This is from Hung TV Show (Season 2 Episode 7). The main character is basically a man whore and is banging a Lebanese chick and an Israeli one and each is cooking him her own hummus. It is good publicity for Lebanon and another “proof” that Hummus is indeed Lebanese.

I saw this sign in Zouk Mikael but could not find any place that sells manakish next to it. Maybe they ran out of gold?

I found a dead bug in my cereals box today morning. Don’t think i have to say more to express my disgust. Maybe i should sue Kellogs.

I received an email from my brother who has been in the states for 6 months now that he misses Baklawa and Bzourat and wants some. He asked me if he should order some online or wait for someone travelling to the states to get him some.

I honestly have never ordered Baklawa online, so i don’t know much about it and i personally dislike it. I know that Al Hallab delivers Baklawa and i also found another site called Baklawaonline.com but it is not located in Lebanon. As for the bzourat, Al Rifai delivers and has special sets for travel.

If anyone has ever ordered Lebanese sweets online, i would be glad to get some hints on the matter.

There is no better business than opening up a restaurant or a snack in Lebanon, however the latest trend is to come up with a very fancy place that attracts customers but serves crappy or average food.

One of them is the recently newly opened Chinese restaurant called the Jasmine Room. It is situated on the Jal el Dib highway and looks very fancy from the outside. I’ve been wanting to try it for a while and finally went there with my gf on Saturday.

Unlike what is stated in this review, it does look a lot like every other Chinese restaurant and resembles a bit ChopSticks! It even has that large rounded table in the middle that rotates so that you can hold like your small buffet.

We were out on a Saturday night and found a table without reservation. The chairs were comfy and the tables were not too close to each others. While checking out the menu, i noticed on the first page set menus for 4, 5 and 6 people. They varied from 200,00LL till 400,000LL or something like that. I don’t know much about food menus but putting such big numbers on the first page of your menu can push customers away.

The menu list was very similar to every other Chinese restaurant, same appetizers (Shrimp dumblings, Spring Rolls etc ..) and hot dishes.

We ordered the following:
- Vegetable Spring Rolls
- A steamed rice bowl with corn (It didnt come with corn but the waitress said she can add corn to it).
- A sweet and sour chicken platter without the green peppers and onions that come with it.
- Noodles with beef platter.

Few minutes later, the spring rolls came and they were not good at all and small as well. The hot dishes then followed and with them came major dissapointment.

- Steamed rice came without corn. They were unable to drop few pieces of corn into the bowl. It is very demanding indeed.
- Sweet and Sour chicken came with the green pepper and onions. The waitress realized the matter as soon as she got to the table, so she apologized, went back to the kitchen, took out the onions and green pepper and came back with it. How did i know that? Simply because the chicken and the sauce smelled like onions and peppers still, but i did not tell her anything.
- The noodles platter my gf ordered was disgusting. Noodles were not well done and they had onions all over them. We asked them to take it back and we ended up not paying for it.

That was pretty much my experience at the Jasmine Room and i am quite sure will be my last one. I thought for a while that ChopSticks is no longer that good, but it is great compared to this one.

There are no words to describe the taste of a Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie…
I’m on a diet now so I try as much as possible to avoid eating sweets and junk food, but today I failed big time, but it was soooo worth it.

So I went up to the cashier and the guy asked me if I’d like to sit and be served or just do take-out. I told him I’ll just have a cookie to go. I chose the regular chocolate chip cookie.

I took the bag and started going up the escalator when I took my first bite of the cookie…. It was fantastic!
I went up to the 1st level, turned around and went back down and ordered 2 more and ate them on the spot… so much for my diet. And I took another one to go in the end…

The cookie costs 2$ but u can get a dozen for 18$, and it’s worth it.

They have all kinds of cookies, with smarties, rice krispy treats, nuts..

I highly recommend that anyone who’s reading this try them.

The shop is located on the basement floor of the ABC Dbayeh, dunno if they have any other stores though.

Crêpes à GoGo is a new place in town that does only crepes. It opened few weeks back in Gemmayze street and its price list is very reasonable and ranges between 2$ for a simple chocolate crepe to 4-5$ for adding several ingredients. I have no clue if it is a local place or is related to the Crepe a Gogo place in Toronto, Canada.

I am a big fan of crepes (I don’t like pancakes though) and my favorite place for crepes is Crepaway. However, My favorite crepes are my mother’s.
We just ordered 4 crepes, so let’s see if they turn out to be good.

Delivery number: 01-570887

Update: We ordered 2 nutella and nuts crepes, 1 kinder and nuts crepe and a dark chocolate crepe. They were decent but a bit too small. I like Crepaway’s crepes better.

I saw this expired Coco pops while buying cereals at Medco’s supermarket on the Dora highway.

I was out having breakfast at the newly revamped ZWZ in Kaslik on Saturday and i finally figured out why the four parking lots in front of it are almost always filled even when there’s barely 1 or 2 occupied tables.

Turns out the employees park their cars there!

Both cars in the image above were of employees who had just shown up to work while we were having breakfast. I wouldn’t mind it if there were more than four empty slots but this is unacceptable! One can almost say they are doing it on purpose to let the valet take more cars.

I found those yogurts at O&C Supermarket while i was buying yogurt. They are relatively more expensive (3.5$ each) than Elle & Vire (Each 3 for 4$) and way more expensive than the local yogurts but have M&Ms, Oreos or corn flakes with them. I got the Oreo one and it was very good but again it’s too much to pay for a yogurt.

Schtroumpf restaurant was one of my favourite places in town and the beer and food there were as good as any other place. But it just lost it for some reason until a year or two back when it turned “American” and became Shtrumpf restaurant. Not sure why they changed the name, but i went for dinner the other day and it was very good, and their salad bar is awesome. There’s soup, a toaster and a large variety.

They are currently holding their 18th beer festival where you pay 19$ and drink beer as much as you can. The festival is held outdoors and includes live bands and entertainment. You need to reserve before going though.

Last time i attended, the atmosphere was really nice and the place crowded but service was a bit slow. Also, not including any food with the beer kind of sucks, specially that they offer open beer and wings night every Tuesday for 16$ or so.

Nevertheless, their beer festival is worthy going to, and i can’t wait for their cheese and wine nights in winter.

The author and chef Anthony Bourdain came to Beirut in 2006 to film an episode of his food show No Reservation for the Travel channel. Two days after arriving the war with Israel started. The episode is available on YouTube divided into 5 parts. Sorry about the quality, this is the best I could find.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Update: I found the torrent, you can get it [Here]

I found this on Saniour’s new menu. I honestly don’t get it.

I was not very fond of sushi until two years back, but since then i’ve tried almost every place in town and i must say it is very hard to tell if one place is that much better than another. One thing is for sure is that sushi is very expensive in Lebanon.

Sushi restaurants are divided into two categories in Lebanon:
- The classy and expensive ones (WokWok, Salmontini, Ybar, Le Sushi bar, and to a certain extent Le Yen and Maki.)

- The affordable and popular ones (Sushi Ko, Scuzi, Tsunami, Oceanus, Sushi Bento, Ichiban, Sushi Mooda, Kaiten etc …)

Most of the expensive places are good but it’s way too overpriced. WokWok has the most uncomfortable chairs too. Maki is a great place too but as Michelle pointed out earlier, it’s a very complex menu which i found annoying. Le Yen on the other hand is one of my favourite places.

As for the less expensive places, Oceanus is the most highly recommended by most people i know.

All my friends who come from abroad tell me sushi is way too expensive here and not that good. But all food is relatively expensive in Lebanon specially the non-Lebanese one, so that’s not something new. As for being not that good, i can’t be the judge of that but i don’t find it that hard to believe. Afterall, we do import most of our sushi and the food control here is “laisse a desirer”.