Al Ibrahimi - Pakistan food, Abu Dhabi

Add: Electra Street, Abu Dhabi
Near: Madinat Zayed, Sands Hotel
Tel: +971 2 634 6258 or +971 2 639 2204

Tripadvisor.co.uk ranks this as the 10th best restaurant (Out of 168 others) in Abu Dhabi ... and Time Out Abu Dhabi raves about it too. I don't quite know why! We have found a number of other eateries (Such as Damascus Flower, Kon Kan, and even Tandoori Corner) to be much tastier, and most of the "family area" has a strange toilet-scent! Eeeep!


Not the best of starts ... Mango lassi (8 AED - Too milky, too sweet!), but at least the large bottle of Mawafi water was cheap at 2 AED.


My chicken briyani, too salty and not heavily spiced enough, 15 AED.

Best dish of the night - Our Mutton Quorma or Mutton Curry, 13 AED. Very tender!

The Chicken Fry at 14 AED was also tender, and quite tasty. Still beaten by Damascus Flower!

The veg curry at 9 AED was not the tastiest of dishes too :-(

The roti was decent, but wait till you try the Paratha at Damascus Flower!

ps - The saving grace? Good waiters, fair prices, and child-friendly!

Jones the Grocer, Khalidiyah - Great place to throw a party!

Located: Pearl Plaza Tower, next to Onyx Hotel and near the Corniche and Khalidiyah Park
Contacts: Monica is the friendly and efficient banquet manager for all party enquiries, you can reach her at the store on +971 2 639 5883
Directions: Enter from 7th (Sheikh Zayad the First) or 32nd (Sultan Bin Zayad) Street when you see "Porcelanosa".


We hosted a party recently at Jones the Grocer, and the service and food was impeccable. The best 2 tea-time dishes were definitely the mini croissants, and the incredible Wagyu beef pie!


We also enjoyed the Wagyu burgers (Mini-ones!), and a selection of sandwiches too.

Halal tim-sum & Chicken Rice at Noodle Bowl, Dubai

We had been to Noodle Bowl in Abu Dhabi's Zayed Sports City / Bowling Alley many times, but when my cousin R asked us to join her in Dubai for tim-sum one weekend, we could not resist. I found the food at the Dubai-branch to be somewhat better, but that's highly subjective!

Mall: Dune Shopping Centre
Located: Al-Satwa / Al Dhiyafah Street
Tel: +971 4 345 3381

Hainanese Chicken Rice - Pretty good! 35 AED, or RM$28. Char Siew Pao (Halal variety, that's chicken char siew, was rather good, pastry/skin could have been fluffier, but "stuffing" was good!) was 16 AED, or RM$6 per pao.


Uncle CH really liked the "Hokkien" Char Kuay Teow, and was rather surprised it could be halal! This cost 29 AED. Beef Horfun with Egg was decent too, 35 AED.


Other drinks ...
Soya milk and peanuts, 15 AED. Water melon juice, 16 AED. Fresh lime soda, 7 AED. Teh Tarik, 10 AED. Jasmine tea in a pot, 15 AED.

And other tim-sums and dishes ...
Fried turnip cake, 18 AED. Prawn chee cheong fun, 17 AED. BBQ Duck congee (Porridge, really good!), 25 AED. Kangkung Malaysia-style, 28 AED.

Zyng Asian Grill - Marina Mall, Abu Dhabi

Located: Marina Mall, Ras Al Akhdar, Abu Dhabi
Tel: +971 2 681 9319
Opening hours: 10.30am - 11.30pm, Daily
Entertainer: Vouchers available, buy-1-get-1 free on main courses

My first visit to Zyng Asian Grill, tucked away in the corner of Marina Mall. Its child-friendly with at least three high-chairs available, and the staff are friendly and very efficient.


Beef with some teriyaki-like sauce, this is truly "kwai-loh" chinese food, notice the generous sprinkle of sesame-seeds on the top! Strictly ... average!


General Tsao (or Tso)'s chicken ... About as American as chinese food gets! Tasted like ... Goreng pisang batter. Very odd, and rather sickly sweet. Eeeeep!


Wikipedia - General Tso's chicken (sometimes Governor Tso's chicken, General Tao's chicken, General Tsao's chicken, General Gao's chicken, or General Gau's chicken) is a sweet-and-spicy, deep-fried chicken dish that is popularly served in American Chinese and Canadian Chinese restaurants. The origins of the dish are unclear. The dish was previously largely unknown in China and other lands home to the Chinese diaspora.

The association with General Tso Tsung-tang, or Zuo Zongtang, a Qing dynasty general and statesman, is unclear. The dish is atypical of Hunanese cuisine, which is traditionally very spicy and rarely sweet. Instead, the dish is believed to have been introduced to New York City in the early 1970s as an example of Hunan- and Szechuan-style cooking. The dish was first mentioned in The New York Times in 1977!

TimeoutAbuDhabi shares some history of the restaurant and its obscure location within a very popular mall ... Zyng Asian Grill’s location really doesn’t do it any favours. Its right at the back of Marina Mall and the windows look out onto a mammoth dark concrete slope – a postponed ski run project. Why they haven’t extended their black and red Ikea-does-Asia style decor to some bamboo blinds or wall hangings, we really couldn’t figure out, so we turned our attention swiftly to the menu.

New Mercedes E300 - Police cars of Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi's police force has new "tai sai ngans" (Cantonese for big-small-eyes!) in service! Stunning new Mercedes W212 E300 police cars!


They were proudly on display at Khalidiyah Mall recently :-)

Al Jazeera News - Ching Ming and iPads

It was Qing Ming or Ching Ming recently, also known as Chinese All Soul's Day. Watched with great glee this article on Al Jazeera News. Seems it was filmed in Melaka :-)


The Star, Malaysia -
GEORGE TOWN: In a store here, there is an iPad going for only RM9.80, a 13.3-inch dual-core processor laptop for under RM12 and an iPhone 4 for a mere RM2. There is one catch, though – while anyone can buy it, only the dead can use it.
“Customers want their dearly departed to be able to keep up with the latest in information technology (IT), besides the usual ‘luxury’ offerings of bungalows with maids and security guards, watches, designer bags and gold ingots. The ‘iPad’ even comes with a USB cable for charging and syncing,” she said.
Even the specifications are literally out of this world. While the current largest storage size for iPads in our world is 64GB, the “other world” users are already using iPads with an auspiciously whopping 888GB!


How about a BMW 5-series or X5 (Can't quite tell!) ... or a MacBook Pro ... DeadBook Pro? :-)

German beers in Abu Dhabi

Playing with my trusty Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 and SB-600 Speedlight one night :-)

It seems ... Warsteiner beer is brewed in the Arnsberger Forestpark outside of Warstein, Germany. Warsteiner has been a product of the Cramer family since 1753.


Hmmm ... yet to open this, perhaps some time this week! Thank goodness for African and Eastern, off-license aka liquor shop, in Abu Dhabi! There's one in Khalidiyah, not far from Lebanese Flower Grill, and another one off Muroor, near Gava Hotel.

The Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu GmbH is a brewery in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It is owned by the Spaten-Löwenbräu-Gruppe which is part of the Belgian company Anheuser-Busch InBev.

EY514 arrives in Abu Dhabi International - AUH

As our flight EY514 from Amman, Jordan back to AUH was about to land ...

Welcome to Abu Dhabi ...

Abu Dhabi's brand-new (1 year old, costing 108 Million USD) Air Traffic Control Complex (ATCC) is positioned midway between the two runways and includes a 5-storey technical and support building integrated with a 110-metre high visual control tower, and (not surprisingly) happens to be the tallest in the region.

Clean, and nearly-new strollers for free hire when you land :-) Perfect!

Goodbye Madaba and Queen Alia Airport, Amman - Jordan

View from our balconey at Mosaic City Hotel - Madaba, which is a nice 21 room family-run hotel. You can contact them at +962 5 3251313.

Queen Alia airport, Amman - Jordan

Our flight wasn't full :-) I had the entire row to myself.

My Lamb Kofta lunch on Etihad EY514, not the best meal I have had on our "local" airlines to be honest. The chef was a little heavy on the salt in this instance!

ps. One last shot of our time in Jordan. Our bottle of Mount Nebo ... Wine of the Holy Land :-) This was actually a 2009 Cardinal Rouge Dry. Hope its good!