NOWRUZ: NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS, PERSIAN STYLE

I was recently invited to sample authentic Persian fare at Shayan, a fine-dining restaurant in the heart of Deira. The occasion? Iranian New Year, also known as Nowruz. It signals the start of spring, and is a great way to celebrate with family and friends.

I went with an open mind and left with a happy, full tummy. Here's a typical Nowruz menu:

A Persian meal always starts with fresh appetizers, consisting of vegetables, nuts, olives and cheeses.

Braised lamb comes off the bone, paired with light and fluffy saffron rice.

Fish and a special sauce topped with fresh herbs: one of my favorites. Lightly seasoned but packed with flavor.

Slow cooked beef with grilled tomatoes and Persian style rice. Another to-die-for menu item.

The smorgasbord set a festive mood and brought smiles to people's faces!

And of course, entertainment was brought to us by a talented Persian pianist, who could shift from Persian classics to contemporary Western hits.

Christmas Away from Home

Unfortunately, this year our schedule didn't allow me to fly home and spend Christmas with my family. But like millions of Filipinos overseas, I have a family here in Dubai, and they're coming over this evening for a very special Christmas eve dinner.

We're shunning the crackers, stuffed turkey with cranberry sauce and other Western festive trimmings we've been seeing on TV and hearing about on the radio. We're going all-Filipino, and I love it.

Each one of us has been assigned to bring a special Filipino dish. So here's what we're expecting this evening:

Hamon

Pancit

Queso de bola

Pandesal

Rellenong bangus

Pinoy-style fruit salad

A variety of kakanin

The one and only foreigner at our party will be in charge of grapes and other beverages.

On top of that, we're going to have our very own impromptu Secret Santa. Our gifts must be dropped off beside the tiny Christmas tree that I decorated and assembled. 

Not to mention Pinoy Christmas songs, courtesy of Fifi.

It's going to be a different but equally meaningful Christmas, filled with love.

Zen the Spa: A sanctuary in the heart of Deira

Deira is the last place you'd want to be if you were looking to relax and get away from it all. But as I discovered, there's a place in that part of town where you can drown out the noise and get your yin and yang in order.

Zen the Spa is located on the fifth floor of Al Ghurair Rayhaan by Rotana, the hotel chain's newest property in the UAE. It's posh, spacious and conveniently attached to the newly renovated Al Ghurair Centre.

As I sat myself on one of the couches of the spa's well-lit lobby, a very helpful receptionist greeted me and ask me to fill out a form about my medical history and massage preferences.

She then led me to a room equipped with a jacuzzi, a steam bath and a sauna room, where I can spend as much time as I want before my appointment.

After utilizing them all, I was fetched by my therapist and taken to a reasonably sized massage room that had all the trappings of a perfect relaxation nest: dim lights, a faint fragrance to soothe my senses, and an inviting, incredibly comfortable massage bed.

This is obviously not me in the picture, but my experience was similar.

First off, a short ritual to kick off the treatment: my feet were gently washed, preparing me for a full hour of bliss. And then, my 60 minutes. Mine, all mine. Mobile phone off, restrictive clothing off.  The treatment I chose is called the Active Muscle Massage. I told my therapist that I had extremely painful knots in parts of my back, as well as a slight, numb feeling on the soles of my feet, that resembled mild cramps.  I was impressed at how well she listened to me, and how she hit those areas spot on. Within minutes, I was in a deep sleep. The combination of the essential oil she used, the quiet humming of instrumental spa music, and my therapist's expertise was all I needed to get to that REM cycle that I found so hard to reach.

Before I knew it, I was gently being reminded that the treatment was over, but that I could continue chilling out in another room. The room was big and had a sens
e of calm about it. Staying there helped me transition from zen mode to 'real world' mode. It was necessary at it was luxurious.

All in all, my experience at Zen the Spa certainly beats some spas in Dubai. I left the hotel with some peace of mind, a smile on my face, and extremely relaxed muscles.

CABARET NIGHTS IN DUBAI

In a bold attempt to convert this huge Filipino night club into an international dining destination, Asiana Hotel's Boracay Night Club is launching the first ever Las Vegas dinner show in Dubai. And I was there at the soft opening, along with discerning foodies and travel industry professionals.

Great food! The flyer said 'international buffet', and more or less, it was. It consisted of Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and a teensy bit of Western fare. I'm talking kimchi, sushi, dumplings, grilled chicken, and pasta.

The cabaret itself was probably the most fabulous night club performance I’ve seen in Dubai. Though I’ve not been to many, I could tell that a huge amount of brainstorming and funding went into the production.

The daily evening show consists of different song and dance numbers, vibrant costumes and multi-talented performers, who I was told were plucked from Universal Studios and Disney. Everything was very entertaining – from the Bruno Mars ballad to the spectacular Burlesque number. The only time I got up to get a drink was when I heard the intro to “My Heart Will Go On”. I thought it was old and tacky, but I looked around and saw all everyone else thoroughly enjoying it. So yeah, i guess that worked as well.

Here’s the best part: It’s AED179 for a full buffet plus the show. Not bad.

THIS TIME, I'M NOT 'SHAYAN' AWAY FROM PERSIAN FOOD

Persian food, anyone? It's not the first thing that comes to mind when I feel like eating out, but I like trying things, and this particular fare deserved my attention. After all, I've been living in Dubai for almost eight years, and it's just not right to ignore it, especially when a lot of people are raving about it.

My first encounter with Iranian food was made possible by Shayan, a restaurant at Rayhaan by Rotana, a hotel attached to the newly renovated Al Ghurair Centre.  It's a spacious, amply lit and extremely classy inside, but with a staff greeting you at the door and leading you to a table of your choice, it's not intimidating at all.

After handing me the menu, the smiling server didn't leave my table. He had expected to be barraged by a number of questions, mostly about what the dishes were and what they consisted of. And that's exactly what I did. And I must say, I was extremely impressed by their knowledge of every single item on the menu. 

The servers at Shayan are extremely friendly and knowledgeable, but not intrusive.

First off, the appetizers. Shayan does fabulously presented yet fresh and uncomplicated starters. Their Salad Shirazi looks like it's been tossed and plated straight from a vegetable garden - cucumbers, red onions, and tomatoes drizzled with virgin olive oil and lime juice. 

These fresh veggies, olives and bread are part of the appetizer round.

It took a few spoonfuls of the Kashk E Bademjan to convince me that the flavors in the dish actually worked together. It's special aged cheese curd mixed with grilled eggplant and seasoned with traditional Persian spices. I'm a big dairy consumer, but eggplants aren't my thing. But the spices actually do a great job marrying those two ingredients. A nice mix of of salty, spicy and savory.

The Esfenaj Nargesi - or seasoned spinach, topped with sauteed onions and fried egg - rests on a dainty plate, a perfectly sized portion. These are simple food items that I didn't realize made perfect sense when combined. It could even work as breakfast. 

Let's get to the good part. The mains were pretty straightforward. I first delved my spoon into the  Gheymeh Bademjan. It's in no way near "gamy" (Gheymeh, get it?). It's a lamb stew prepared with lentils, tomatoes and fired eggplant. It's something, I imagine, that an Iranian mother would make for her family of eight when there's a special occasion. It's comfort meets festive. Never mind my loathing for eggplant (which I guess is Bademjan in Farsi). The rest of the dish was something I would have over and over again at Shayan. 

A plateful of grilled goodness.

Then there came the enormous plate full of delectable grill items. Let's talk about the first one, called Kubideh Ye Joojeh. It's basically minced chicken breast, onion and saffron on a skewer. It's moist, tasty and healthy. That's a dinner dish I can get on board with. 

I sampled another chicken skewer called Joojeh Kabab Ba Ostokan (won't try to say it twice). It's chicken on the bone marinated with saffron sauce. It's tender, richer and densely packed with the sauce. The bits of chicken come apart! 

I then focused my attention on the beef. Tikke Masti is beef tenderloin marinated with yogurt, saffron and Persian spices. At this point, my taste buds were dominated by saffron. That wasn't a complaint at all. I thought it was good that saffron was one of the common elements in some of the dishes, because it was subtle yet undeniably essential in making the dishes achieve a certain flavor profile.  Tikke Masti isn't massively different from Arabic kebab, but in a way, it's distinctly Persian.

Three different kinds of rice served with the mains

Now I'm no fan of lamb. Some of the lamb kebabs I've had in the past tasted too gamy, over seasoned and oily beyond necessity. But Shayan's Kabab Shishlik was neither of those things. It was as fragrant as a good piece of lamb could get, grilled to perfection and seasoned to my liking. It's the kind of grub you'd have with lots of greens and grilled tomatoes.

The single weird thing I tasted that evening was the Tahchin Ghoosh Mahi. It's basically a savory rice cake flavored with saffron and layered with shrimp, fish and other seafood, topped with sea scallops, barberries and pistachios. Yes, it tastes as strange as it sounds. I was told that many patrons of the restaurant order it. I'm guessing they're all Iranian. I guess it's a really authentic and unique Persian flavor. It's one of those things: one of the Filipino dishes that everyone in my country loves is kare-kare, which is made with peanut butter, veggies and tripe. So this dish is something like that. Not a fan.

Room for dessert? Anytime. I sometimes think I eat a whole meal just to get to the much awaited dessert round. And my meal at Shayan is not exception. I was served traditional Persian ice cream, flavored with saffron and rosewater, adorned with vermicelli. There were many textures in this ice cream. At first I thought it was going to taste like kulfi, but it was sweeter than kulfi, but not as rich as mainstream ice cream, for example. The rosewater put me off, but the string of hardened caramel in the cup kept me going. I finished about 3/4 of my cup.

Trivia: Wikipedia says ice cream originated in Iran. Yup. Here's what it says:

In the Persian Empire, people would pour grape-juice concentrate over snow, in a bowl, and eat this as a treat. This was done primarily when the weather was hot, using snow saved in the cool-keeping underground chambers known as "yakhchal", or taken from snowfall that remained at the top of mountains by the summer capital — Hagmatana, Ecbatana or Hamedan of today. In 400 BC, the Persians went further and invented a special chilled food, made of rose water and vermicelli, which was served to royalty during summers.^[5] The ice was mixed with saffron, fruits, and various other flavours.

All in all, my Shayan experience left me bloated and happy, feeling like I knew more about the world than before I walked into the place. Lots of hits, a few misses. Contrary to my preconceived notion that Persian cuisine was similar to Arabic, it's actually unique. It's less intense but equally delicious. It's rustic in the way it is prepared and presented but complex flavor-wise. And of course, it's been around for centuries, which makes it a piece of ancient Persian culture. That's pretty cool.

Don't Stop Believing....

We haven't! That's why this video exists, despite everyone's judgment.

Mediterranean Snack's Baked Lentil Chips give me hope

. . . that I can still snack idly while watching pointless YouTube videos without expecting my hips to blow up tomorrow.

Gluten free, fiber-rich, and 70 per cent less fat than regular potato chips. That's what the label says.

It's 110 calories, versus Lay's Baked Potato Chips' 180. With a low-fat yogurt dip and lots of water, I should be able to carry on snacking without feeling a tinge of guilt.

www.recmend.com

Tanzania

Earlier this year, Tanzania was something we read about on the internet, and in our then newly purchased Rough Guide book.
Now, two days after landing in Dubai from one of the most diverse countries in East Africa, we can say that all the interest, research and excitement we devoted to our biggest holiday so far were worth it.

JAMBO! 
Welcome!

We had a a taste of Dar Es Salaam on our first night. In one of the safest cities in East Africa (or so the locals claim), we did a bit of exploring and drinking and admired the under-developed, third-world and happy vibe of Tanzania's capital. That was cool. At one point I believe LBT screamed "I want to live in Tanzania!" as he chugged down his third Kilimanjaro beer.

The airport

Abdullah, our cabbie

The next day, we flew up north to Arusha to do a five-day safari. It was awesome. The breath-taking scenery and the sight of the animals roaming around freely in their natural habitat are something you don't get to experience every day. Many people never even experience it in their lifetime. So it was a gift, really, to witness wildlife at its wildest. I, a cowboy and a believer of immersion holidays, emptied my bladder just outside Serengeti National Park. That was the ultimate gesture of being one with nature and unspoken camaraderie with my rafiki, whose dung has beautifully decorated the the vast grasslands for years. Maybe even decades. Centuries. Who knows?!

Our tent in Serengeti

A rare cheetah sighting. And it wasn't eating Cheetos.

A big family of elephants that have just crossed the street

Thirsty wildebeests, minutes before a lion started chasing them

I don't remember what kind of deer these are, but aren't they a beautiful sight?

And let's not forget our Masai Mara stopover. We stayed there for a bit and palled around with our Masai brovas, took lots of pictures, and left $150 poorer, and a little happier in an ignorant tourist way.

LBT happy with his talking stick

Five days of  safari left us pooped (pun intended), and a nice evening in Arusha before heading to our next destination was what we needed to recharge. Arusha is a nice sweet place. The main road is lined with overly enthusiastic vendors that sell street food (gotta love my grilled corn) and used clothing. They sometimes get in the way of traffic. But the cars, as reckless as they may appear, don't seem to mind at all. Adding to the madness of Arusha's streets are a few Caucasian and Asian backpackers looking happily lost in the organized, dust-covered chaos that is Arusha.We had a few beers and retired to our lovely lodge to prepare for our next stop.

At Arusha City Park, enjoying a bottle of ice cold Tusker

POLE-POLE...
Slowly...

We said bye bye to Arusha and flew to the island of Zanzibar, a word that originally meant "sea of blacks", a term the Iranians gave the beautiful spice-rich island when they set foot on it. Our first stop: Nungwi, a beach in the northern part of the Zanzi peninsula. It can be a perfect honeymoon destination, or a backpacker's haven, depending on where you stay. We stayed at the very luxurious The Z Hotel. Fine white sand (Boracay's is finer and whiter, but let's not steal the spotlight from Zanzi), seafood and beer all day, lounging by the pool for five hours while buried in a book and letting the sun do its magic on our skin. Not to mention a TV attached to the bed's canopy. That was how we spent time for three straight days.

View from my lounge chair

We got a sea view room. Sweet.

Then we drove off to  Stone Town, the last leg of our great Tanzanian journey. We stayed in a lovely B and B, with a cafe that serves all-day breakfast on the ground floor. Since arrving in Tz, every place we stayed at served eggs and sausages for breakfast. Not this one.I had a nice sweet brekkie of banana crepes and cranberry green tea on the first morning, and spicy avocado on toast with grilled tomatoes and green tea on the second. Both were to die for. On both days, we let ourselves get lost in the alleyways of Stone Town. Souvenir shops, antique houses and lots of intricately designed doors lined every narrow street, with the occasional quaint coffee shop serving premium Rwandan, Ghanian and Tanzanian cuppas surprising us.

New friends!

A nice coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. Stone Town be da best plezz man.

He focused on the door. Thank you.

Mosquito nets are romantic.

One of Stone Town's many alleyways.

 We also went to a reggae concert, but left after one beer. There were nine people in the crowd, and the front act was a middle-aged white man. Very Ras Trent, by the Lonely Island.

"Are you there Ja? It's me, Ras Trent."

ASANTE SANA!
Thank you!
On our last morning, we found ourselves in Dar Es Salaam's airport, penniless (thanks to the $10-a-person airport fee that we didn't know about) and exhausted. But memories of our eleven-day adventure were still fresh, and we still breathed African air, the same air that made it possible for Tanzania's first president Julius Nyerere to utter his intention of uniting all indigenous tribes in Africa.

Our flight back was delayed by an hour, by which time we were getting a bit annoyed. Waiting in the airport - any airport - isn't something I would consider fun. There's only so much you can do. Hold hands, look at people, tell jokes, have a beer, have two cups of tea, have a nap in a very uncomfortable position, take a leak, drink more water so you can kill a few more minutes by taking another leak, and so on and so forth. When we finally boarded the plane, we relaxed. Relaxed as in relaxed. Relaxed. Relaxed. LBT relished the six-hour flight by watching movies and downing mini bottles of red wine. Emirates Airline really is the best in a lot of ways.

Julius Nyerere International Airport

30 Rock and grape. This is the life.

Okay, we're back here in Dubai, working our butts off just hours after landing. Back to reality, oops there goes gravity (a line from Eminem's Lose Yourself, I think). But we're still not over our African high. We're sorting out our souvenirs and washing clothes to kill all the ants and other alien insects we brought back with us. We have yet to frame the big Masai necklace we bought, and decide where to put LBT's tribal talking stick. It's a good way of buying time and denying that our holiday is indeed over.

Oh well. 'Til our next big adventure!

E-Gate is the only thing I believe in

The UAE E-gate card is the single most important thing in your life if you are a Dubai-based expat and travel at least twice a year.


Not having to wait in an immigration queue is one of the most wonderful experiences ever. I shelled out a little over 200 dirhams for my card, and in return, it gives me lots of time to wander aimlessly in any of the terminals at Dubai International Airport. I can shop for books, have a coffee, walk as slowly as possible, and so on.

It also preserves whatever airport look I'm going for. I put a lot of effort into making myself not look like an illegal immigrant whenever I am traveling. I think it's a must, in this judgmental society and in the airport environment, where profiling is an acceptable way to enforce security. Aaaanyway, falling in line and waiting and walking around and panicking make me look harassed. With my E-gate card, I breeze through the whole immigration process by saying hello to a small machine. Boom! Illegal immigrant look gone forever.

GOT THIS PHOTO OFF WWW.GULFNEWS.COM

In addition, my precious card put an end to airport diarrhea, a unique condition I have. It is usually caused by nothing but unfounded guilt. Nothing can destroy my stomach more than a stern look from an immigration official. I have never committed an offense (unless airport diarrhea is a crime), but I go crazy when someone gives me a look that says, "I'll get you. Just you wait".

Aaanyway, my E-gate card is the best!

IHYPE on IHOP

Yes, IHOP is coming to Dubai and I cannot wait.
I know, I can make waffles and pancakes and fry some eggs next to a pile of crispy bacon in the comfort of our kitchen.
But there's nothing like sitting back and watching a waiter balance a tray on which a big plate of lard, salt and sugar wobble nervously and walk to my table.
It's not having billions of dollars in an offshore bank account that makes you a king.
It's having someone make incredible breakfast for you without moving a single muscle.
And all for a few dirhams.

The downside? I will feel guilty immediately after I finish my plate.
Then I'll go on the treadmill and feel unworthy of being on a treadmill.
It's a sick cycle, my friend.

A sick, pancake-shaped cycle.

Fiestang Pinoy

Did a quick VO for Fiestang Pinoy, a new Filipino restaurant in Dubai.
Here's a quick link to the TVC: http://vimeo.com/47640237

KERALA PICTURES

Thought I'd post pictures form our Kerala trip. Really miss going on a holiday and thinking of absolutely nothing. I've been working like a dawg and the only thing that keeps me going is the promise of a much-needed getaway in less than two months! For the meantime, I am going to have to look at these and maybe pack my suitcase in advance.

MY FIRST IFTAR THIS YEAR

I'm so excited to attend an Indonesian iftar tonight! I am meeting Isti, a lovely Indonesian lady who has lived in Dubai for years.

She's serving up a feast at sunset, and it's going to fresh, tasty and accompanied by stories from her and her guests.

I like nasi goreng and Liam likes beef rendang. Let's see if those two dishes will be part of her spread this evening.

I'll keep you posted!

Celeb Street Style Spotlight: Maxi Skirts Celeb Street Style Spotlight: Maxi Skirts – The Frisky

Celeb Street Style Spotlight: Maxi Skirts Celeb Street Style Spotlight: Maxi Skirts – The Frisky

We love maxi skirts!

Forget potions.

Dr. Ibrahim is the best dermatologist in the world.

Very reassuring, calm and prescribes nothing but the best.