Fit for Kings

I bite into a cheese-filled samboosa (a cousin of our samosa) at Naseef.

Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast like a king they say, and the Bahrainis seem to take this to heart. On Day 2, I skip the breakfast buffet at the hotel and head to the alleys of Manama souq, just a five-minute walk away. I spot the sign for Haji’s Café (around since 1950) and walk right in, drawn by the warm waft emanating from the kitchen tandoor. Five men are busy churning out khubz — the leavened flatbread — a staple at every Bahraini meal. I walk past the powder-blue benches against a wall that displays black-and-white photos of old Bahrain. The place is crowded for a weekday morning, but it’s common for locals to eat breakfasts out.
Haji’s menu is in Arabic so Zahra places the order as we sip on chai karak, an intensely sweet tea spiked with cardamom and a dash of milk, like our masala chai. The server arrives with a massive breakfast platter and a stack of khubz. Eggs make an appearance in multiple forms like baydh tomat (egg and spiced tomato scrambled together), balaleet (mildly sweetened vermicelli topped with an omelette, a strange combination that works somehow), and shakshouka.

Then there are several bean-based dishes like hamsat nikhi (fried chickpeas), foule (mashed kidney beans), and luba (spicy baked beans). I tear off pieces of khubz and sample every dish. Another day and it’s another breakfast, this time at Saffron by Jena in Muharraq, a slightly upscale café in a restored 200-year-old traditional Bahraini house, where I try a variation of the khubz called mihyawa (flatbread brushed with a light fish sauce). Another breakfast specialty is the kebab roll (a spicy patty stuffed in bread), which reminds me of the Gujarati dabeli. “Bahrain was an important port since ancient times so our food has been influenced by Arabic, Persian, Indian, and Egyptian cuisines,” says Zahra. Other breakfast staples I sample include zinjibari (fried bread bites with cheese filling), and a spicy sautéed chicken liver dish (a must-try if you eat offal).

Other breakfast staples I sample include zinjibari (fried bread bites with cheese filling), and a spicy sautéed chicken liver dish (a must-try if you eat offal). 

Meat Treat

After waddling out of the breakfast café, you would think lunch and dinner would be a simple affair. Well, fat chance. “We always eat rice and some meat dish for lunch and dinner,” says Zahra, as she proceeds to order chicken machboos. This is a mix of rice and meat (could be chicken, lamb, or even fish) cooked with spices, such as black pepper, cloves, cardamom, saffron, cinnamon, etc. Another ingredient that goes into the machboos and many other dishes giving them a distinct flavour is loomi — limes that are boiled, and sundried until blackened — the main souring agent in Bahraini cuisine. Stacks of loomi can be found in spice souqs. Machboos may be Bahrain’s national dish but the pièce de resistance, for me, is qouzi, a rice-based dish served with slow-cooked lamb, roasted nuts and raisins. The best rendition I try is at Hala Café at Amwaj Islands where golden-yellow saffron-laced rice is served with a lamb shank cooked to such perfection that the meat falls off the bone at the touch of my fork. It’s well worth the couple of extra inches I’m sure to pack on.