Dandydish

It was an impromptu decision. We decided to go out for dinner with some good friends and plans were made. The only thing not planned was the place to go to. We were finally bundled in one car and started driving without actually knowing where were we headed to. Suggestions from the ladies was sought who duly informed us that they felt like chinese food. Last week while driving past the Hamra district, I had seen the hoarding of a new place called Chopsticks. I remembered this well as the tag line was Fresh Chinese cuisine. So we headed to the direction of Chopsticks. Once there, we were greeted by an empty restaurant. It was a weekday night and we reached the place by around 10.00 in the night. But the interiors were so warm and welcoming that we did not let the empty space bother us. Once we were seated, our server, Paul got us some complimentary Kiwi shots. It was fresh but overtly sweet for my taste. However the others on the table seemed to like this. The menu is quite exte...

Birthdays are a big deal for me. Especially if it is of my better half. I normally like to plan well in advance and fill the special day with small bits of surprises all throughout. Food is an equally important part of it and I have 2 main requirements while plannig this aspect. 1.) The place should of course be exclusive 2.) It should be a place that we have never been to before. Wife's birthday was yesterday and so I began planning 10 days before this. I called up the various so called chic places to find out about their menu, availability and decor ( cos I wanted a sea facing set up this time around, after all I need to capitalise on the Red Sea.) Most of the places that I called up had a restrcition in terms of the vegetarian options that they served. Some others did not have a sea view, which I was very particular about. After a lot of phone calls and discussions with freinds and colleagues, I zeroed in on Noodles located inside the Rosewood corniche hotel. The guy on the p...

It is part laziness combined with the fact that I have not been to many interesting places lately that resulted in a lull in my posting on this blog. However, a dinner yesterday night changed all that. Last couple of times during our trips to the Mall of Arabia, we glanced across this place called Chapter that claimed to serve malaysian cuisine along with some boutique bakery stuff. Honestly, it was the boutique stuff that kept us away from this place. But yesterday we were accompanied by our very good malaysian friend and hence it seemed like a safe bet to try and sample the malaysian fare. The place is chic and looks more english than malaysian to be honest, but it was new and clean with comfortable seating and seemed very welcoming. Once seated we were handed over the menu cards that had a lot of stuff that spelt malaysian with a detailed description of each item. We could see our friend's eyes light up on seeing the menu, which is always a good sign. He asked...

In my post a couple of months ago, I had mentioned how much in love I am with Al nakheel located at the corniche. ( http://dandydish.blogspot.com/2011/06/long-absence-from-my-last-post-is.html ) Well, yesterday was an extended new version of this love. Red Sea mall was the venue. Wife and me visit this place once every fortnight on Tuesdays for some social commitment. Most of the time we end up having dinner in the food court here as we are usually short on time. Yesterday we reached this place a bit early and had time to kill. During our previous visits to this place, we had seen that Al Nakheel had opened an outlet here by the name Ara'es Al Nakheel but we never really ventured out there. We still are pretty regular with our visits to the original Al Nakheel at the corniche and something inside always told me that this would not meet up to the orginal standards. I was wrong!!! Once inside what struck us most was the chic decor. Very contemporary. Very stylish. We d...

It has been an awfully long time. I mean really long. The holy month of ramadan meant that I could not eat out as frequently as I would have liked to. Add to the fact that the wife thinks I need to lose weight, I mean a lot of weight. So its not been all happy happy eating out in Foodsville. However, every dark could has a silver lining. In my case this was our Eid trip to the beautiful wonderful Istanbul. Below is just a teaser. The real post will follow soon. The quintessential drink in Turkey. Watch this space!!

If Starship enterprises had an ice-cream parlor, this would be it. You can easily imagine Capt. Kirk relaxing here after a hard at work saving the galaxy! Marcel's, located at the Danube square off Tahliya street, was highly recommened by various people on the jeddahfood website. This newly open place serves only frozen yoghurt that is specially imported from South Africa. Upon entering the place, you are greeted by a warm white decor with multi color lights that gives the place an inter-galactic feel. There is a small display offering the various flavors of frozen yoghurts and there are the dispensers that dole out the yoghurts in the soft cone format. The good thing is that the flavors are not limited to the usual three flavors of Vanilla, berry and yoghurt. Instead you get to choose form a wide variety of imaginative flavors like peanut butter and English toffee apart from the usual ones. The family seating is one the first floor which is manned all the time by a friendl...