Shang Thai (Telephone: 2448 3083) is a Chinese-Thai restaurant in Al Khuwair that opened earlier this year. The restaurant is located right next to McDonald’s in Al Khuwair. It shares its venue with Mirchi, an Indian restaurant, but you have to go upstairs to dine in Shang Thai. The restaurant is operated by Bu Al Hickman, the same company that operates Pizza Express in Oman.

Shang Thai is a very nice looking restaurant, but it is not as fancy as Silk Route or the Noodle House. The place is quite spacious. We went on a Wednesday evening and only about one third of the tables was taken.

The menu of Shang Thai is pretty extensive, it has a number of vegetarian and non vegetarian starters, soups, salads, and various kinds of fish, seafood, chicken, duck, meat, and vegetarian main courses. After we made our orders we got a complimentary Shrimp Chips intro with some dips. It was nice, but nothing special.

For the starter we shared a Xiang Zha Dui Xia, (Prawns on Toast – RO 2.5). This was fried marinated minced prawns on toast which was served with plum sauce. I really liked it, I thought it was very tender and the sauce was excellent.

For the main course we had a Chuchee Goong (Prawn with Red Curry – RO 6) which had flavoured king prawns cooked in a spicy red curry. We also ordered a Gai Phad Samoon Phai (RO 3.6) which had stir fried chicken with Thai herbs and was served with some lemon grass and lemon leaves. We also ordered a Thai Fried Rice (RO 3) which was made up of stir fried Jasmine rice with shrimps, eggs, and vegetable.

The portions of the main courses are big and the waiters will offer to serve a bit of each dish you ordered with everyone on the table. We liked everything we ordered, I preferred the chicken over the prawns, but my friend preferred the prawns over the chicken. The fried rice was also excellent. We really enjoyed eating everything we ordered.

For the drinks we had a Ginger Lemonade (RO 1.2) and a Citrus Mint Cooler (RO 1.6). I had the Citrus Mint Cooler, which was supposed to be a orange, lemon, and mint juice mixed with Soda, but due to the unavailability of soda on that night it was mixed with water. I still quite enjoyed it, but I can’t say that I was blown away. For the desserts we had a Kluay Thod (RO 3) which had fried bananas served with vanilla ice cream. I initially liked it, but then couldn’t finished my portion cause I thought the banana was just too sweet for me handle, but that’s probably just me. I thought that it was better than the one I had in the Noodle House long time ago.

The service at Shang Thai is excellent, the waiters were friendly and gave us a lot of recommendations as to what we should order. The food came quite fast and the waiters helped serve it on our plates.

In total we ordered 1 starter, 2 main courses, 1 rice dish, 2 juices, and 1 desserts. Our final bill was RO 20.900.

I enjoyed the food I had and I thought that the service was excellent. Try this place if you want to have fancy Thai food in Al Khuwair.

Silk Route (Telephone: Sohar 26844656, MQ 24696967) is a Chinese-Thai restaurant that had its branch in MQ for a number of years, it recently opened in Sohar Plaza in Sohar. The restaurant is located on the first floor of Sohar Plaza, if you are coming from Muscat, you can get to this new mall by turning right from the Sohar Roundabout and  then turn left from the first roundabout after it to go towards the new banks district. Sohar Plaza is less than a five minute drive on that road and it cannot be missed.

Silk Route is a very fancy restaurants, the seating and decor is nice, the lighting is calm and the place is very spacious. There is also apparently a private dinning room which could be seen on the back left side of the image above. We went on the last night before Ramadhan, which could be the reason why it was practically empty. The place lack of guests could be due to the fact that it is also currently the most expensive restaurant in Sohar – more on this later.

The menu is Silk Route is very long, none of us was an expert on Chinese food and we had no idea what to have, so we almost picked stuff randomly. In Silk Route, before you order anything you get a complimentary intro of shrimp chips and some weird lettuce(?) side. These intros come with a Thai sweet chili sauce and a hot chili sauce. The shrimp chips were nice, but nothing super special, the other vegetable starter was a bit too spicy, we didn’t have much of it.

We had three starters, the first was some Assorted Dim-sums (pictured above). These were Chinese dumplings cooked in some sauce, the cover was made up of some very watery wrap and the inside had chopped chicken with vegetable or chopped prawns with vegetables. Eating this was a unique experience, but at the end we all decided that we did not like it.

Our second starter was a plate of chicken winglets, it was well cooked and the coating crunchy and well flavoured. We really loved it.

Our third started was a plate of “Chicken Tidbits”, these are small chicken pieces fried in some sort of sweet or honey sauce. The portion was huge and it tasted really nice. Besides the dim-sums, we really liked the starters, but we thought that they are a bit too much, especially if you take the intros into consideration. Each of these starters is meant to be shared by a group of four people.

We ordered four main courses, the first was a ball of chicken balls in garlic sauce. The chicken was finely minced and mixed with spices and was dipped in a garlic sauce. It was very tender, sort of tasted like a “kofta” dish, and was collectively our favourite item we had.

The second main course we had was a Chicken Black Pepper Sizzler, which was literally just that. I thought it would be somewhat dusty because of all the black pepper, but it wasn’t, it was not too spicy either and tasted nice.

Our third main course was a bowl of Stir Fried Chicken Noodles, nothing out of the ordinary, and a tiny bit bland.

Our final starter was a dish of sliced beef cooked in five spices. Not exactly sure of what they are now, but we really didn’t like it that much, I thought that it was too sour.

For the drinks we had Coke and Mountain Dew, did not try anything special. Our drinks were machine served and barely had any fizz in them left. We did not try any of the desserts of Silk Route.

The service at Silk Route was excellent, not sure how it would have been if it were busy, but the waiters were buzzing around us and seemed hospitable, though nobody helped us pick our dishes or made suggestions on what we should have, even though we seemed like we have never been to it before and kept on asking questions about the dishes.

In conclusion, we ordered three starters, four main courses, five soft drinks, and a small bottle of water for RO 30.800. I don’t have the actual dish costs, but each starter/main course costs about RO 4, soft drinks cost about RO 0.5 and they are not refillable.

It is great to have some more nice restaurants in Sohar where you can go out and dine in. Silk Route has a great atmosphere and the service is great, however, we were not blown away by the food we had. It is true that picked randomly from the menu, but we ordered a lot of food and barely had anything seriously memorable. I never tried the MQ branch, so I cannot compare it with that one. However, the place is also literally empty, not sure if this was because it was Ramadhan or what, but it is obviously the most expensive restaurant in Sohar now and it’s prices might be a bit too much for Soharians.

Three Star Restaurant, Al Hail

I once wanted to have a post titled ‘Battle of the Generics’ where I thought I’ll post a joint review of all these generic Indian-Chinese restaurants that have the same exact menu that has the name of every single Indian and Chinese dish ever invented. 3 Star was one of these. Not sure if this restaurant is really three star, maybe just 2.5, they have a fountain in their restaurant with plastic frogs inside it. It is located right next to City Center.

Al Aktham Restaurant, Al Khuwair

Al Aktham is the king of generics, it is one of the oldest and most famous restaurants in town, its boardsign boasts with the word ‘Restaurant’ without a brand name. It has private dining rooms used by conservative families and guys taking out girls on dates (.. to al aktham? We’re going on a data to AL AKTHAM?!). This restaurant is found somewhere near Al Safeer Hotel in Al Khuwair Commercial Area.

Grill House, Al Khuwair

Grill House is my favourite generic restaurant, I can have their Schezwan Chicken Fried Rice dish for dinner, lunch and breakfast. Favourite side dishes include a green salad and chips. This restaurant is next to the MQ traffic lights. Their food is nice, but they badly need to work on their restaurant front image!

I used to think that I had photos of Spicy Village as well, can’t find them though. Will make another post with some other restaurants.

Indian-Chinese restaurant the Pavilion was reviewed in a recent post at Kishor Cariappa’s blog. Kishor says the chicken at this MBD restaurant was “very delectable and grilled to perfection” and that  the service “was good and ambience very pleasing”. You can read the whole review and check out pictures of the restaurant and its food over at Kishor’s Blog.

Fellow blogger Kishor Cariappa posted on his blog a review of Wok of Life, the new Chinese restaurant in MBD. Check out his review here.

Something is happening in town, several high-profile new restaurants opened all almost at the same time during the last couple of months, one that I visited and had to write a review about is The Noodle House, a Chinese restaurant in Muscat City Centre. The Noodle House is found on the first floor of City Centre, right at the entrance of the newer side of the mall (same side as the Boarders bookstore). It is really nice to have an option other than Chili’s for people like us living on that side of town (we do not acknowledge the existence of Hamburger Nation, we are THAT much unhappy with it).

The seating of The Noodle House is quite unique, it is very spacious and open. The main seating area in the center of the restaurant is made up of long tables and benches on which diners have to sit on. It kinda feels funny at the first few minutes when sit on s bench because there is nothing to support your back, but you can drag the bench a bit closer to the table and then lean on the table, I thought that this felt more comfortable. There are regular chairs on all tables by the sides, so you can sit on any of these if you cannot sit on the benches.

Part of the ‘Noodle House Experience’ is ordering from their menu, each table has a paper pad of menus, from which you have to tear one and mark up dishes you would like to have. The menu has a selection of appetisers, wet noodles & soup, wok fried noodles & rice, specialities, and desserts. In addition to the order pad, there is a long list of drinks on the table. They have tens of ice teas and fruit soda mixes.

I’ve been to The Noodle House twice: the first time I shared two dishes with a friend, the second time I went with a large group of people and we ordered more than half the menu, it was cool as we tried everything, but the problem was that I had no idea what I ate or what I liked the most, so I really don’t think I can make any serious recommendations on what to try, but generally we were very happy with the food. It was rich with flavour, very nicely presented, and in a good quantity.

You should watch out when ordering that not all dishes come with rice or noodles, especially ones from the Specialties section of the menu, but you can order side dishes such as vegetables or rice to make for it.

Desserts are also usually ordered in advance at The Noodle House. We tried the banana beignets with mango syrup and vanilla ice-cream, a friend of mine was crazy about how good it was, so we tried it but, we were no impressed with it as much as her. We also tried the crispy friend wontons with caramel ice-cream (pictured below), the group did not think that it did not have enough caramel, I didn’t think that it was special at all.

Starters in The Noodle House cost from RO 2 to RO 3, main courses cost from RO 2.5 to RO 5, desserts about RO 2, and drinks range in price from RO 0.7 to RO 2. Two main courses, with three drinks cost about RO 13 – taxes included.

I had a great time at The Noodle House, even though I never tried their starters and did not like their desserts, but their main courses were great, the service was good, and the place has a nice atmosphere. Make sure you try it out next time you go to Muscat City Centre.

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.