I decided to treat myself to dinner and ate a grotesque amount...and had more than double left over. This meal was had by me for the whopping price of 12 bucks (USD).
It's definitely the best local food I've had. There was a Maybach and Maserati parked in front - not to mention the Jags, Mercedes, and Porches.
I do wish that I remembered the name of the place though - it's down the street from another great spot called Mint.
I did manage to take a picture after I was done eating.
I walked past the Al-Najada Souq on Friday during the "siesta" time. Basically from 12-4 nothing is open except the Indian-owned restaurants and shops. Most of those are even closed as they'd rather take some time off during the day anyways.
Much of the country employs a bit of the Starbucks marketing mentality. They believe heavily in consolidated communities of goods. So where there is a mobile phone store, there will be 20 - with nothing else there. You walk from store to store asking how much the same phone is and you get 20 different prices. All of which you're expected to bargain down 20%-60%. So really, the price doesn't even matter. I still don't quite understand the economics of expected bargaining.
But I had two goals for Saturday. I wanted to pick up an SP5 from I-mate and eat some good pizza. I failed at both. I found a few places that had the phone for 1500-2000 riyal, but by the time I decided to buy the 1500 price one, I forgot which store had it.
I also wanted good pizza. Anyone that knows me knows that this will be the toughest thing about food here. So far everything has been delicious, but I've yet to experience good pizza. I found a place that had Chicago pizza on the menu. So I took a closer look.
Maybe I don't know enough about Chicago style pizza, but I'm pretty sure there aren't many parts of the city in which a Chicagoan would claim this as old-skool.
After this I went back to some shops and saw a gaggle of chicken butcher shops. There were 5-6 shops, with 25 or so chickens apiece. All of them had about 20 sq feet of total space for them. They're not chickens leading a good life. But you pick one out and the butcher cuts the head off and drains it. Fresh meat.
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