I realized that I did not share my recent Iftar dinner I participated in last week. Now, you may be asking yourself, "What is Iftar?" Well, if you weren't asking yourself that question, I bet you are now! No? Oh well...
Iftar is the meal that the Muslims break their Ramadan fast with. It is essentially dinner. It usually includes certain fruits, juices, dates and varied dishes but could depend upon the region you are having Iftar in. I believe that traditionally fast was broken with water, dates and some juices. Then the bigger meal would be later in the evening. However, every place is different.
I went to the Iftar buffet at my hotel. A girl I was speaking to mentioned that usually the hotels had the better Iftars, so why not? After bumping into a lady who also wanted to do Iftar, we headed into the restaurant got started!
Before I even started walking around, I had to take a picture of the table. It was simply done, but still very pretty with a small dish of dried apricots, figs and dates. After admiring the decor I decided to walk around and see what they were offering. They had several stations with varying foods. The stations included a juice bar, 'salad' area, hot dishes with finger foods, soups, desserts (hot and cold), breads and some meats. The juice area had traditional drinks like Arabic coffee, rose water juice, a coconut concotion, mango juice, a yogurt drink and a few others. I hit the 'salad' area first. Now, when I say salad, we're not talking the sald bar you find at a typical American restaurant. This was a Middle Eastern 'salad bar' on steroids (very expensive steroids). It had several homemade dressings (no, they did not have blue cheese), bowls of veggie based dips like hummus and baba ghanoush, veggies, a litle bit of cold and salted seafood (squid, anchovies, etc.), cheeses, and a few other tidbits. Needless to say that a person could have just spent a while eating from the salad area.
After grabbing a few pieces of seafood, cheese (for those of you who know me well, I know this is shocking) and exotic eats I headed over to the soup. They had several soups, but I chose the soup in the coolest container, yes it was a tough decision. The gentleman scooping the soup out of this large teardrop-shaped stainless steel container was very kind to add all of the accompaniments that went along with the small bowl of soup. It was a lentil soup that was absolutely delicious and I was even lucky enough to get the recipe from the executive chef! Yeah! Although I did not hit it up, the bread station was pretty amazing as well.
The next area of attack was the hot dishes. Here they had about 10 to fifteen chaffing dishes lined up with various Indian and Middle Eastern foods. They also had two chefs making homemade falafel, or any other dishes you might have a hankering for. Next to the dishes were a finger foods area and they even managed to squeeze in an 'Italian' area with spags and mac 'n cheese.
The meat station was mall, but made up for it in the fact that they had a succulent (love that word) cooked whole lamb over a bed of rice. Yes, that makes me happy. I had a few pieces of that and a few bites of the lamb kebab next to it.
The desserts were absolutely stunning, however I am not the biggest fan of Middle eastern sweets. I a few pieces of this and that. There was a lot of honey based desserts and phyllo used.
It was all very pretty. I finished off with a date or two, which I found out is usually how they break the fast, but why veer from tradition of not doing what I am supposed to? They had a beautiful date set-up with bowls of dates, a palm tree with dates acting as the trunk of the tree with a flowing mist of smoke (dry ice) pouring down from the base of the trunk onto the bowls of dates below. It was magical...too bad I found out that I am not the biggest fan of dates.
Needless to say, after a cappuccino, I was a happy camper. The foods were great, there were some neat new dishes I had never had and a few foods prepared different from how I've had them. So, if you ever find yourself in the Middle East during Ramadan, do not fret. Hit an Iftar at sunset!
Iftar is the meal that the Muslims break their Ramadan fast with. It is essentially dinner. It usually includes certain fruits, juices, dates and varied dishes but could depend upon the region you are having Iftar in. I believe that traditionally fast was broken with water, dates and some juices. Then the bigger meal would be later in the evening. However, every place is different.
I went to the Iftar buffet at my hotel. A girl I was speaking to mentioned that usually the hotels had the better Iftars, so why not? After bumping into a lady who also wanted to do Iftar, we headed into the restaurant got started!
Before I even started walking around, I had to take a picture of the table. It was simply done, but still very pretty with a small dish of dried apricots, figs and dates. After admiring the decor I decided to walk around and see what they were offering. They had several stations with varying foods. The stations included a juice bar, 'salad' area, hot dishes with finger foods, soups, desserts (hot and cold), breads and some meats. The juice area had traditional drinks like Arabic coffee, rose water juice, a coconut concotion, mango juice, a yogurt drink and a few others. I hit the 'salad' area first. Now, when I say salad, we're not talking the sald bar you find at a typical American restaurant. This was a Middle Eastern 'salad bar' on steroids (very expensive steroids). It had several homemade dressings (no, they did not have blue cheese), bowls of veggie based dips like hummus and baba ghanoush, veggies, a litle bit of cold and salted seafood (squid, anchovies, etc.), cheeses, and a few other tidbits. Needless to say that a person could have just spent a while eating from the salad area.
After grabbing a few pieces of seafood, cheese (for those of you who know me well, I know this is shocking) and exotic eats I headed over to the soup. They had several soups, but I chose the soup in the coolest container, yes it was a tough decision. The gentleman scooping the soup out of this large teardrop-shaped stainless steel container was very kind to add all of the accompaniments that went along with the small bowl of soup. It was a lentil soup that was absolutely delicious and I was even lucky enough to get the recipe from the executive chef! Yeah! Although I did not hit it up, the bread station was pretty amazing as well.
The next area of attack was the hot dishes. Here they had about 10 to fifteen chaffing dishes lined up with various Indian and Middle Eastern foods. They also had two chefs making homemade falafel, or any other dishes you might have a hankering for. Next to the dishes were a finger foods area and they even managed to squeeze in an 'Italian' area with spags and mac 'n cheese.
The meat station was mall, but made up for it in the fact that they had a succulent (love that word) cooked whole lamb over a bed of rice. Yes, that makes me happy. I had a few pieces of that and a few bites of the lamb kebab next to it.
The desserts were absolutely stunning, however I am not the biggest fan of Middle eastern sweets. I a few pieces of this and that. There was a lot of honey based desserts and phyllo used.
It was all very pretty. I finished off with a date or two, which I found out is usually how they break the fast, but why veer from tradition of not doing what I am supposed to? They had a beautiful date set-up with bowls of dates, a palm tree with dates acting as the trunk of the tree with a flowing mist of smoke (dry ice) pouring down from the base of the trunk onto the bowls of dates below. It was magical...too bad I found out that I am not the biggest fan of dates.
Needless to say, after a cappuccino, I was a happy camper. The foods were great, there were some neat new dishes I had never had and a few foods prepared different from how I've had them. So, if you ever find yourself in the Middle East during Ramadan, do not fret. Hit an Iftar at sunset!
