Category: food

I’m sorry, but this sort of thing becomes very important if you are here for a while. FInding good food becomes a bit of an obsession here. I wondered if there is a correlation between when I get pissed about living here and when I’m hungry. I get hungry a lot here, every place worth going to is a ways away… Went to an Ethiopian place last night. Wasn’t impressed. Granted, this wasn’t exactly a 5 star resturant, but my first impressions of Ethiopian aren’t too good. I went to the place across from citymax today. The Indian place is towards the end of sharia Baghdad, go a little farther and you hit sharia siteen. You can see this place pretty easily once you hit siteen. Anyway, it’s a burger/pizza place. The pizza was typical cafeteria quality. One warning, the “beef” they put on the pizza looks (and tastes) like slices of hot dogs. Next time I’ll get the veggie one… Their ice cream is pretty good, I had their cherry. It was actually vanilla with a swirl of merichino cherry stuff in it. The pizza wasn’t nearly as good as pizziola’s, but it was about half the price… It’s nice to have another option.

The last time I went to the Indian place, they brought the check (Al heesab) on top of a bed of what I believe were anise seeds. I asked him what they were and he indicated that they were for counteracting my onion, garlic, curry breath. I chewed on several and they tasted like licorice, that’s anise, right? I happen to enjoy licorice, so I thought that they were rather tasty. They did a remarkable job of neutralizing my breath as well. I expected them to be stronger, maybe they were only weak as compared to my recently consumed curry:-) I’ll have to pick up some of those seeds…

I went back to the Indian place tonight. Had a ton of food, and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. I have also found a new, cheap way of getting there. I can also get to Luchiano’s place that way. This is extremely cool because it takes my round trip from 1000 riyals to 40. I win!

I didn’t know what I wanted tonight, but I sure as hell knew what I didn’t want, roasted chicken or lamb with rice… So I hopped into a dabob and hoped that inspiration would strike. All of the decent places to eat are along (or right off of) Hada street. Most of them are just upscale versions of what I usually go to or a close relative like Syrian food. Maybe KFC, I still haven’t been there, but if the Pizza hut was anything to go by, it would be very expensive and not quite as good as back home. In the case of Pizza Hut and KFC, being not quite as “good” as home puts them in a rather unattractive level of eating… Anyway, As we were zooming along, I remembered the Chinese place that Michael and I went to. I didn’t have a very good idea of the exact location, but I knew the general area it was in. I got off and started walking. After a while of not seeing anything familiar, I asked someone. He gave me directions, then I asked someone else, then someone else and I was there.

Just like last time, the food is very good. I am going to go ahead and upgrade this place from being pretty good for Yemen and just call it a pretty good restaurant. For those of you that might be staying in Sana’a for a while, the place is called Beijing cuisine. I still don’t know exactly where it is… From Zubiari, turn left onto Hada street. Get off past the Porche dealership, take a street to the right off of Hada and start walking and asking directions…. It’s worth finding.

Anyway, I thought I’d have a straight shot back to the main drag Hada, but it turns out there’s a weird detour and other road work. I started down a side street and noticed that Dabaobs were zooming past me. I flagged one down, told them where I wanted to go and got in. Well, he got to the far end of his route (the opposite end of where i wanted to go) and decided that he wanted to eat, so I had to get off. Asshole… Anyway, I got another and eventually made it back to my place. The total time door to door was a little under 3 hours. The trip back was in what had to be the fastest dabob I have ever been in and hopefully will ever be in. The good news is that I found out that I can get to one of my favorite restaurants by dabob. I had always assumed that it was too far, but it turns out that it is very close to the end of the dabob’s route. Villa de Angelo has what I consider to be the best pizza in town. That probably means the best in the country I suppose. I really can’t afford to go to these places very often, they are about the same price as a regular place in the US. The food was good enough that I think I’ll have difficulty limiting myself to once a week…

Isaac

travelling food sanna’a sanna yemen