Food in the Middle East, nine: Beverages

This is the last in a series of posts about food in the Middle East that is based on material collected during the trip completed in May and early June. In this new series, so far I have written about breakfasts; lunches and dinners in Jordan; sweets; pickles and olives; lunches and dinners in Jerusalem; street food; lunches and dinners in Istanbul; and lunches and dinners in Abu Dhabi.

On 19 June, on the day the first post in this food series went up, I posted on Facebook: “I'm going to do a total of eight individual food posts based on the Middle East trip. The first one was on breakfasts (today). The second one will be meals in Jordan. 3 will be sweets. 4 will be drinks. 5 will be pickles and olives. 6 will be meals in Jerusalem. 7 will be street food. 8 will be meals in Istanbul and Abu Dhabi.” The plan was based on the photos featuring food that I had extracted from the daily storage folders I had brought back with me from overseas. Looking at the photos I thought about what I would write and my plan derived from those thoughts.

So, the post you are currently reading was intended to be the fourth in the series but over a period of hours and days as I thought about what I would write I realised that it would probably turn out to be the longest and most complicated one of all. Which is in fact what transpired; the post you are currently reading contains around 3400 words. The other thing that changed from plan to execution is that I ended up splitting Istanbul and Abu Dhabi lunches and dinners into one blogpost for each city.

But to the point … I got back to Sydney on 3 June and my bowels had settled down a bit by 13 June but flared up again a couple of days later and then quieted down on 25 June. You can’t drink tap water in the Middle East although bottled water is available in many shops in areas tourists use for very little cost at all hours of the day and night.

The following photo shows me sitting in the lobby of the Jumeirah Hotel in Abu Dhabi on the homeward leg before getting the car to the airport. On the table in front of me is a bottle of water that had been brought from my room to drink in the interval between checking out and leaving the establishment. It is an Etihad branded bottle with a gold label

Normally, during the trip, we would buy a two-litre bottle of water or two at the end of the day and take them back to our rooms in preparation for the evening. Most evenings in the hotel I wrote down my posts and put them on the blog along with the photos I thought best illustrated the day’s events. In the posts in this new series on food I have drawn on those chronicles to talk about the meals we ate, including breakfasts, and so have touched on a number of different beverages already. I might go over some of the same material again in this post if it appears to warrant a new look in this new context. 

In Jordan they will often put a small bottle of water on the table for each person dining as soon as you sit down and before you have had a chance to order. They will charge you for this water so if you go there and this happens, don’t be surprised.

The other thing that struck me about the Middle East in respect of drinks is the fruit juices that you can buy all over the place. With comestibles, you notice the mezze and flat bread that is available everywhere, and the wide array of dairy items on offer, especially for breakfast. But when it comes to potables, to drinking something with a meal, or as a refreshment on its own, fruit juices reign supreme in this part of the world. Part of this is to do with the Muslim habit of not drinking alcohol. (In addition it was Ramadan when we were there, so the restrictions were sometimes more complete.) But as a general rule I think it goes deeper than that as you can get fruit juices just as easily in Jerusalem as you can in Amman.

The above photo shows a cup of pomegranate juice that my friend bought to drink in Jerusalem on day four in the city. The beverage cost 24 new Israeli shekels (A$9.60) at a shop that also sold pasta and salads. 

Fruit juices are available simply everywhere. In Petra on day two, the day we were walking almost continuously from 10.30am to 6.10pm, we did stop several times for refreshments, one time buying a cold bottle of Lipton tea and a plastic cup full of freshly-squeezed orange juice (5 Jordanian dinars, or A$10 in total). 

I bought a bottle of Barakat-brand mango juice in the airport in Abu Dhabi on the outward leg. We also had glasses of mango juice on floor 74 of Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi on the way back to Australia. There is a circular space up there that is accessed using a very slow lift that the staff will help you to use. To get up there in the first place you have to prove that you are a guest in the hotel (we went up after we had checked out and before going to the airport). You sit in lounge chairs in front of the view of the city and the surrounding desert, as well as the Persian Gulf (see photo below). In addition to the staffer who stands at the desk in the lobby, on the ground floor of the building, that serves the observation deck, there are several staff up on the observation deck itself who prepare food and drinks, and who serve customers who come up to enjoy the view.

The following photo was taken in Wadi Musa, the town that services the ruins of the ancient Nabataean city of Petra, which is in the south of Jordan at a distance of about 250km from the capital of Amman. This photo was taken on day one of our stay in the town and shows a drinks cabinet by the side of the road outside a shop. You can see a wide range of non-alcoholic drinks on offer in this refrigerated cabinet with its signage in Arabic and English. The drinks on display had been brought from all over the place, including Europe and the Middle East, so that people can get refreshment in the hot weather. 

Jordan is very dry and hot in the summer – we were there in late spring – and even though people are not supposed to drink or eat anything between sunrise and sunset, some do at least drink from time to time. The driver who took us from Amman to Wadi Musa, whose name was Umar and who was Palestinian although he had been born in Jordan, was aged in his late twenties of early thirties. We left the hotel at 8.30am and at 10.10am we stopped at a rest house to use the conveniences. Umar had a coffee and the two of us had cups of what turned out to be quite bitter cappuccino, which was served in tiny paper cups (2 Jordanian dinars, or about A$4, for two).

Soft drinks (or “soda” for Americans) is usually available in shops and restaurants, as for example in the Afra Restaurant and Café where we stopped on day two in Amman. In the photo below you can see in front of me on the table a can of Pepsi. This kind of drink can offer a good way to allow you to take in some calories if you are tired from walking. In Aqaba on day three in Petra, Khalid our driver found a Pizza Hut that was willing to serve us food during the daylight hours and he brought us cans of soft drink as well, which we drank in a park next to a road as we ate our food. On that day at around 3.30pm it was still 38 degrees C in the shade.

I talked about breakfast coffee in an earlier post in this series of blogposts. Here I want to look at the coffee culture of the countries we visited more generally. You can get cappuccinos all over the place in the Middle East although such antipodean specialties as the flat white are not available; you will also struggle to find a place selling a café latte. 

In Amman on day two we visited Rainbow Street and dropped into a cafe there to have something to drink. The waiter who came to greet us asked us to sit inside as it was Ramadan, and we got to a table at the back of the dark space. The place was named Cafe Nara and it had big flat screens on the wall that were showing a man in a traditional Jordanian headdress talking to the camera. After I had paid (9 Jordanian dinars, or about A$18.20) and as we were walking to the front door, the waiter who had shown us to our table proceeded to raise the blinds that had been closed while we were in the shop. We left the café and set off along the street. 

The photo below shows the cappuccino I drank in Café Nara. You can see the masses of firm froth that cover the coffee and milk mix. This is the regular way that cappuccinos are served in the Middle East. They are usually not as good as what you can easily find in Australia as they are often weak or not hot enough. But the froth is very good.

In Abu Dhabi on the return leg my friend had a cappuccino in the Palace Hotel when we went there for lunch before boarding the flight back to Sydney. The photo below shows the gold flakes that they put on her beverage. It was priced accordingly but was a special treat; she had identified this restaurant and this hotel on the internet before leaving Australia. 

You can get other types of milk drink in the Middle East as well. In Amman on day three in the city we ventured away from the area the hotel was located in to Boulevard Abdeli Mall, a shopping centre. There, we went through a security scanner to get into a restaurant named Cafe Italia. A man in a neat black suit used a metal detector to check my torso. We had a conversation with the waiter and sat down and ordered drinks. Until 9.30pm you could not order food. I ordered mineral water and a frozen peppermint chocolate. The drinks came and then after a while a waiter brought the menus again and we ordered some pasta. The frozen beverage I had ordered was very good and the pasta was not.

On day four in Istanbul near the Pera Museum we went into a cafe at about 7.10pm, and ordered what was advertised as a “green juice” and a cappuccino, which came to 27.5 Turkish lira (A$6.80). ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ in a cover version was playing at one point on the stereo.

In Turkey this kind of option is common but here you have an especially strong coffee culture although the native type of coffee is very different from what we are used to. The photo below shows the courtyard of a café we stopped at near Ayasofya on day three in the city. The tables were placed on a walkway or footpath that went around the perimeter of the space inside the high walls, with the garden laid out in the middle of it. In this café we had a Turkish coffee and a rose tea, that for both cost 10 Turkish lira (A$2.50). The coffee of course contained thick grounds at the bottom and was black and very bitter.   

On day four in Istanbul we went to the Pera Museum near Istiklal Street on the north side of the Golden Horn. In this tall building there are a number of different floors and in one space there was a display of objects relating to Turkey’s coffee culture. The following photo shows part of that display. In it you can see a coffee pot and a number of different glazed ceramic coffee cups that were traditionally used in the kahvahane (coffee houses) in the country. The glasses that they serve Turkish coffee these days also don’t have handles. 

The display also contained a picture of what one of these traditional establishments would have looked like as late as the 19th century (see photo below). In the text accompanying the displays, you learn that coffee houses first appeared in Mecca, Cairo, and Damascus in the early 16th century. They had arrived in Istanbul by the middle of that century. There is a chronicle of the time that says that two Arab coffee makers arrived in Istanbul in 1554. Their names were Hakem of Aleppo and Shams of Damascus. They opened a coffee house in Tahtakale and coffee houses soon became important social magnets, drawing people together to talk and offering an alternative to the traditional spaces of home, market, and mosque. Because politics was often discussed in coffee houses (as happened later in places such as England) the authorities tried to ban them periodically, according to the Pera Museum’s display text.

The following photo shows a man in traditional Turkish dress drinking coffee. In the foreground of the shot there are also some utensils made from glazed ceramic that were traditionally used to serve coffee. This photo, like the two that come before it, were taken in the Pera Museum in Istanbul.

Beverages have a social function in every culture and in the Middle East it is no different to anywhere in the West although giving you a free drink in the ME might as often as not be intended as the prelude to a commercial proposition. 

To curry favour with you, the customer, they often offer you apple tea on the house when you dine in a restaurant on the tourist strip on the peninsular south of the Golden Horn, where our hotel was located. Mezze and flat bread before the main course and tea and baklava after it are routine parts of your meal if you are inclined to accept them. They will often be served up without charge if you ask for it to be that way. 

Free tea can be used as an opportunity to strike up a conversation with you in Wadi Musa. When, on day three in Petra, we went to Wadi Rum, a sandy place with strange sandstone cliffs that are often featured in Hollywood movies, we were taken to a Bedouin tent (see photo below). In the middle of the floor was an open fire that had hot coals with, on top of them, a teapot. There, at 12.20pm we drank a cup of tea made from cardamom, sage and cinnamon. 

A group of about 30 Italians arrived in three of the “jeeps” (Toyota Hilux diesel utilities) that the drivers in Wadi Rum use to transport people around the dunes, and piled into the tent we occupied. The man in charge of the operation at this point went around the whole collection of tourists placing a dab of myrrh on each person’s hand. This was an invitation to browse the shop’s wares, which included such regular tat as scarves and necklaces. The country is saturated with this kind of stuff. The Italian guide translated the word of the scent for the benefit of his charges.

The previous day in Petra we had also been offered free tea, this time by the operator of a store named Lawrence of Arabia, who told us many things about the Bedouin that we hadn’t known before. His English was perfect, and I thought he was Australian at first, but he was Bedouin and he said that when he was young his people would move to different places and live in tents during the harvest (wheat and barley). They also, as is more commonly known, run sheep and goats. He gave us some delicious tea and then (unsurprisingly) tried to get us interested in some tours he could organise for us if we wanted. We declined and headed back to the refuge of the hotel where we knew no-one would try to sell us anything.

Beer was easy to get in Jerusalem and in Istanbul but a bit harder to get in Jordan. The photo below was taken on day two in Amman in the Pasha Hotel’s restaurant. You can see the “Petra” brand beer bottle and, in order to disguise the beverage due to Ramadan, the mug they gave me to drink it from. You can also see the orange juice my friend ordered at the same meal.

I went to the Pasha Hotel the next day as well after a difficult cab ride where I thought the driver had taken us on an unnecessarily long route in order to increase the fare. After getting out of the cab and back to the hotel, I left a little later and walked to the Pasha Hotel and asked the guy at the front desk if I could drink a beer. He said to get in the lift and go up to the fifth floor, then walk up to the sixth. The flight of stairs had walls covered in graffiti that had been made by people from all over the world. I asked the guy I saw near the top of the stairs if I could have a beer and he said, “Sure.” He showed me to a table and I sat down facing east and ordered a bottle of Petra.

The day before, the hotel owner had said that he had animals other than the chipmunk he was playing with in the hotel lobby, and on this day I saw them. Ducks, chickens, a rabbit, and a guinea pig trotted peacefully around the roof of the building between the feet of visitors seated at tables there. The wifi password was “savethetrees”. The tab came to 6.3 Jordanian dinars (A$12.80).

The following photo shows the view from my hotel room in Jerusalem, once we had moved to the Alon Hotel. Here, the internet was not very good and I had to use a mobile hotspot on my phone in order to do the posts I made at the end of each day (or, sometimes, on the following morning before going out). But you can see the small shop or kiosk with the blue awning across the street, which is a pedestrian-only thoroughfare. This shop was where, at the end of the day, I would buy beer, usually Maccabee brand and sometimes a stronger Maccabee with 10% alcohol. At about 5.10pm on day two in Jerusalem when we were still staying in the YMCA Three Arches Hotel, I headed downstairs and bought two bottles of Goldstar beer for 44 new Israeli shekels (A$17.50), which was pricier than the kiosk across town later in the sojourn charged (about 22 ILS, or A$8.80) for two regular strength Maccabees. The kiosk also sold such foreign brands as Carlsberg and Tuborg. 

In Jerusalem there are craft beers made locally that you can get with your meal in some (better) restaurants. The price for a craft beer in the Rimon Bistro was about 25 new Israeli shekels (A$10), which is comparable to what the same kind of establishment in Sydney would charge for the same kind of beer.

In Istanbul in the evenings after dinner I would go to a convenience store near the hotel and buy a couple of bottles of Bomonti “Fabrika” beer, which was better, in my estimation, than Efes. The Bomontis cost 10 Turkish lira (A$2.50) a bottle. Both brands are brewed in Turkey and both are unremarkable from the point of view of taste. The same shop sold some foreign brands of beer as well. 

I drank very good white wine at two restaurants and I have talked about those beverages in the posts detailing lunches and dinners in Abu Dhabi (this Lebanese restaurant served a Lebanese wine) and Jerusalem (which sold a dry Israeli wine and a local dessert wine as well).