sandCat in Dubai

Category: food

  • dusty and hot

    Stu had planned a small braai for friday. His rationale was twofold, firstly we wanted to invite a new couple, who had only been in Dubai for a few weeks, to give them a break from apartment living, and secondly we figured we would make the most of the last of the “cooler” spring weather. So of course as luck, or murphy probably, would have it Friday was particularly hot and humid. In fact when Stu went to the supermarket in the morning it was already about 35 degrees Celsius. We were feeling rather depressed that it meant that summer was about to begin and that we had several long months of hot weather, followed by indescribable heat in July and August, to look forward to, at least if last year was anything to go by. Happily, according to the Gulf News website today, this weather is in fact unseasonal and not the start of summer.

    Dubai: Though the temperature will shoot up this Saturday to 31 degrees Celsius, the pleasant weather will continue through March and the blistering heat of summer is still far away, according to weathermen.

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  • waffles and WTF?

    Our weekend started off with a charity evening, namely the Feline Friends annual ball, which was held at the Crowne Plaza hotel in SZR* on Thursday. It had originally been planned for November last year, but due to some legal issues around animal charities, like they don’t exist here officially, it had to be postponed until the correct license was obtained. This was duly resolved this month, probably only after a large fee was paid no doubt, but one of the conditions of allowing the ball to go ahead was that a) it could not be advertised and b) no-one could be charged for it, any contribution had to be strictly a donation. Sadly it seems that the delays meant that the momentum was lost, and this, combined with not being able to advertise, meant that the attendance was rather dismal. The hall could have easily have seated 3 times the amount of people who showed up, in fact tables were set for at least double the number, and I found it heart-breaking to see all the empty places. I really hope it wasn’t a case of people just not pitching up on the night, but I think maybe there was some of this going on as well. Of course we managed to enjoy ourselves nevertheless, and were collected by our saferdriver bang on time.. what a great idea!

    view from the restaurant
    [the view of the Creek from the restaurant]

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  • record breaking biryani

    I saw this in the Xpress newspaper today and I could not resist sharing it.

    biryani
    [mammoth task indeed]

    Tomorrow, at Global Village in Dubai, an attempt will be made to break a world record for feeding the most people from the world’s biggest bowl of biryani. The bowl will contain 2.5 tonnes of chicken biryani and will be enough for around 300,000 people. The bowl itself is made from pure stainless steel (5mm thick) and weighs more than 700kg.

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  • a minor ghaf

    Once again the week has flown, and the weekend is almost over. I realised on Thursday evening that I had reached the 6 month anniversary of my leaving Johannesburg, in some ways it feels like I have been here a lot longer, like a few years, but in other ways it feels like I just arrived. The thought of a five year stay here was rather daunting to begin with, but it seems that the time will pass quite quickly after all.

    On Tuesday I met the girls for a pizza at Ibn Battuta mall, which is now the closest mall to my new office. Its a large mall, split into differently themed sections, which are all rather over the top but that is the way things are done here. The parking lot was packed when I arrived after work, but inside the mall itself it was like a ghost town. Apparently most of the cars belong to people going to the gym, not very good news for the quiet shops inside, even with the shopping festival on it seems people aren’t buying. In fact when I bought myself a new handbag the week before (yes I needed it) the lady in the store had said it has been the worst shopping festival ever.

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  • andiamo!

    Stu and I had the most delicious meal last night at Andiamo!, which is at the Grand Hyatt. All I can say is BELLISIMO (and I mean beautiful, and not how they mean it here)!

    Caprese
    [our starters]

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