All posts tagged: Middle East

Shamsuddin – Iranian food in Satwa

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Originally by I’m Not a Fiend Aahh, meat. Sometimes I love the stuff. Sometimes I go weeks feeling completely ambivalent about it. Sometimes I read depressing articles and the thought of meat consumption makes me feel sick. Sometimes I eat Iranian food and remember just how beautiful meat really is. How could I ever have thought otherwise?? Those Persians know how to treat meat right. You haven’t experienced tender meat till you’ve had a good Iranian kebab. So I was excited to spot Shamsuddin on Satwa Road recently. It’s pretty bare bones, but that’s just the way I like it. Basic furniture. Tissue boxes. TV on the news channel. Two guys running the whole place. The guy working the grill must have been someone’s son, a baby-faced meat apprentice. Shamsuddin don’t even have a menu. Just decide if you want mutton or chicken, minced or pieces. Simple as that. The rest will come to you. In the face of such choices, we ordered a plate of everything. A housemade laban, heavy on the fresh mint, kept …

A great little farmer’s market with a big offering

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 Last weekend FNND took a trip down to the farmer’s market on the balcony (next to the car park) of the Emirate’s Towers, she left the house wondering as to the potential of this alternate version set up by Baker and Spice. And what a lovely surprise! There are few things nicer on a weekend that lazily browsing through a market, however small, with an abundance of fresh vegetables, eggs, breads and pastries, delicious coffee straight from Ethiopia’s farms, pure cacao and lucuma (who ever heard of that? it’s a very delicious source of vitamin B) and spiced Yemeni honey. Each vendor had their own story to tell, the founders of the companies were there to tell you about their food, including the owner of Baker and Spice who set up the market. Fat Nancy spent the morning talking food, coffee, herbs and honeys, learning about Ethiopia, farming in the UAE, Yemen and South America. It was great. Coffee Planet with their range of speciality coffees. The Indonesian was FNND’s favourite after a tasting of all …

REPRESENT III – Hamra Abbas

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Hamra Abbas represented by Lawrie Shabibi Hamra Abbas’s work is playful and unpredictable, it has a definite presence, but is so versatile that it is hard to pin down exactly what it is about an Abbas work that tells you it is hers. Fat Nancy takes a look at why she likes it so much. Firstly and overarching, Abbas’s work is pure. In its use of colour, its concepts and humour, she sticks to absolute and direct messaging. The colours she uses are sharp, clear and translucent, even when used in prints. They remind FN of David Batchelor’s works, often managing to bring a similar brightness to the fore without the need for artificial light, using instead natural light, colour on paper, on glass, with food colouring in plasticine, as a tool to manipulate and reflect the intensity she desires. Abbas’s life, and consequently her work, could be said to be somewhat fractured – coming from Pakistan and a deeply Islamic community and now living and working in the USA. Perhaps it is this contradiction that makes it addictively erratic, fickle and playfully …

The Inside Guide IV. Dubai

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No amount of guidebook research can replace local knowledge so FNND has asked locals about their city and how they interact with it. They live and work in the city and kindly provided their favourite spots. This is the third in a series, with part three focused on Dubai. So meet Dubai resident Reiner Erlings who loves the old and the new in his city. What you do for a living? I am a composer and music producer based here in Dubai. The main thing I do is to compose original music, sound design, and foley for advertising, TV and film projects, such as TV/online ads, cinema campaigns, and (short) films. I have a recording studio where I work with artists and bands from the region as a producer and mixing engineer. How long have you been living in Dubai? I’ve been in Dubai for almost nine years now. How did you end up here? I grew up in Oman, so have been coming to Dubai for many years on weekends and breaks. After going …

The Troyka Bar is Backstage Dubai

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Seventies ‘teatime’ and TV was fun – Getting dressed up in pyjamas to see the spectacle of a large mahogany box (TV) wheeled out. The TV set was the thing that made it exciting. Because seventies TV programmes were not. They were usually made up of  bad actors, wearing various shades of brown  and trying not to wobble the stage set when they closed a door. But the massive mahogany TV can make the long winter nights something to savour. If the picture goes wobbly – just bang it in the right place to get a good picture, which feels like ‘The Fonz’ Fonzerelli in ‘Happy Days’. Because, If the content is a little ‘tongue in cheek’ and it doesn’t run as smoothly as you’d hope… They are some of the reasons for enjoying it. So let us introduce you to the mahogany clad Ascot Hotel in Bur Dubai. With its faux-period facade, and an interior filled with regency fittings that hark back to a time of kitsch grandeur  – It is the seventies sitcom of …