I love my meat. And I love my bread. And when you throw little juicy slivers of meat over chunks of bread drenched in warm yoghurt and melted butter, dousing it all in a delicately spiced tomato sauce, I experience UBER-LOVE.

I speak to you of none other than the Iskender Kabab. The Turkish kabab that you could find at Shikidim and that I’d raved on about as one of Dubai’s Top 16 Ethnic Eats…only to learn a day after the article was published that Shikidim had shut down. To any lonely tourist who read the article and was out hunting for those now non-existent meaty sauced-up chunks of Iskender on Murraggabat street…yes, I do deserve to be pelted with rotten tomatoes.

But such is Dubai. The land of imports, the land of transience, the land of I-saw-this-in-NYC-and-I-want-it-here-too. I-want-it-NOW. Oh-and-one-year-later-I-am-bored-of-running-it-so-let’s-call-it-quits.

Often, I don’t even realize when something gets shut down, unless some wise foodie reaches out and warns me that I should probably stop raving about the kababs I had ten months ago because they’ve long gone [on that special note, thank you Daddybird, for keeping me honest.] I get so distracted with constantly hunting out new places that I rarely go back to the same place again. Shikidim and its award-winning [I Love You So Darn Much in My Frying Pan Award] Iskendar kababs had hit the cemetery and I hadn’t even mourned the loss.  RIP.

But if Dubai can be fickle with me, I can be fickle with Dubai. I’ve switched my loyalties to my latest Turkish find along the Deira Corniche, Ankara. Admittedly, the Iskender at Ankara was a couple of notches less awesome than the one I’d had at Shikidim. They didn’t have the wider chunks of chicken alongside the tiny shawarma slivers that Shikidim had served, and the narrower surface area meant less sauce was soaked up per sliver of kabab.  I also committed a faux-pas and ordered a somewhat bastardized chicken version that didn’t have the beefy juices lurking about in Shikidim’s mixed chicken and beef Iskendar plate. Neither version is authentic really, the way to go probably pure lamb, and Ankara does offer that too (I stupidly didn’t order it. yeah, don’t ask.)

But comparisons with dead restaurants aside, Ankara’s plate of saucey kababs was still a worthy balm for the emotional wounds I had suffered after Shikidim had shut down so abruptly. What’s more is that the owner is visibly passionate about the food and how it MUST be served. He threw a hissy fit when I arrived late to pick up my first take-out order of Iskender kabab from them. The plastic tub of chicken shavings over juicy bread had waited for an entire 30 minutes for me to arrive, which is unacceptable in the land of optimal Iskendar consumption. Before the dish could become a weeping soggy mess, he gave it away to another customer, and prepared a fresh one when I arrived.

THAT is called passion for food. And I rarely see it in this city.

Another must-eat at Ankara is the lahmacun (pronounced lahmajoun), a Turkish pizza that’s been snowed over with minced meat and optionally traced with beaten eggs that have meandered through the meaty fissures and baked up into omelet rivers in the oven. I’d totally recommend going with the eggy version, and putting a spot or two of sweet bottled ketchup if you’re a proud ketchup freak like I am. There’s no cheese on the lahmacun, and I’m glad there isn’t, else it would stamp out the fresh parsley and subtle seasoning locked in by the ground meat.

Ankara kick starts your meal with a free bowl of killer lentil soup, fresh pide bread, and heaps of chopped veggies dressed in olive oil. I could have skipped the lahmacun and the kababs altogether, and just sat there, philosophizing about life between dunks of pide into lemony lentil broth. After years of having complex Indian dal spiced with every ingredient available in the bottomless masala dabba, the sheer simplicity of minimalist Mediterranean and Middle Eastern lentil soups always catches me off guard. In a very, very good way.

I’ve also tried a stew with velvety mutton morsels, eggplant and other veggies that had melted into soft succulent cubes of meat broth flavour. The stew was a discovery during my first takeout experience, when I took a shot in the dark and asked the phone attendant whether they had any meaty curry with eggplants. It’s definitely not on the menu, though it may be one of the tantalizing dishes sprawled out in the display to your left as you step into the restaurant. When reheated the next day over lunch, all the earthy mutton juices in the stew had intensified and screamed out for a toasty Turkish pide to be drowned in them.

There’s a good reason I’d go back to Ankara. Or maybe three good reasons. The first being this dreamy bundle of glistening chicken stuffed with rice that I saw in the display, and that I shall willingly befriend it on my next visit. The second is for dessert. The sign outside suggests that they have the clownish Dondurma (Turkish ice cream) show happening within, but sadly, I didn’t see anything of its kind within. What they did have was a tray of some sort of fried dough soaked in syrup. If I hadn’t already devoured half a plate of Iskender and a couple of Lahmacun strips, that dessert would have made it to the table.

Imagine if they served mysterious deep fried syrupy dessert under a thick creamy scoop of Dondurma? I know. I’m drooling too. Over something that neither of us has even tasted just yet.

And the last dish I’ve got to stick my fork into would be the yogurtlu kababs, long skewers of minced meat bathing in yogurt sauce.

This time around, I’ll make sure to go back. I’m going to dabble about in as much Turkish goodness as I can at Ankara until…oh, I don’t know…fickle Dubai steals the kabab plate away from me again.

[psst. You really can’t miss Ankara on the Deira Corniche. Unless you’re still mourning the loss of Shikidim and would never betray them for another Turkish restaurant. Or more likely, unless you never drive down the Deira Corniche. But it’s there, right next to the Belhoul specialty hospital, with a big flickering green and red sign overhead. Droves of bachelor men or married men who need minimal conversation and piles of meat are scattered across the tables, starting out on the pavement and leading into the restaurant. For a lady seeking her share of meat, the servers are kind enough to escort her away from the male turf and into their private family dining room at the back of the restaurant.]

Ankara Restaurant
Deira Corniche, next to Belhoul Specialty Hospital
Phone: +971 (4) 273-1855

Considering I’ve known Chirag for close to two years now, a joint foodie post with him is like…close to two years overdue. Anyhoo, we’ve finally got our act together, and it took nothing less than a food that we both hold close to our hearts, our tummies, our food loving souls…to make it happen. Manakish.

[psst, the word ‘manousheh’ in our post is not some sort of auto-correct defect. It’s the singular of manakish in Arabic. Yes it is. No, it’s not right to say can I have A manakish with cheese. Yes, we know you’ve said it before, we have too. No, it’s never too late to change.]

Now Chirag had told me about these falafel manakish in Karama. That’s like waving a bone in front of a dog, go fetch. I barked till he agreed to take me there.

I came across the falafel manousheh quite by accident – come to think of it, this is starting to ring true for a lot of really good food I find. The term they first used at Moulin D’Or when I walked in a few years ago during late night certification classes was: falafel sandwiches. But sandwich it was not. I watched their chef make what looked like a green topping manousheh wondering what he was up to, before I realized they really meant ‘falafel manousheh.’ I’d had falafel manousheh just once before in Abu Dhabi, where the guy tried to break open what I believe was a solitary falafel over labneh in a combination that, well, was clearly not worth blogging about.

Moulin D’Or however, put a nice spin on a traditional offering, spreading delicious falafel batter on a manousheh dough, topped with tahini, tomatoes, some greens and pickles. I can get aboard that train any day.

Me too…any day, ALL day. And if I’m hopping on any train, I’m taking both Chirag and Sheban—two outrageously smart, tech-wired entrepreneurs—with me, and making a food tour working session of it. Yeah I know, everything these days is about the food tours. I’ll launch it and then I’ll shut up already. Or maybe you’ll see promo SMS spam on food tours violently possess your cellphones. You can turn off the TV, turn off the radio, shut your eyes tight when you pass an annoying yellow bakeshop-plastered billboard, but cellphone…that’s where I’ve got you right where I want you, because Dubai has established that your cellphone is the one place you can never opt out of promo spam. It’s the Hotel California of ominous marketing spam, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…

But I will admit, when I stepped into Moulin D’Or, the food tours were the last thing on my mind. For someone whose Achilles heel lies in warm buttery baked goodies, this was heavenly hell. I walked in and it all just smacked me in the face: giant croissants puffed up like angry birds, small white discs of pastry smattered with za’atar and cheese, chocolate glazed rows of ganache and coffee buttercream-layered Opera cake, boats and crescents and all the usual shapes of tiny fatayer with cheese and meat and veggies. How had I not ever given Moulin D’Or a second glance on my visits across the street to Al Reef Bakery? Imagine, all those mornings where I could have been living the dream with HULK buttery croissants…

Seriously? You know you can get giant croissants anywhere right? It’s the falafel manousheh that’s a rare species around here. And to think we almost missed it that evening.

When I walked up to Moulin D’Or’s manakish oven, my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t see the A4 printed sign in Calibri that used to read “Falafel Sandwich, 5 Dhs”. It would seem we were a couple months too late to make the trip, and the falafel manousheh had now morphed into a mainstream falafel sandwich, no frills. Dejected, we walked back to the table. I was devastated, Sheban looked sad but could potentially be won over with a meaty fatayer. But Arva…Arva hadn’t really accepted the tragic news at all. She just strolled right back to the counter, because one more attempt at sighting the falafel manousheh was absolutely necessary. Skipping over a comment relating to women, better service and the GCC, I will merely point out that the chef agreed to make a couple of manakish just for us.

I’m ashamed to admit that I do use my chubby womanly charm when it comes to food. That’s not a bad thing now, is it?

Considering how the evening had progressed, the manakish’s arrival to the table was that much more exciting. The consensus around the table was that it looked even better than expected (though I was just gobsmacked with hunger by this point to have any expectations at all) I was just glad our trip had not been in vain.

Crisp manousheh dough, layered with awesome falafel mix, topped with tahina and crunch, a quiet calm engulfed the table as we ate (save for my incessant questions about food tours this and food tours that). Falafel makes for a very light manousheh when not fried, and although I felt that my memory of the manousheh I’d had here years ago was slightly better than the reality on my plate, this was still…

…satisfying. Of all the manousheh I’ve tried, the salty-bitter za’atar and cheese ones, the meaty sujuk ones, the creamy sweet lebneh ones, I’d say this falafel manousheh was the more subtle of the lot. The manousheh innards were so light that if you guzzled them down thoughtlessly, you wouldn’t hear the falafel spread murmur fragrantly from the crust. The base was thin and crispy, disintegrating into a crunch reminiscent of a stroll over dry autumn leaves in a city with four seasons. There was no cheese, and if there was tahina, it was barely there. The whole ensemble was delicate and understated.

The manakish must have been good, because we talked about falafels for about 20 minutes afterwards. Did you guys know there’s a falafel bar in Sharjah? NaaahsssSSSH! It’s a secret! …but more on that later. I can’t guarantee that Moulin D’Or will entertain more requests for the coveted manousheh, but having a woman in your party apparently helps. If not, they do have a decent repertoire of manakish to choose from. and cheesy fatayer and angry bird croissants. yumsies.

[Share some reader love with Chirag and check out the cross-posted post on his blog, Naihar.]

Moulin D’Or Bakery
Zabeel Road, across from Al Reef Bakery
Phone: +971 (4) 354-7847
Website

I recently met someone who walks through the city like I do. Where most people would have cursed me for dragging them into Naif Square for Afghani kababs without decent directions (mostly because I didn’t have a clue where the restaurant was either.), he was thrilled at having stumbled across the Naif Police Museum and the Naif Souq. Where most people would have scurried off after lunch to the cool comforts of a part of town not as jumbled up as Naif, he stuck around to wander about the maze in peak afternoon heat. Where most people would have sailed past dark and obscure alleys in oblivion, he strolled right in to gaze at the colorful homes and faded signs and dirty old brooms stuck into the wires of old-school air-conditioning exhausts.

Said someone is Alex. Alex, the graphic designer dude. Alex, the photographer pro. Alex, the awesome yet totally unassuming artist, who skips the clichéd towering photos of the Burj Khalifa to capture the beauty of the traditional doors of homes in Al Ain.

Alex, the patient soul who got dragged into one of my poorly navigated kabab expeditions and had nothing but a few of my characteristic, cryptic text messages to find the target restaurant.

As we strolled about Naif road after lunch, I was fascinated at how someone actually pre-empted my steps for a change…turning into bleak winding alleyways with a sense of curiosity and fascination as to what could be living…or as is usually my case, cooking…within. That’s when his words, uttered earlier as we settled down for lunch, crossed legged in the Afghani majlis, really sunk in: “I feel like we have a real affinity when it comes to old parts of town.”

I agree, we do.

I’d still fumble about a bit if you were to ask me to lead you back there for kababs. But that’s shockingly better than having to wait at the Naif Police Station until Afghan Khorasan can spare one of their delivery guys to cycle out and find you. Yes, that does happen in my world.

The delivery white knight who had rescued me from the police station laid our plastic dining sheet out on the majlis. Similar to the pre-meal nibbles treatment you get with Yemeni Mandi, our dining sheet was plied with veggies, yogurt, and a clear, lukewarm soup stocked up with a yarn of noodles and fragrant dill. The mutton shami (called kabab kofta in the menu) and chicken tikka at Afghan Khorasan were decent. I wouldn’t necessarily mount them up on my Kabab Wall of Fame, and they’re by no means memorable enough for me to give you a slow-mo mouthful by mouthful replay of them…but yeah, they were decent.

I must interject my own foodie train of thought at this point to say I was dead nervous, wielding my camera in front of a pro photographer. Luckily I didn’t trip over my camera bag or send the lens cap springing across the room or sit over my lens or do anything else that’s quite routine for me in most cases, but would have been unthinkably mortifying at lunch with a photographer who’s respected enough to have been featured on TED. Though it still crushes me to think that Alex is potentially looking at my kabab photos right now with a sense of extreme pity, and hoping to dear God that his Adobe workshops would never seat a student with the kind of chronic camera clumsiness I possess.

The bread accompanying our kababs was not this intriguing boat-shaped bread faintly resembling the Iraqi barberi pictured on the menu, but just a plain Jane naan. Rumour has it that their star baker has left the kitchen.

If there’s something I’d go back to Afghan Khorasan for, it would be the daal gosht, fiery-colored chana (split chickpea) lentils that had been slow-cooked to a mush with hefty chunks of mutton and spices sizzled in ghee.

The mutton itself was not the star of the dish. What I reminisce about, over two weeks after my visit, is using the bread to scoop up those slightly chunky lentils, plump with butter and meaty juices. If there’s a dish I’d ask…beg…DEMAND you to order at Afghan Khorasan, the dal gosht would be it.

But if you do decide to pay Afghan Khorasan a visit, Naif may not be the best option (unless you plan to make a little Old Dubai sightseeing trip out of it, in which case it’s totally worth it.) They don’t stock some of my most loved dishes, the flattened beef chapli kabab or maas daal or chicken kadai. That said, the Barsha branch didn’t have most of these…harder to prepare?…dishes either when I called them. At least Bur Dubai stocked the chapli kabab. Your best bet is to not bet at all, and just give them a ring to check if they have any or all of: dal gosht, chapli kabab, maas dal, chicken or mutton kadai. These are the more unique, harder-to-ace items on the menu that are just begging for a taste-test, especially since mediocre kababs are a dime a dozen in the city.

But I get the feeling that kababs or no kababs, Alex and I will each find our way back into Naif soon, exploring, wandering, get lost, getting found again…and hopefully testing out the other two Afghani restaurants I glimpsed on my long-winded pinball route around the streets.

Afghan Khorasan Kabab
Naif Square, Deira
Near the Naif Police Station. [As you walk outside the Police Station, with the station on your left and the mosque on your right, take the first left and walk down the lane. At that stage...call for exact directions or ask someone where the restaurant is!] 
Phone: +971 (4) 234-0999
Al Quoz
Across from the Dubai Bowling Centre, 2nd Interchange, Sheikh Zayed Road
Phone: +971 (4) 338-9838
Bur Dubai
Right across from the Dubai Customs, Al Mina Road
Phone: +971 (4) 234-0999

My pending posts have become like a disorganized Old McDonald’s farm of nibbles, here a nibble, there a nibble, everywhere a nibble nibble [which is tantamount to a massive nibble]…

And no post to show for it.

So rather than let the tiny eats rot away in solitary unposted confinement in that part of my brain that would prefer to curl up and snooze after a heavy meal, I’m going to just patch up those disconnected nibbles into one post and pretend like there’s some DEEP unbreakable connection across these foods. SUCH AS: my intense passion to share tasty nibbles with my food loving fellows across the city.

[and the fact that the photos of these nibbles stare me in the face every time I launch Picasa.]

First up, a takeout of stuffed pigeon, or hamam mahshi, from Grand Abu Shakra.

If you mistakenly call them haMMam mahshi, don’t be surprised if the waiters snigger back at you because you’ve just inadvertently asked for stuffed bathrooms. Yuckies.

The last time I attempted grilled pigeons from Grand Abu Shakra, I ordered the unstuffed version…and was served up skanky emaciated pigeons that were quite literally, skin draped over tiny 00-sized pigeon bones. This stuffed pigeon takeout experience was clearly of a different (=tastier) flock. My golden-crusted pigeon was perched on a bed of short-grained rice, scattered with kidney and gizzards (most likely that of a chicken given their size), and throbbing with the sweet essence of heady spices, most prominently cinnamon.

Finding the meat in the bird was like a game of treasure hunt. To compensate for the hollow fleshless innards, the chef had stuffed the bird silly with same spiced rice that was mounded up on the plate. It was only when I got to the breast portion that I found a tender missile-shaped nugget of dark pigeon meat. But the victorious feeling of having found that morsel of pigeon meat, the fragrance of the rice, the crunch of the pigeon skin that boasted the golden sheen of a perfectly roasted, well-oiled bird, all of those together have ensured that forever more, I will look at pigeons with hungry eyes and a growling tummy.

If you ever find yourself at the Spice Souk, you’d realize that sadly, there’s not much to nosh on except this fabulous Arabianized Gelateria (I hope one of my erudite readers out there shrieks out a big fat NO! in my comments and corrects me with a laundry list of eateries in the spice souk area. I’d be eternally grateful.)

Of course I made a beeline for the camel milk, which I’d have expected to have a strong flavour, a gamey essence, a thick-skinned texture that would leave me grunting for more. But, in reality, the camel milk gelato scoop turned out to be quite timid, sort of as though it’d come from the milk of a very…shy camel?

The less exotic half of my gelato cup, a coffee-coloured scoop of hazelnut, was far more exciting and conducive to gelato giggles than the shy camel one. I also sampled a spoon of dates gelato, and one of saffron, both of which are brilliant and will definitely find their way into my gelato cup the next time I’m lurking about that area.

Does anyone remember the time when I went on this Nepalese momo hunt and landed up on floor -1 of a building in Meena Bazaar? Since then, Kathmandu Highland has got a ton of publicity, with one of their servers being splashed up on a full page of The National’s lifestyle cover. Anyhoo, after that last time I blogged about momos, I discovered two new momo variants. One is the kothe momo, partly steamed, partly pan-fried, and fully charged with the teasing smell of timur, a type of unique Nepalese spice with the aromatic prowess of potpourri.

An ordering tip: make sure you ask the servers to get your kothe momos with less oil. Sometimes the chef can get a little too adventurous with the grease in his pan and drown those poor babies.

That up there is the fourth momo variant I know of, the C-momo: plump steamed momos with Chinese style sweet and sour gravy streaming all over them. Sweet and sour gravy is like the cheese of Chinese cooking, you can slap it over anything and it’d probably taste good. As do these momos, though if I had to pick, kothe momos would still be my first choice.

I also claim to have tasted the shish tawook at Bait Al Wakeel. I only mention it because I rarely ever enjoy dry boring chunks of shish tawook, but in this case, (a) the service was so obnoxiously horrid, not just for my table, but all the other annoyed tables around us, that it does deserve a mention. I hypothesize that a rat had died in the kitchen and the servers were mourning its death; (b) the location is so perfectly romantic, with a deck overlooking the Bur Dubai side of the creek.

However, the server-dementors had obviously closed off the deck that night. The thrilled faces of customers enjoying their meal on the deck would have been intolerable I presume; (c) this may well be one of the oldest buildings in town, with interiors that speak to its history as “The House of the [presumably British] Agent;” and (d) that shish tawook, despite the abominable service, was actually ridiculously good. It was smoky and charred at the edges in a way that had me guzzling the chicken chunks down before my dementors could realize that I was enjoying the meal far too much and it had to be snatched away from me.

If it isn’t obvious already, I won’t be going back. Even if they coat their shisk tawook in edible gold and fan me with peacock feathers. [why doesn't a restaurant in Dubai do this already? It's unforgivable, really.]

This Filipino muffin-bun with unmistakeable Spanish influence: Ensemada.

In total defiance of the gluten-free diet that is currently topping the pop diet charts at the moment, I picked up this fluffy puff of unhealthiness from my local Madina store downstairs. You start nibbling on the hat of melted sugar and al-dente strands of sour highly processed cheese, till you realize that the sweet-cheesy hat is…gone….and replaced with light fluffy innards that could be dunked into tea (anything longer than a 1 second rapid dunk will cause the fluff to disintegrate into your chai. you have been forewarned.)

As ‘research’ for my article for Serious Eats, I tucked into cheesy Nabulsi Kunafa from Qwaider al Nabulsi, a Palestinian restaurant in Deira with uber-friendly servers, lip-smacking pistachio and dates mamoul, and trays of kunafa and other Arabic sweets that are pimped right at the entrance to trap poor unsuspecting, weak-willed, sweet-toothed customers. My kunafa of choice here is the one covered with ground brown semolina, which I make sure they serve hand-scorching hot so that the cheese can bubble out into my spoon in a show of ultimate decadent comfort.

The perk of parking yourself at Qwaider is that you can place an order for some of the best falafel there is to try in town from the psychedelic-signed Sultan Al Falafel restaurant next door. Sultan puts out a killer plate of stuffed falafel, or falafel mahshi, fried to a deadly crisp and studded with white sesame seeds. Contrary to their chickpea counterparts, these falafel innards are made of fava beans and lined with a thin layer of tomato and onion stuffing that one-ups other falafels in that category.

I think the moral of this disconnected, long-winded nibbles story is that, I should try to forget my camera at home more often so that, oops, I can’t post about that yummy pigeon that exploded into a volcano of fragrant rice because I don’t have a photo of it [though the pigeon was a takeout that I devoured at home, so I was cornered in by my Canon.] and no one wants a photoless post and therefore I must not be plagued with self-induced guilt about owning a photo of something excruciatingly tasty that the world at large must know about even though they probably don’t give two hoots about what I consumed over the past two months.

…or it could just be that if you’re a food blogger, you’re going to be pretty darn well-fed.

Grand Abu Shakra
Al Maktoum Street, Next to Al Khaleej Palace
Phone: +971-4-222-9900

Kathmandu Highland Palace Restaurant
Near Astoria Hotel, Opposite Highland Supermarket, Meena Bazaar, Bur Dubai. [Probably best to ask the guy who picks up the phone to come and get you from the Astoria. He seemed super friendly and ever-so-willing to personally walk me over!]
Phone: +971 (4) 3536398 || +971 (55) 1742232

Bait Al Wakeel
Right by the Bur Dubai side of the creek, near the Textile Souk
Phone: +971 (4) 353-0530

Spice Souk Gelato Stand [I'm sure it has a more legit name, but I was too smitten with my hazelnut scoop to read the signboard.]
Look for the signpost in the main corridor of the Spice Souk

My Ensemada Fix
Any grocery store that stocks Filipino baked goodies…else trek over to the Madina Supermarket on Al Rigga Road.

Qwaider Al Nabulsi
Al Muraggabat Street, Deira
Phone: +971 (4) 227-7762 || +971 (4) 2277760

Sultan Falafel Restaurant
Al Muraggabat Street, Deira
Phone: +971 (4) 227-5559

I’m one of those ignorant kids who grew up thinking there was only one kind of noodle. Or maybe two, the kind that you’d pop out of a Maggi pack. Or those Italian hoses of Bolognese coated with minced meat. That was it.

I’m also one of those kids who grew up never really embarking on any sort of quest for noodle enlightenment. They never excited me to begin with, so I was happy to let unexciting dormant noodle dogs lie. By this wise stage of my life, I knew there were other kinds, soba, buckwheat, rice, udon, whatever else, but noodle history isn’t a topic that would have prompted me to curl up on a sofa and spend the next few hours reading about it the way, for instance, stuffed parathas might.

If I were Kung Fu Panda, daddy would hang his goose neck in shame right about now.

Flash forward to Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur where I found myself last week. Where I experienced a sort of noodle coming-of-age.

Standing at the tip of KL’s Chinatown is like facing a gigantic suction pump. You’re just edges away from the rim, one step forward and you’ll get whooshed in to this massive world of smells and sights and flavours, wanted and unwanted, all being flung in your face. And noodles. I’ve never seen so many noodles being chopped, dunked, twirled and slurped within a one mile radius of me. A little ignorant voice in me whispered: Golly. There are so many different types of noodles. And so many different ways of preparing the different types. And I don’t understand the names. Uh oh.

Maybe the thought of curling up on a sofa and doing some noodle research before stepping into this slurpy menagerie wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all.

Or I could have just turned to the last section of my handy Lonely Planet Guide to Malaysia, the one that I obviously found on my flight home to Dubai, and quickly skimmed two of Robyn Eckhardt’s brilliantly simple paragraph on noodles in Malaysia. She describes the Chee Cheong Fun, a frivolous sounding noodle that I had glimpsed in KL’s Chinatown when I walked past stall owners slicing up translucent “steamed rice flour sheets into strips topped with meat gravy or chilli and black prawn sauces.”

But I had skipped them because Assam Laksa had been my noodle aim for the day. Robyn’s description of laksa from a particular stall (‘the end stall’) in Chinatown’s Madras lane had me fixed on ordering the dish, though I clumsily picked the wrong ‘end’ of the line of stalls and chose a laksa stand that wasn’t the one glorified in Robyn’s writings. Yet, those white rice noodles, concealed under a sweet, throat-warming, sardine and minty broth was quite an exact replica of the Laksa that Robyn had described.

Fat chunks of tinned sardine bobbed up at the top of the soup, garnished with mint and ominous Thai bird chilies. The heat of the laksa was a different, superficial kind—the kind that made my face erupt into a sweating, heaving volcano, the kind that coursed down my throat with a fiery urgency, barely extinguished by its complex constitution of sweet pineapple bits, onion, and fleshy tinned sardine chunks. But by the time the broth and its noodle flotsam had reached my belly, the fire was gone. This was not like Indian spice, not the sadistic kind that burns you in your chest, in your lower tummy, and in all other bad places that were never made to burn.

The laksa noodles were thick, gelatinous, most likely rice flour-based, and responded to my teeth with a far more substantial bite than the noodles in the Johor Laksa I sampled with Mark, the Simply Enak tour guide, in Petaling Jaya. I sadly don’t remember much of the Johor Laksa (sorry Mark. I suck.), but to be fair, (a) my stomach had been overextended during a food tour the night before, (b) Mark had just fed me a Malaysian breakfast at the local wet market, with my favorite black sesame buns included, and (c) I had a plate of sweet, fragrant Beef Rendang that was vying for my attention at the time the Johor Laksa made an appearance. My scant notes on the dish say: “broth made from fish, minty taste, kalamansi, onions, basil.” And Wikipedia declares that Johor Laksa replaces from the thick Laksa noodle with plain spaghetti noodles. So be it. Fishy, minty, lemony soup of spaghetti noodles.

Another noodle variant that I stuck my chopsticks into were the yellow Chinese mee noodles that appeared in my soup bowl at the Imbi market. In a market throbbing with steaming vats and big net noodle ladles and pimpled deep-fried shapes and a mountain of other foods that were screaming out exotically scary but exciting names, I ordered the…Chicken Sliced Noodle. Sometimes I make such walloping big mistakes that hitting my head with a rock-hard coconut feels inadequate, hence I lay it bare on this blog so you can all laugh and point fingers and fling subpar noodles at me. I may have been blind to the insipid name, but the soup more than made up for it, mocking me with a blandness that even the scallions and sambal couldn’t salvage. In a place where I should have scaled the peak of Malaysian culinary experimentation, I was instead hanging precariously from the threads of noodle mediocrity.

The Imbi market disappointment was a far cry from the Prawn Hokkien Mee I had shared with mom two nights before at Little Penang Kafé in the mall adjacent to the Petronas towers.  The massive bowl of Hokkien Mee showcased fat boiled egg halves, chicken strips, two juicy prawns and swamp cabbage (kankong) delicately floating over a spicy, deadly flavorful broth that’s the perfect mix of tastes to bring you back to earth after you’ve scaled the Petronas next door. The soup twirled its way around two kinds of noodles: yellow egg noodles as well as bee hoon, or rice vermicelli, that traced the broth with its skinny, silky fingers.

Noodles also made an appearance at the Nasi Kandar restaurants peppered all about the country. Nasi Kandars are flavourful imprints of South Indian, often Muslim, immigrants on the Malaysian culinary scene, and serve everything from tandoori chicken to thosai (aka dosa). In contrast to their Malay or Chinese counterparts, the Nasi Kandar noodle versions were usually left ‘unsouped’ and stir-fried as mee goreng, full of Indian-style curry powder, and reminiscent of the Maggi curry flavor that almost every Indian child, and every Indian adult who has remnants of an Indian child within him, loves irrationally. In fact, in many places, the restaurants use the Maggi mix right out of the pack.

My plate of Maggi Goreng Ayam at Penang’s Gurney Tower was topped with chopped fried chicken, tender white chunks with the curried crispy skin left intact.  Even though I had initially scoffed at the thought of going to a restaurant to have them whip something out of a Maggi pack for me, you’d be surprised, the addition of crispy fried chicken and some restaurant wok grease really does amp up those noodles a notch higher than what you can slurp down at home. [Thanks for taking me here Pris!]

Another type of noodle that slid its way down during my dinner in Penang was the Kway Teow, flat rice noodles that are the protagonist of Penang’s famed Char Kway Teow. These noodles are usually throbbing with thick soy sauce and oodles of wok grease, topped with cockles, eggs, bean sprouts, shrimp and often pork, unless you go for the porkless version that I found at the nightly street food market on Penang’s Gurney Drive.

It was the same night that I had been running a fever, and teetered out of my hotel room in search of food. Either it was the fever that had numbed my taste buds, or the Char Kway Teow stall I picked wasn’t the life of Penang noodle action, but this much hyped and lauded dish didn’t really have me lasso-ing the stall owner with my last noodle for more. After five greasy spoonfuls, I put my plastic fork down in resignation.

I think I had enough noodles on one trip to sling me all the way to China and back. And even then, I know I left the country not having noodled my way through so many other variants, be it the coconut-based Laksa Lemak, the Loh See Fun that Robyn Eckhardt unappetizingly describes as stubby ‘rat tail’ noodles, sticky Lor Mee (though I doubt I’d get a pork-free version), the Won Ton Mee dumpling and noodle combination, the potato gravied egg noodles of Mee Rebus, or the beef noodle shops I saw people flocking to on Chinatown’s Petaling Street. I was like that small little ringlet of a scallion lost in a sea of soupy noodles, surrounded by so many options that weren’t even really options because I hadn’t done my homework before the trip. Maybe curling up with a book on noodle history and culture before my next trip to the Far East won’t be such a bland idea after all.

Assam Laksa
Madras Lane Stalls
Chinatown, KL

Johor Laksa
With Simply Enak Food Tours
Santai Restaurant
10, Persiaran Zaaba, Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, KL10 Persiaran Zaaba, KL
Phone: (03) 7728-8173
Petaling Jaya

Chicken Sliced Noodle
Stall at Imbi Market (official name: Pasar Baru Bukit Bintang), KL

Prawn Hokkien Mee
Little Penang Kafé
Suria, KLCC
Phone: (03) 2163-0215

Maggi Mee Goreng
Kapitan’s Nasi Kandar
Gurney Tower, Penang
Phone: (04) 8182-811

Char Kway Teow
Night Market Stalls at Gurney Drive, Penang

My mother once told me of a paratha that my cousin would bring home on Fridays. Early in the morning for breakfast, with the notoriously luscious baigan bhartha, an Indian gravy of eggplants charred and pulped to a cream that I have never quite been able to successfully replicate on my stove. On occasion, mother has altered the story by replacing baigan bhartha with aloo ki subzi, potatoes that I imagine were spiced in ways reminiscent of a modest village. Said cousin had moved back to India a couple of years ago, and the weekend supply of parathas and baigan bhartha, or aloo, depending on which version of the story you hear from my mother on any particular day, had abruptly stopped right after.

This year, I finally reached out to the cousin and asked him for his secret source of Friday parathas. In Meena Bazaar, go by 8 in the morning at the latest, there’s a long line. But how do I find him? Ah, how do I describe it…it’s in an alley. Ask anyone, they’ll know! Oh and what subzi is it served with, baingan or aloo? What? Where’d you hear that from? No, the guy makes koki paratha, with this special daal. Make sure you order the daal. I nodded at my blackberry messenger in obedience, ji bhaijaan.

The roadmap to my cousin’s paratha supply was hazy, but there were a few telling clues. He had mentioned koki, a paratha that has only recently made my acquaintance at the famous Paratha King, and one that has quickly shot up to number one on my list of most loved parathas—those discs of whole wheat flatbread, sometimes stuffed, sometimes layered, sometimes both, shallow-fried in oil…or on a decadent day, slathered with ghee.

I have vowed to write about my Paratha King experience someday, after I finish tasting all 101 of their parathas—but Pankaj Pathak, the “King” of that paratha show has countered that by the time I’m done sampling the lot, he’d have evily extended the empire by annexing countless more creative paratha ingredients.

Unless I could eat 2 parathas per meal for 3 meals every day for the next 16 days. Muahahahahaha.

Though I think my grand plan to conquer the 101 parathas would be sidetracked by paratha #5 on meal #3, and then every two meals after. I’d end up repeatedly begging for the koki. This paratha variant is the creation of the Sindhis, the people originating from the Sind province of Pakistan, the Hindu contingent of which had migrated to India after the partition in 1947. While made with the same wheat flour as the rest of its North Indian brethren, the koki is stuffed with onions, coriander, sometimes pomegranate seeds. They key is the characteristically crispy, parched-looking, cracked outer crust. Some recipes call for partially toasting the half-rolled out discs of dough before rolling them out to full size, some call for making the dough more crumbly in the first place, some completely ignore any difference in technique between koki and any other ordinary paratha. But in my humble, non-Sindhi opinion, a koki should always be crispy, and leave that lingering earthy toasted onion aftertaste which keeps you mesmerized by the rapidly diminishing paratha disc in front of you. I’d recommend pairing it with curd and lemon pickle, or devour it plain, enjoying the carby buttered bitefuls in their own onion-breathed isolation—but bhaijaan had ordered me to order it alongside the daal.

Bhaijaan had still not given me an exact location. And knowing my luck, I’d be hunting around Meena Bazaar like a lost lemur for hours on end, finding the place only after it had shut, or worse, after it had sold its last paratha to the obnoxious customer who had stepped into the shop fifteen seconds before I could stumble in. With something as popular as this paratha, getting lost was not an option.

The next clue was from a friend one who understands old Dubai like the back of his hand, and whose knowledge of old ethnic eateries I have come to respect. Karan confirmed that indeed, a kokiwalla does exist. That he does have a long line. And thankfully, that I could go any day of the week, without having to heave myself off the bed early on a Friday morning.

The final clue was a tweeted response to my desperate plea: does anywhere know where the kokiwalla in meena bazaar sells his goods in the morning? Twitter can be so productive when targeted at information other than Kim Kardashian’s next boringly predictable move.

The tweeted coordinates: His name is Nihal. Tip Top Lane, next to Delhi laundry.

Tip Top Lane is really not a lane at all. It’s a little mouse hole diagonally across the Tip Top shop, where tiny little mouse children were hauling their mattresses over to Delhi Laundry. As they scurried out of sight, I noticed an A4 paper sign proudly stating ‘Nihal’s’ on the door of a restaurant mysteriously called Dorrat Al Bahr. This was the place. My koki and dal was just steps away.

I peeked into a room with two tables flanked with plastic chairs, an open kitchen with a staircase leading to what was potentially a bigger kitchen, or a pantry, upstairs, a coke fridge converted into a cold storage for leafy vegetables, and a small sink unceremoniously crouched at the far end of the room. I’d say that an interior designer had thought of giving the place a facelift, but left the ceiling with nothing save three tube lights, only two of which were still functional. Groups of wires dangled out of the ceiling, hinting to the possible lives of aspiring ceiling lamps that eventually walked past the mouse hole of Tip Top Lane, completely ignoring its existence altogether.

None of it really concerned me. I was here for the koki paratha and daal, and I declared my intentions as such through the opening in the glass that separated that kitchen and its two nimble inhabitants from the two tables. The daal wasn’t ready—10 minute wait suggested one man, the more amiable of the two. 20 minutes at least, the other snarled back at us.

Sure, I’ll wait. With a cup of chai if you please.

I like doing that. Sitting and sipping and observing and getting absorbed into the faded walls. Watching how customers walk in, straight up to the glass window, and shout out their paratha order—koki or aloo, the latter being a more commonly found North Indian paratha stuffed with curried potatoes. Nearly everyone took their orders to go, this wasn’t a place to really lounge about. The sweet stench of garbage wafting up from the trash can behind me and the pipe infected with red paan-spit measles right outside the restaurant weren’t particularly appetizing, but the thought of koki parathas and daal were enough to mask all unworthy smells and sights.

At long last it arrived. My daal and the…wrong paratha. It was the potato one, and I can’t really tell you if it was good or bad—all I knew was that I was craving a koki, so that first anticlimactic bite of paratha was completely lost on me. There were a bunch of men crowded around the window by this point, so it didn’t surprise me that they had got my order mixed up. But I still wanted my koki.

The amiable server replaced the aloo I had sampled and quickly returned with a folded koki. The surface of the paratha looked incredibly crispy, mottled with light brown, golden brown, and crispy dark burnt spots. It was tattooed all over with charred onion flecks, the same kind you’d crunch into on the top hat of an American onion bagel.

Unfolded, this paratha was massive, the perfect area for me to stencil two and half of my palms in. Or maybe three if I squished them in close. It was one of those breakfasts that you could have at 8 in the morning, and would keep you going till at least 2pm.

The daal it was served with was minimal, one of those daals that had been spiced so subtly that you could immediately sense the earthy lentil taste rather than hunting for it between spoonfuls of ghee and spice. There were chopped chillies too, looking venomous at first sight, but mustardy and irresistibly picklish when bitten into. My personal technique was to tear off a miniscule piece of the gargantuan paratha, curve it into a baby boat, scoop up some daal, and then follow that bite with a quick speck of chilli.

I’d love to say that at the end of the hunt, at the end of the wait, the paratha was earth-shatteringly good and that you should all queue up outside the mouse hole. But honestly, even though the chillies were I prefer the one at Paratha King. This one was a bit too thick and carby, with insides that felt somewhat doughy and under cooked. Maybe this wasn’t the kokiwalla that bhaijaan used to get his Friday supply from after all?

I’m still on the lookout for a mindblowing koki. And I know Meena Bazaar has a ton of other koki places just begging for them to be tried. The veggie blogger Raji has professed her love for Vaibhav’s off of Al Fahidi street in the past. And I’ve walked past a bunch of small, near invisible places that proudly declare they serve koki too. So consider this the first of my blogged about koki explorations. I can sense that there’ll be more crunchy, onion-odoured quests to follow.

Nihal’s Restaurant
In the lane across from Tip Top in Meena Bazaar. Adjacent to Delhi Laundry.
Phone: +971 (4) 355-3528/ (4) 3525249/ (055) 832-2952/ (050) 695-2870

I’d have written an entire post dedicated to…

…this bowl of smooth lentil soup that you’d want to cuddle up with in the cold.

…this disc of bread, undulated with all the uneven craters and peaks, charred bits and soft pockets, doughy bits and wafery bits, that you’d expect from anything fresh and artisanal.

…this breakfast bowl of glossy caramelized onions and mutton chunks, scattered all over a swamp of gravy soaked, tender and chewy bread chunks.

…this baked carb grenade, that…

…explodes into rice fragrant with the sweet zing of cinnamon, noodles, ouzi lamb, chicken, raisins and toasted almond slivers.

…this mound of buttery rice grains, moist lemony chicken and gravied onions, veiled by a fairy-like wing of bread.

But I won’t. I won’t talk about any of these dishes, nor give them a name, nor identify the Iraqi restaurant in Deira that served them. All I’ll say is that (1) it wasn’t Bait Al Baghdadi, where I had a great experience in comparison, and (2) it does serve Iraqi masgouf. If you want to play detective on which restaurant this is, go ahead, be my guest.

Yes, I am boiling mad. Seething, frothing, foaming at the mouth with anger. I thought I’d give it at least a day before slamming the keys on this blogpost, but two hours later, I still feel so violated that I had to write it out. You will only see this post days after I’ve written it – I have to give myself some leeway in case my stance softens and I decide not to publish this post.

But a week down the line, if you’re reading this post, then you know my stance is the same. And if I’m harsh, then so be it. Because I truly believe that racist restaurants should not be forgiven even if they put out earth-shatteringly good food.

Addressed to the hateful restaurant that brought out the worst in me with their primitive racist attitude:

IF…

1) you fail to give me a menu unless I beg for it,
2) you take three times as long to serve me as everyone else of a nationality that feels more akin to yours – even when you’ve got barely three tables to service,
3) you make me walk up to you to ask for tea, rather than politely stop by my table in a show of true Arabian hospitality,
4) you scoff at me condescendingly when I ask you to pack my leftovers for a takeout,
5) you mutter under your breath and turn away when I ask you for the bill – for the second time,
6) and most obnoxiously, you deny doing all of the above when called out on it. In fact, you try to turn your back on me and leave midway as I’m talking to you (politely. I don’t believe in impolite loud complaints that ruin the meals of guests around me),
7) you do all of the above, not once, not twice, but to some measure on all THREE of the times I have visited you…

IF you do most or all of the above…if you don’t just have uniformly crappy service, but crappy service targeted at diners based on which country they call home…then you may as well put a sign up on your door saying: “The following nationalities, please STAY THE HECK OUT: [pick your hated nationalities]”

I’m sure you, racist restaurant, don’t give two sumac sprinkles about my opinion. You certainly didn’t at the restaurant, but regardless, I think it’s important that people share these experiences and don’t pander to restaurants like yourself that are openly racist. And no, condescendingly suggesting that you’d comp the meal will not help. I didn’t walk in for free food, even though your stereotype of me would suggest just that.

Back to my readers: The reason I don’t name the restaurant is because it’s well known that restaurants in this part of the world can fling a lawsuit at your feet for uncovering their dirty laundry. I’m not saying this happens everyday, or that it’s ever happened in this city – just that it could, at some point it could. I have neither the monetary resources, the courage, nor the desire to get into a legal battle that would, most inevitably, favor the restaurant no matter what I say or do. In my opinion, the best way to deal with racism in most parts of the world, the U.S. included, is to take your business elsewhere and keep your sanity intact.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Don’t take names of restaurants, I don’t want this blog space becoming Haters’ Central. All I want to know is whether you would be willing to overlook the racist hand that serves you brilliant food.

When Robyn reached out asking if I’d write for the NYC-based community blog, Serious Eats, I responded with one line: OMG. I’ll respond when I’m done hyperventilating….

Almost exactly a month later, thanks to Robyn, my article on Dubai’s top ethnic eats went online. Here is it folks, 16 Top Ethnic Eats of Old Dubai. Check out how some of the low-end yumminess you can find in this city struts past the gilded plates of the designer hotels and makes its way to centre stage.

The rest of this post isn’t about food. I think I’ve spewed out what I’ve had to say for at least a month on the food front in my slideshow for Serious Eats. For a change, I’m doing a behind-the-scenes post that talks about what’s inspired me to blog. No, this is not my version of an Oscar speech for getting aired on Serious Eats. I just wanted to share why I’m so excited about this article…it’s not about face time on a high-traffic site, but about having the opportunity to work with someone whom I’ve looked up to for a long time.

That said, if you don’t care two cents for a blogger spilling the contents of her currently high-on-emo heart, and flaming fish and cheesy manousheh is all your heart desires, skip this post and go straight to Serious Eats.

This article on Serious Eats was a huge deal for me. I used to follow the site in my previous life in New York, though their posts still hit my google reader in Dubai every day. I still occasionally drool over Kenji’s photography or participate silently in battles over hot dogs from Chicago or pizza from New York (or hot dogs from New York and pizza from Chicago…or whichever other city dares to contest that no-winners battle), or slurp up ground-breaking information about instant noodles from around the world.

Serious Eats is one of a handful of online publications whose writers I really look up to, and get inspired by. But even before Serious Eats came into the picture, there was Robyn from The Girl Who Ate Everything. She’s been on the top of my list for at least three years, maybe more, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been influenced by her.

Robyn, I hope your not reading this because from the little I know of you, you’re going to squirm with modesty, and maybe even annoyance that ‘jeez, here’s ANOTHER fan blogger who dreams of having a blog that’s as awesome as mine.’ 

She’s really the first blogger I started following with a passion, and whose website has actively shaped my own style and approach to blogging. Two years into the blogging scene, having read and commented on throngs of blogs, hers is still the one that resonates the most with me.

Here’s what I love about The Girl Who Ate Everything. Her writing flows unpretentiously like an everyday conversation, with hilarious bits of self-deprecation or observation el randemo thrown in. I kid you not, but even her punctuation is distinctive…it makes her written thoughts glide, shift gears, leap, take a detour, accelerate, or come to a grinding halt just as they would in stream-of-consciousness reality. The quality of her photographs poo poo over many of those overly styled, red-and-white-straws-in-milk-jars-with-a-stack-of-cookies-and-one-lone-broken-cookie-strategically-crumbled-by-the-photographer-on-the-top-right-corner-of-the-frame photographs that seem to have become the contrived rage today. And her doodles, which have prompted me to attempt my own, deserve to be framed in any foodie’s home—like this ripe banana comic that had me giggling over it for days. I still share it with friends, such is the impact that banana farts had on me.

It’s scary, but sometimes when I’m at a loss for words, and a warm shower, a run, a drive, a chocolate chip cookie can’t fix it, the thought that often pops up in my head is: How would Robyn have said it? And the answer is usually, ‘she’d have said it just like it is.’ No pretense, no overly contrived words, no attempt at creating a story out of something that isn’t there. And with a boatload of humour thrown in. I’d never want to be a blogging copycat, and I pray I’m not, but if I’ve ever been inspired, intentionally or unintentionally by another blog, you should know that it’s Robyn’s.

Robyn, I hope you’re reading again now—for unknowingly getting me excited about the food blogosphere, for teaching me something interesting about unique style, voice and photography through every one of your posts, for weaving in humour and doodles seamlessly into your writing, and of course, for showcasing some of the most gobsmacking eats there are to gorge on in NYC, or from around the world…

….and for inviting me to write on Serious Eats…

THANK YOU.

Ever seen that row of South Indian restaurants in Karama, all sitting cross-legged next to each other, selling appams and fish curries and dosas just like the southies next door? Let’s call it Little South India for the purposes of this post.

Each one always feels like its buzzing. Aaryas, Saravanas Bhavan, Calicut Paragon, Aapa Kadai, Chef Lanka, Anjappar Chettinad…I’m sure there are more. They’re always deep-frying a vada or steaming an idli with zeal, even though it’s just a two second decision for a loyal customer to defect to one of their neighbors for his sambar fix. Go there on a weekend dinner, and they’re all cramped up. Go there on a weekday lunch, and they’re not awkwardly empty either. Little South India is like one of those jam-packed smoky street bazaars, everybody makes his buck. And each place has its devout fan following. I’m relieved that they have their patrons despite being lodged one against the other. It would break my dosa-loving heart if one of them were to shut.

It’s not like they bribe me with free dosas or anything, but I still love having them all there. So much raw South Indian culinary talent all in one convenient bunched up location. And I’ve shameless been sitting on my haunches not doing anything about it. I’ve tried Saravanas in New York and Aapa Kadai in the Marina – but the rest, save for the blessed Chef Lanka that I’ve actually stepped into for their dinner buffet – I haven’t yet tried.

But I’m on track to righting that wrong. The other day mom and I stepped into Calicut Paragon, the home of curries and yummies fried up along the Malabar coast of India. And my 2012 resolution is that I’d have conquered the rest of Little South India by the end of the year (…on its own, a very doable resolution. Combined with all my other foodie resolutions, including eating through 101 parathas at the House of Parathas, covering more Malaysian and Korean ground, and reconnecting with eats in Satwa – it can be quite an undertaking.)

We were pretty conservative in our ordering strategy that day (aka mom is a nutritionist.) But the food was simple, soulful and heaped graciously with the signature ingredient of Little South India: coconut.

The Most Poofy Dish of the Dinner award goes to this puffy undulated terrain of a parotta, with airy peaks that protrude out of a fried, elastic, well-oiled but not greasy, stretch of dough.

Never make the mistake of confusing the South Indian white flour-based Parotta with its North Indian wheat-flour Paratha predecessor. It’s the pizza equivalent to mixing up New York thin crust with Chicago deep-dish. Major foodie faux pas.

Mom’s curry accompaniment-of-choice were these lacy coconut-milk and rice flour appams.

I’ve spoken about the sponge-like properties and dipping utility of appams in my Aapa Kadai post in more colorful detail, but the two part bottom-line is: (1) rip crunchy perimeter of appam and dip in curry. (2) plonk finger in centre of the appam valley and sensually trace its spongy coconut milk skin…but still rip apart and dip in curry.

The chicken curry was appropriately fragrant and well-seasoned. Nothing to throw celebratory rice from the rooftops for, and I’m not even sure what it was called anymore (maybe the Mulakittath). All I recollect was that it gave me the gravy pool I needed to dip the parotta and appams in.

But the dish that became The Dish of the Evening, the dish that I mulled over for the next two days, and whose explosively crunchy coconut crumbs and fried fragrant curry leaves I can still taste in my mind’s mouth, was the Malabar Dry Fry Prawns.

It was like someone had shaved off those crispiest edge bits of golden hash browns right over a bed of prawns, and dusted it with spice like there was no tomorrow. [Yes Potson, the spice brought out the The Crying Pan in me.] The most intriguing, yet slight creepy part of this dry concoction was that the prawns came intact with their hands and legs, all of which had been fried along with the prawn torso into brittle matchsticks that curled around the clumps of crunchy coconut bits. I’m quite sure that sounds vile to most people, but honestly, other than feeling a tad bit disturbed at the sound of crackling prawn limbs, I know that this dish will go down in my prawn memoirs for posterity.

Now I know a bunch of you are die hard Calicut fans and have recommended entire lists of dishes that I’ve got to try at this place. I’ve failed you all, I know I have. I lost the darned lists. Be a paragon of Calicut virtue and send them again, I beg you.

Calicut Paragon
Phone: +971 (4) 335-8700
Opposite Lulu Centre Karama
http://www.paragonrestaurant.net/index.htm

First of: Sheban and Chirag: THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY SITE.

That comic up there has been the story of my life for the past two days. I’d just posted up about this massive Iraqi fish and was hoping you all would read it…when my blog blew up into smithereens. The poor fish died a second lonely death in the midst of unnoticed post oblivion.

The gist: another site was pushing out malware through this blog, Google blacklisted the page, and if you tried visiting the site, you’d have seen this awful hazardous sign that makes it seem like the End of the World is snarling back at your from your computer monitor:

Just as I’d almost considered throwing in the towel and changing my life to iliveinasaucepan.com, Sheban and Chirag swooped in to my rescue and restored my site with their magic IT skills…and a boatload of sheer common sense that, in my moment of cruel cyber crisis, seemed to have fled from me like I were the plague.

We were the perfect team – The Terrific Techie Trio.

Actually, the two of them were Terrific. I was Traumatized. And totally unhelpful. I’m never going to mock the damsel-in-distress in one of those cliched dramas again. I felt her pain.

Anyhoo, every time life shoves a battering ram up your nose, you learn a couple of lessons. I’m sure there are more “Lessons Learnt” and “How Not to Get Hacked” preachers out there than the number of doughnuts I’ve consumed in a lifetime. But here’s my version. All of it is common sense, but if I don’t publicly declare them, I feel like I’ll forget what I need to do if the hacker hyenas hound me again.

1. There are no coincidences in technology. Famous last words by Sheban, who was working with me on my site for something totally unrelated, and saw a security screen flare up on my computer. I assumed it was a one-off and poo-poo’d it off. But Sheban was suspicious, and left me with those ominous words that I should frame somewhere. Or make the tag line of my site so that I never forget them.

2. Make sure all your computers have anti-virus. DUH. But seriously, any computer that you’re using to work on your site, which doesn’t have anti-virus software, becomes the breeding ground for hackers. Microsoft Security Essentials is what Sheban got to me install on all my computers. That doesn’t keep all hackers away…my site still got malware didn’t it?…but it’s a solid preventative measure in most cases, and it does flag any threats upfront. And when it does, back to point #1, ACT on it.

3. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools. Do this NOW, don’t wait to be hacked. If your site has malware or whatever other cyber creepy crawlies there are out there, having an account here is key because they can give you much needed information on what the issue is, which piece of malicious code may be mucking up your site, etc. If you wait to sign up until after your site goes down, it will take hours before Google can collect information on the issue for you. And time is KEY when your site is down.

Most importantly, this is the panel through which you can request a review of your site after you’ve managed to clean up the hacked mess. And if the review comes clean, then your site will no longer be blacklisted by Google and that dreaded red endoftheworld page goes away. Woo-hoo.

4. I could write an entire article now about how to not screw around with WordPress and hosting security. And even that wouldn’t be comprehensive enough. But some of the key things I learned:

• Don’t install a ton of plugins you don’t need (obvious? yeah. I felt like a blithering buffoon when Chirag and Sheban pointed to my 31 plugins, most of which were unused, and one of which may have well been the entry points for the malware.)
• If you do have plugins, make sure you update them when new versions are released. I’ve ignored the updates in the past << BAD.
• That said, if there were two plugins I should have had, it would have been the Sucuri Scanner and WP Malwatch. I’m not going to get into why they’re awesome, check out their specs and it should be fairly evident why you need them if you’re a WordPress user.
• If you use FTP, make sure you use SFTP or SSH because they encrypt your passwords. This is what I learned from my hosting service: Discontinue use of regular FTP if you use it — it sends passwords over the internet in plaintext. Ick.
• Make sure all your passwords are impossible to crack, and that you change them regularly. I can bet that I’m going to forget this piece of advice months down the line, but…YOU should do it.

5. REGULARLY BACK UP YOUR SITE. There are ton of ways to do this – ask your host to do it for you (if you’re self-hosted), use SFTP, export your wordpress content (go to Tools > Export)…I’m sure there are a ton of ways. Figure out what’s the best for your site and DO IT.

These next few points are for what happens if…God Forbid…your site gets hacked.

6. When your site has been infected or hacked, Google will most likely catch the issue and blacklist your site. Yes, it’s as bad as it sounds, they will blacklist it and shove the red endoftheworld page on your site. Google Chrome, Mozilla, Safari….will all block you from entering the site, Internet Explorer may be the only one that would let you enter. And if it does, you better pray that your anti-virus software kicks in for the crap that’s going to go down. BUT, the one ray of hope on that blasted red page is the link to Google’s Safe Browsing Diagnostic Page. Clicking that link at least gives you more information on what Google has detected. The page may just provide the tiniest sliver of information, nothing close to what you need to solve the problem, but it’s a start. And when the world is ending, you damn well need a start.

7. Contact your host immediately (if you are self-hosted) and get them to diagnose the issue. In my case, this step wasn’t very helpful because their response time was slower than I’d have liked, but still, it doesn’t hurt and they may find something you haven’t already.

8. If you’re a WordPress user who’s hosting your site on Dreamhost, look at this Bible of What to Do When Hacked. It’s written for the techie bimbo in you. This is another helpful pages: FAQ My site was hacked.

9. Try to stay calm, and get some sleep. I could barely follow this piece of advice, but it’s true – every time I got jittery or tried to glare at something through droopy eyes, I messed it up and made things worse. Hint: if you have water trickling down your cheek and you’re starting to mumble words in a language you don’t know, then GO TO SLEEP. And deal with the issue when you’re human again.

9. Wear latex gloves when you’re dealing with the issue. Else you will have nails that have been hacked to bleeding bits by the end of the nerve-racking ordeal. If only you knew how much it hurts to type this post out.

10. The most important point – have awesome friends who can work with you on the issue. 2 brilliant brains + 1 traumatized brain is WAY better than 1 traumatized brain alone. I hate asking for help, really I do. But I did ask for it this time, and Sheban and Chirag bailed me out. Thank you guys. Mushy group hug with background awwwws. Dude high-fives in silence.

This of course is by no means a comprehensive list (aka if you follow all these steps and your site still goes down, don’t blame me.) I’m sure there are a ton of other things that I’ll remember in retrospect, and I’ll add it to the list when I do. If you think I’ve missed something super critical that must be shared with the world of hacked cyber victims, do leave a comment so we can learn from each other and be one big happy family against those wretched hackers.