Omani Cuisine

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.

Here is the second bunch of reviews that were never written.

Samba – Shangri La

Had a buffet at this restaurant in the Shangri-La a couple of times and really loved it. Their buffet was about RO 13 I think with an additional discount for Omanis and local residents. Samba restaurant is Mexican/South American cuisine, but it also had a nice sushi section. Really worth the distance travelled to go there! (Plus the price is considered *cheap* for a buffet at a 5-Star hotel).

Beirut Restaurant – Qurum Commercial Area

Beirtut Restaurant is a Lebanese restaurant right behind Sabco. I’ve been to it once last year and I really liked it. The food was awesome and the place looked nice. I remember I paid by card and forgot it at the restaurant! They came shouting behind us to tell us about the card!! I tried their dishes and not their sandwiches, they have some nice juices as you can see from the photo below.

Beirut Snack, Al Khode

I went to this restaurant/coffee-shop once when it opened and really hated it. Their food sucked, their place is right on the road and their service was not so good. Never thought of going back.

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.

It’s hard to believe that we never wrote about Chili’s on the Omani Cuisine even though we mention it in almost every other post we make. Chilis is an international casual dining restaurant chain that serves Mexican/American food. The only Chili’s branch we have in Oman is found in Muscat City Centre opposite the old Starbucks near the food court. Even after the opening of three other dine-in restaurants in City Center over the past two years, Chilis is still undeniably the most popular.

(Boneless Buffalo Wings)

The crowd at Chili’s is mixed and it attracts people from all age groups, probably because it was the ONLY proper place to dine in in City Centre and the Seeb area generally for a while. Chili’s is pretty big in size andis  spacious, it has a designated place for smokers down inside and has a sitting area for those waiting for take away orders and those waiting for a table to get cleared during peak hours.

(Club Tacos)

The menu of Chili’s is pretty big and has many different sections that include starters (RO 2.5 to RO 4), salads (RO 3.2 to RO 4.9), burgers (RO 2.4 to RO 3.1), sandwiches (~ RO 3), grills (RO 4.8 to RO 7.9), steaks (RO 6 to RO 7), misc courses (RO 3.9 to RO 4.9), desserts (RO 2.5 to RO 2.7) and drinks (starting from RO 0.9). 

(Fajita Quesadillas)

There are several nice starters in Chilis, but like the majority of their dishes, they are large in quantity and should be shared with another person. I advise you to only order more than one starter if you are in a group of more than three people. Our favourite starters are the Fajita Nachos, Triple Play (Fried Cheese Rolls, Chicken Wings, and Eggrolls), Texas Fries (Chips covered with chili sauce and jalapinos), and the Boneless Buffalo Wings. Go for the Triple Play if you are three or four people, and take the Texas Fries only if your main course is not served with chips.

Selecting a main course at Chili’s can be quite hard because there is so much to choose from. If it is your first time I suggest that you go for a steak or a fajita, as they are Chili’s highlights. There are a variety of fire grilled steaks seasoned with different sauces. All steaks come with two pre-selected sidelines such corn and mashed potatoes along with garlic bread. You can always ask to have something else instead of these sidelines if you wish. The waiters might not tell you this, but you can have rice, beans, chips, or cooked vegetables instead of the corn and mashed potatoes. 

Chili’s Club Sandwiches

Another first time selection which you can go for is a fajita (not pictured), which can be chicken, beaf, or prawn, cooked with vegetables and mexican sauces and comes served with flat tortila bread and dips which you can use to create your own sandwiches as you eat. You can have a mix of chicken, beef and prawns instead of selecting one and you can also optionally add mushroom to the mix. This is one of the main courses which you can share if you do not think you can finish it all by yourself. It is a little bit messy and will require you to use your hands, so only select it if you are ready to do that.

Of course there are loads and loads of other dishes to try if you do not like any of the ones mentioned above, I always go for the Club Tacos when I feel like having something ‘lighter’ or a Fajita Pita when I feel like having a sandwich. There are also some other dishes like the pasta pictured above, the quesadillas, burgers, salads, and others.

The most popular desert at Chili’s is the Molten Chocolate Cake (RO 2.7), it is a hot chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream on top. It is enough for four people to share after a meal. If you are sick of having the awesome Molten Chocolate Cake I suggest that you try to the Cheese Cake which I only tried once but really loved.

A meal at Chilis for two people at Chilis would cost around RO 12 to RO 15 if you have a starter, two main courses, two soft drinks and a desert. 

I think that the food at Chilis is really good, it is one of the few places on Al Seeb side of town to dine in, we never get sick of it. I am not sure about how good the service is these days, it used to be much better in the past as we have had several incidents on which the service was extremely slow and sloppy even when there weren’t many people dining. However, we always go back because we love their food.

 

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.

Blogger Rashad made a post about Jean’s Grill, the restaurant up in Sultan Center. I’ve never been the place myself, but according to Rashad the place serves an awesome breakfast buffet for RO 2.5. Check out his review over at his blog.

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.

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!