juice which I thought was really good.

For the main course I had a Tough-in-The-Gulf Club Sandwich (it is the only club sandwich they have - pictured above - RO 3.5) which you can order with salad or with chips, I had mine with chips and I loved i, especially for its salad fillings. We also ordered a Chicken Quesadilla (pictured below- RO 3.6) which can also be ordered with salad of chips, and comes also with three dips. My other friend had a Chicken “Shawarma Pockets”(pictured down below - RO 3.5) which was pretty hard to handle, but supposedly tasted great as well.

We thought that the food at Cafe Ceramique was great and the service was also good enough, but we also wanted to try out the painting part, which was the thing that made this place special. To paint a ceramic piece at the cafe you simply have to pick one from any of the shelves in the store, there are loads of different ones in all sorts of shapes and sizes, there are plates, cups, mugs, pots, boxes, ashtrays, and all sorts of statues and simple decoration pieces. The price of the piece is placed on its bottom and I think that it ranges from RO 2 to RO 15 or so, depending on the size and the shape.

Once you select the piece you want to paint, you are given a paper to select 5 colours and 2 outliners. These colours are then given to you with a sponge, water, and a set of brushes. You can colour as you please (instructions for this or the table paper and an *artist* is available in the store to help you if you need drawing guidance!) and when you are done you have to leave it in the cafe for them to fire the piece and glaze it (that takes at least 7 days).  You are given a receipt which you must use to collect your piece after the completion date. The pieces are all supposed to be microwave and dishwasher friendly and the colours do not contain any toxins so you can eat and drink using them.

The painting activity is really fun and relaxing, it felt like art classes from school, but seriously this is not something that you should attempt to do without planning on spending a lot of time in the cafe. We stayed for more than three hours and decided to leave cause it was already kinda late even though in theory we thought we can spend even much more time painting.

Ceramique Cafe is the perfect place to go to if you have a family and would like to do something fun or even if you dont’ have a family and still want to go out and try something different for the weekend!

We’ll post a photo of the Omani Cuisine artwork when we get the piece from Cafe Ceramique next week!

2nd Avenue is a new-ish continental restaurant in Shatti Al Qurum, it is located in a random place in-between the houses near Grant Hayyat. I suggest that you call them (2469 5164) to ask for directions if you would like to know where the place is exactly. 2nd Avenue is not a branch of an international franchise but a local restaurant owned by the same person who owns the Lebanese Tarboosh restaurant.However, it is much more fancier and expensive than Tarboosh.

2nd Avenue has a seating outside (which I suppose will be used in nicer times of the year), a smoking area on the ground floor of the restaurant, and a bigger seating area on the first floor of the restaurant. The strange thing about 2nd Avenue is that when I get inside the restaurant it instantly feels like you travelled back to the year 1995. The restaurant is fancy, but the taste of furniture is quite old-school (in a weird way).

The menu of 2nd Avenue has all sorts of *continental* food, i.e. salads, sandwiches, pasta , steaks, sizzlers and grills. We had three starters, the first was a”Tilmedoe” (pictured above - RO 1.5) which was basically some potatoe cubes seasoned with some spices and baked in the oven. It was just okay but not really special.The second was a ‘Quesadilla’ (pictured below - RO 3.0) which is flat tortilla sandwich, it was not as cheesy as the one served in Chilli’s and quite nice (I really liked it!).

The third starter we had was a “Pop Corn Shrimp” (picured above - RO 3.0) which is a dish of fried breaded shrimps (think KFC Pop Corn Chicken but for srimps!), it was well cooked and awesome. For the main course, I had a ‘Chicken Gabiello’ (pictured below - RO 4.5) which was a dish of cubed chicken marinated in youghurt and vegetables. It tasted good, but I thought that the sauce it came with was a bit too thick because of the yougurt. It came with french fries and vegetables.

My friends had a’Pepper Steak’ (pictured below - RO 5) and the other one had a ‘Cordon Blue’ chicken dish (last image down below - RO 4.5), nobody had any complaints about their main courses, but I did not hear them praise any of it either. We all had fresh juices with our food (lemon/mint, water melon, and mago juice). We did not take a look at the disserts menu because we decided to go somewhere else for it.

The service at 2nd Avenue was excellent (I do not know if it was affected by the fact that we told them we are taking photographs for a website), but waiters were buzzing around all the time, somebody started smoking in the non-smoking section and a waiter told him to stop smoking (and he did), the food came quickly and it was exactly what we ordered.

We ordered 1 small mineral water bottle, 3 fresh juices, 3 starters, and 3 main courses, our bill came out to RO 28.667 taxes included.

We thought that our visit to 2nd avenue was okay. The place was fine, but was way too dark upstairs for my liking. Food-wise, I liked the starters way more than the main courses we had, I did not think that what I had (the Chicken Gabiello) was memorable at all. My friend seemed to like the place more and thinks that he would come again to check out the other items on the menu.