Chowpatty – Al Khuwair

Chowpatty (Telephone: 2448 8829 – Map) is an Indian chaat restaurant located in Al Khuwair on Dohat Al Adab Street somewhat near Muscat International Hotel.

Chowpatty is a relatively small restaurant with a nice modern theme that looks much prettier than what you would expect from looking at it from the outside. I have been twice to Chowpatty and it was never too crowded.

Similar to The Bollywood, Chowpatty serves Indian chaat which is a kind of cuisine that does a variety of small vegetarian snack-like dishes. The menu of Chowpatty is divided into five sections: “Snacks” – which has things like samosas, “Pav Bhaji” for dishes which are served in or with a bun, “Chats” which are a variety of light snacks, and “South Indian” section which has some “Dosa” and other Indian specialities, and “Sandwiches”.

The problem I faced in both of my visits to Chowpatty is that I do not understand anything from the menu, there are more than 50 different items on it with names like Dahi Sev Puri, Tawa Alu Chat, Pav Bhaji, and Mayasore Uttapam? There are no pictures of these dishes and  no descriptions or mention of the ingredients of these items. The waiters do not really speak good enough English to be able to explain what these things are. So what I ended up doing in both times is just order random things and then try to guess what’s in them.

Out of all the things I tried I thought the Dosa’s (from “South Indian” section of the menu) were my favorite, these are wraps made up with the crepe-like Indian pancake and have all sorts of fillings that can go with them. You can have them plain, with cheese, with spicy masala, or even  with chocolate if that’s what you want. Some of them come with a dip and cut into smaller pieces like the picture above, while others come as a whole piece like the picture below.  Both times I thought that the dosa’s I tried were delicious.

I tried a dessert at Chowpatty, but as I said in a previous blog post, I really do not like Indian desserts. This thing was milky, had coco nut and saffron, and like all Indian desserts – was too intense for me to do.

The first time I tried Chowpatty I tried their cocktail fresh juice and it was horrible. My friend tried some other juice too and he did not like it at all. I do not recommend any of the juices at Chowpatty.

I thought that the service at Chowpatty was good and the the staff were friendly and welcome even though they were hopefully when it came to explaining what’s actually on the menu. It is cheap – only 2 items out of the 50 or so on the menu cost more than RO 1. I do think that Chowpatty serves some really good food, but it is a big challenge to go there if you do not know anything about chaat because it is almost like playing a lottery as there are no pictures or descriptions of the dishes served

The Great Kabab Factory – Al Khuwair

The Great Kabab Factory (Telephone: 2447 8373 – Map) is a Indian kabab restaurant in Al Khuwair commercial area somewhere opposite Pizza Hut and these bunch of restaurants on Al Kuleiyah Street.

The Great Kabab Factory is quite a spacious restaurants that can accommodate a big amount of people. We had lunch on a weekend and it wasn’t crowded at all.

The concept of the Great Kabab Factory is that you pay a specific amount for unlimited servings of kabab that get served to you in a special order at your table. Once you are seated you are asked to selected between the non-vegetarian option (RO 4.900)  or vegetarian option and then they will start serving you the food.

The order in which items come are usually as follows:

1. Salad
2. The signature minced lamb patty
3. Mixed variety of kababs
4. Biryani
5. Dessert

After you get served the variety of kababs you can ask them to repeat any specific kabab you liked to have more of if you wish. Throughout the meal you will also get some dips, dalh, vegetable curry, naan bread, and a yogurt drink, too. From my understanding the actual items that get served differ from one day to the next, at times they serve chicken biryani and at others lamb biryani.

I thought the food at The Great Kabab Factory was amazing, especially their minced lamb patty which we got to spread over the flat bread they got us and make a sandwich out of.  I thought the variety of the kababs was OK, we had a couple of chicken ones and a couple of lamb ones. We had chicken biryani at the end and it was great.

Right when we finished they got us some Indian desserts which I just can’t ever get myself to like, they are way too intense for me to handle. (I know that I am a big disappointment for someone who is this much into Indian food). I think people who actually like Indian desserts will actually like the things they serve at this place.

Besides the yogurt drink you nothing else is included with your food, at that time we were they offered orange juice and watermelon juice – we got good old orange juice (RO 1.400).

I was really impressed with the service at the Great Kabab Factory, the waiters were cheerful, very talkative and tried to explain to us the things that were coming in.

The Great Kebab Factory advertises the non-vegetarian option to be at RO 4.900 nowadays, but this amount does not include an additional 8% service charge and another %9 of government taxes. In total we had 2 non-vegetarian selections, 1 bottle of water, and 2 juices. Our bill came to RO 16.010.

I really enjoyed my experience at the Great Kabab Factory, their food was excellent and the service was great!

Dawaat | Sohar

Dawaat (Sohar 26847565, Ruwi 24787980) is an upper mid range Indian Restaurant in Sohar and Ruwi. Dawaat is located in Sohar Souq somewhere not too far from the Souq Roundabout.

The size of the Dawaat Restaurant is not too bad and has thing “triangle” theme thing going on all over the ceiling, wall, and even the back of the chairs – which I think makes the restaurant looks horrendous – it’s not that the place is dirty or anything, but it is just UGLY. From the color theme, the ridiculous trivia table paper and even the silly plants around the place.  Dawaat Sohar is definitely the worst looking restaurant I’ve reviewed in Oman in 2010.

The menu of Dawaat is the typical generic Indian/Chinese menu found in restaurants of its class – soups, grilled stuff, Mughlai food, rice, bread, chinese food, and noodles. We ordered two plates of Chicken Tikka Masala (RO 3.000 each) for the starter along with a Dal Shorba (Lentil Soup – RO 0.800) and Chicken Manchow Soup (RO 0.900). I only tried the Chicken Tikka Masala which was average and a tiny bit too moist for my liking.

For the main course we ordered a chicken biryani (Pictured above – RO 2.000), a portion of Chicken Masala (RO 2.400), and a portion of Chicken Manchurian (RO 2.200) along with a mixed bread basket. I only tried the Chicken Biryani, which was much drier that usual even though the appropriate spiciness. I’ve tried in the past and it was so much better, but that is one of the main problems of this place – the quality of their food is inconsistent – at times the food comes out perfect, on other days it is cold, dry, too moist, or something is wrong with it. I do not know if they have more one chef inside, but there is no guarantee that the food will come out the same way as you had on your last visit.

My biggest complaint about Dawaat is their service, it is not that the service is bad in the traditional sense, but the waiters and the restaurant manager are all very annoying people – I hate how the manager doesn’t really speak Arabic or English and mixes a bit of both to get buy and I think this is the perfect language combination to deal with your typical Omani customers in Sohar, but it just annoys me because I cannot ever tell if he understands what I’m saying because he will respond to me in broekn Arabic when I speak to him in English. What is more annoying is that the do not give you a chance to have your food the way you want and forcefully serve it for you, I almsot always have to shout at them to force them stop doing that every time I go to the restaurant, and what annoys me the most is that they will run to take the food from infront of you once they see that you have stopped eating even though other people with you on the table are not done eating – they will go as far to get you a small bowl of water and lime to wash your hands while other people are still eating – it drives me insane.

In total we had 2 starters, 2 soups, 3 main courses, 1 mixed bread basket, a few soft drinks, and a bottle of water for about RO 15.

Dawaat is not exactly my most favorite place to go eat at in Sohar, but now that Woodlands has closed down this place is the only decent place which I can go to have Indian food, the day another proper restaurant opens I will probably never come back here again. I am not sure if I got spoiled by how great Woodlands was, cause the food is edible, but the service really turns me off. I know I complained a lot, but don’t surprised if you see me there soon though cause really there are no other options!!

Kurkum | Mattrah

Kurkum (Telephone: 24714114) is a fancy new Indian restaurant in Mattrah. It’s located on the corniche between the main entrance of Souq Muttrah and the branch of Bank Muscat on the corniche.

Kurkum is a relatively small restaurant and has a few tables outside if you want to enjoy the weather during winter. The place has a white clean theme and looks very fancy, tables located near the windows enjoy a nice view of the Sultan Qaboos port.

Kurkum currently has two different menus for lunch and dinner. The lunch menu is a lighter one that offers soups, salads, sandwiches, and a few finger dishes, while the dinner menu is an extensive one with soups, salads, variety of indian starters, along with chicken, lamb, fish, and vegetable main courses that could be had with rice or bread.

Before our starters came we were presented with a couple of free complimentary intros, the first was a dish of fried bamya which I’ve never tried before and was pretty nice. We were also then offered a single potato finger which also tasted awesome.

For the starters we ordered one a fish soup (RO 3.5), a tomato soup (RO 1.8), and a dish of chicken dimsums (RO 2). My tomato soup was creamy and I really enjoyed it. The chicken dimsums had tamarind chutney in them, I thought that there were OK, but I’m not the biggest fan of dimsums, so I wasn’t exactly blown away.

For the main course we ordered a dish of Goan Coconut Chicken Curry (RO 4.5) which basically had boneless chicken pieces cooked in Goan style coconut curry. Our second main course was a dish of dry Tandoori Fish (RO 6) which had chunks of hammour fish marinated with spices grilled in the tandoori oven. We ordered a mixed bread basket to have with our main courses both of which turned out to be excellent and were cooked to perfection.

For the drinks we were offered a selection of juices, soft drinks, and a variety of flavored lassi, we ordered mango flavoured lassi (RO 2) which tasted super fresh and refreshing. We didn’t try any of the desserts, but asked to have karak tea, which wasn’t on the menu, but somehow they got it for us! When we asked to pay the bill we were also offered complimentary Omani halwa which was very nice!

In total we ordered two soups, one starter, two main courses, a basket of bread, 1 lassis, one bottle of water, and tea cups of tea, our bill came to RO 23. When I got back home I was checking the bill again and realized that Kurkum made some mistake and forgot to charge us for a couple of things we ordered, our bill should’ve been RO 26 at least.

The service at Kurkum was excellent, all the staff members were friendly and cheerful, the food came quickly and was presented in an elegant manner. We loved everything about Kurkum and had an awesome food there. The restaurant is still new and nobody seems to know about it yet, we hope that this excellent service and food continue remain even after more people discover this place. If you are going to take someone to see Souq Muttrah there is no better place to go to than Kurkum, but I guess only if you can find a place to park your car at the corniche which seems to be a serious hassle!

Reviews That Were Never Written – Part 1

I’m going to travel in about a week’s time and I won’t be able to write any new reviews for the Omani Cuisine, I have been to many restaurants which I photographed and everything but never got to write a review for – most probably due to some bad time management skills!

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.

The Pavilion Restaurant Reviewed @ Kishor’s

 

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.

The Bollywood – Qurum Commercial Area

The Bollywood (Telephone: 2456 5653) is a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Qurum Commercial Area right next to CCC. We felt adventurous a couple of weeks ago and decided to give this restaurant a go. The Bollywood has been around for years, it was previously known as Bollywood Chaat, but I do not know a single (Omani) person who has been to it before.

The Bollywood restaurant is all (guess what?) Bollywood, the spacious restaurant is covered with photographs and posters in various shapes and sizes of Indian movie superstars. The crowd in The Bollywood is Indian and mostly families and couples. The Bollywood is not a fancy place unlike Mumtaz Mahal, the cost of food is lower and the service and venue is not as fancy either. I don’t think that it is licensed to serve alcohol because we were not offered a drinks menu. I don’t also think that were seated, we entered the restaurants and had to look for a table ourselves and only after we sat a waiter came to us with a menu.

The Bollywood only serves vegetarian food – we did not know that before sitting down. I personally considered leaving when the waiter told us this, but we decided to just give it a try because were not that hungry anyway. Unfortunately the menu of The Bollywood is not very helpful, it has all sorts of fancy ethnic dish names but they barely had any explanation of what that dish actually was.  We asked the waiter for help but he couldn’t explain anything to as at all. So we ended up picking stuff that had pictures of them on the menu. For the starter we had a Tandoor Platter (pictured above – RO 2.500) which was made up of different things which we did not know, some of these things had a texture of minced beef burger but tasted quite unique in a good way, some bits of it were moderatly spicy.

We also had a some paratha bread with cheese (pictured above – RO 0.900)  and some buttered naan bread (not pictured – RO 0.450) ,  the cheese paratha bread was awesome. It came perfectly warm and the cheese inside it tasted amazing.

I very rarely eat rice on regular days, so I always take the opportunity to try out a rice dish  if I’m in an Indian restaurant, EVNE WHEN ITS VEGETARIAN… unfortunately though I did not like the vegeterian biryani (pictured above – RO 1.350)  of The Bollywood, it was quite spicy, but somehow I just did not like it. I did not like the mix of things they had in it and I thought that it was boring without any chicken.

My friend had a Chole Bhature for his main dish, it was a spicy chickpeas dish that come with funny looking bread.The only memory my friend has of this is that it was too spicy for him.

We decided to also try a new drink at The Bollywood, so we went for Kala Katta (pictured above – RO 0.400), we tried very hard to make the waiter explain to us what it was made up of, but we did not understand one word of what he said, the drink turned out to be some sort of fruit-like juice, reddish-black in coloured, it tasted quite sour and very weird (vimto and laban mix?). It was not cold enough and I did not like it.

At the end we had one starter, two main courses, some bread, two drinks, our bill came out at RO 7.850.

Our dining experiece at The Bollywood was quite *unique* to say the least, the fact that a place is vegetarian will probably be a turn-off to many people. The waiters did not guide us through the menu to help order stuff which we might like. I do not think that I will be going back anytime soon. However, I am sure that a vegeterian Indian family that has an idea of the food served would likely enjoy the place. Others willing to pay a little bit more for a better Indian experience can visit the Mumtaz Mahal instead where there is greater variety in food, the ambience is nicer, and the service is way much better.

The Great Kabab Factory Reviewed @ Kishor’s

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.

Review: Allaudin (Omar Al Khayyam) – Al Khuwair

Allaudin is an Indian-Chinese restaurant located in Al Khuwair next to the traffic lights of Madinat Sultan Qaboos (MQ). The name Allaudin is the new brand of the restaurants of the Omar Al Khayyam group, a very old local restaurant chain.

Omar Al Khayyam is of the same class as restaurants such as Spicy Village, Grill House, and Al Akhatham, they serve almost the same exact menu at very similar prices. If restaurants were to have ratings, the restaurants above would have 3-star ratings. Nothing fancy, but clean enough to some extent to dine in. Allaudin is relatively spacious, the place is decorated with elephants and other Indian-looking artifacts at the entrance. It has a private dining room upstairs.

We went to Allaudin for dinner and ordered Chili Beef, a dry dish of small beef shreds cooked with spicy herbs and chili, it was hot as expected of an Indian restaurant in a good way – and that required the use of a box of tissues. We also ordered humous, naan and paratha bread, which all were quite good. For the drinks I had lemon juice, which was not that good, but I guess you can’t ask for much when you pay 200 baisa for a glass.

The prices of Allaudin is relatively cheap, we ordered one main course, one humous plate, a mix of breads, one fresh juice, and one bottle of water, and that in total cost us RO 3.400. Overall, dinner at Allaudin was good, we liked the food and we thought that we got what we paid for.

Review: Woodlands – Sohar

Fine Indian restaurant Woodlands has opened earlier this year in Sohar. If you are coming from Muscat you have to take the right turn from the Sohar Globe roundabout and then turn left from the first roundabout after it to go towards the new banks district. Woodlands is five minutes from there right before Al Turaif roundabout on the left side of the road. This is the third branch Woodlands opens, the first is in Ruwi in Muscat, the second is in Salalah, and the third most recent one is in Sohar. Woodlands won the Oman2day Restaurant Awards 2007 for the best service category and was a finalist in the best Indian restaurant category (which was eventually won by Mumtaz Mahal).

Woodlands Sohar looks nice, it is very spacious and has tables varying in sizes for all sorts of diners. There are also three or four private family rooms with eight seats each. I am not sure of the smoking policy in Mumtaz, but I doubt they allow it. We thought that the staff of Woodlands were all very friendly and caring, though at many times they did not seem to be trained actually well (They surely did not win the award mentioned earlier for their Sohar branch). I’ve only been to the restaurant with my family, yet we were never offered any of the family private rooms before we asked for one. In my most recent visit to the restaurant, each one of us ordered a main course each but when the food came the waiter took one of the food pots and started putting some of it on each of our plates without asking us if we wanted to share it or not. A major third blooper is that there is no way to ask for anything when you dine in a private family room without going out of the room and calling a waiter. Not sure if they are not supposed to check on your in the family rooms for culture reasons or not. Not to say that Woodlands’ service is horrible, they are usually fast and never screw up your food, but occasional bloopers happens quit often probably because the restaurant is relatively new.

Woodlands menu is quite large and can be hard to decipher, especially as the person who wrote the menu must’ve had gotten tired halfway through as the first half of the menu has descriptions of each menu item, while the other half has titles only. We asked the waiter for help on several occasions, but the answer he gave always was ‘this is chicken cooked with onion and capsicum, it is a gravy dish’ for half the dishes we asked about, and that was not really helpful. The manager occasionally tours around and he seems to have suggestions on what to have and more things to say about the dishes than newer waiters.

Regardless of how much I bitch about Woodlands, it is actually my favourite restaurant at the moment, I love their food. They have a wide set of starters, my favourites are the Crumb Fried Fish and Chicken Lolly Pops (both not pictured), on our last visit we had Fish Tikka (pictured above) which we unfortunately did not like, the fish tasted weird and each piece shattered into threads when we poked it with a fork. The waiter might suggest you take two or three starters at least, even if you are two or three people only, which could be too much if you are going to have a main course each. The best starter we had was the Crumb Fried Fish, be sure to try that one out.

We had no complaints about the main courses, everything we tried tasted amazing. We always order the gravy Chicken Manchurian (pictured above) which we thought was rich with flavour and very well done. We usually have this with buttered or garlic naan bread. My personal favourite is the Chicken Biryani (pictured earlier above). I hesitated to have it because I thought it would such a boring dish to have, but now I don’t think that I’ll ever have a Chicken Biryani better than that of Woodlands. It was not too spicy yet very delicious. We tried a Kadai Chicken gravy (pictured below) which was also good. We thought that the potion of food given was very decent.

We did not explore the drinks menu of Woodlands and have only been drinking soft drinks during our visits. It is worth mentioning that Woodlands Sohar does not serve alcohol.

Vegetarian dishes at Woodlands cost about RO 2, chicken and meat dishes cost aroud RO 2.5 and sea food dishes start from RO 3. Bread starts from 0.300 a bread. In our very recent visit to Woodlands we had 1 fish starter, 4 main courses, some bread, and 3 soft drinks for about RO 19 – taxes included.

We thought that dining at Woodlands was generally a pleasant experience, disregarding the occasional waiters’ cluelessness of what they menu has. The food is delicious and the place is nice. All of you rich people coming to purchase land plots in Sohar can finally have a good dine-in restaurant to celebrate your new investment in Sohar itself.