El Andalous - Eating Pigeon

Pigeon

I’m really back to my desired routine now – well, I’m not fitting everything in, but generally I’m writing in the morning, swimming in the afternoon, and reading in the evening. If I have enough energy, I’ll do some Arabic, but up to now I’ve usually been waylaid by other things (writing, admin, TV, going out).

I’ve had a few meals out. One characteristic of eating out here is that there are still not so many tourists, so it’s hard for restaurants to keep a full menu going. After my visa woes, and getting only six months instead of a year, Horst and Hilde decided we should go and have an ice cream in town to cheer ourselves up (well, to cheer me up, and I guess for them to sit back and relax). There are surprisingly few places to sit and eat ice cream. Anyway, we sat down and ordered and then watched the guy go out shopping to buy the ingredients (ie, a tub of ice cream from across the road)! In the UK, if something is taking a long time, you might joke that they’re still trying to kill the chicken. Over here, that’s not a joke; it’s the state of reality.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened. It’s now closed, but when Chez Paul was in business, we ordered some wine. Instead of saying they didn’t have any, they went all the way into Hurgada to get it (so we waited for about an hour) and then charged as an astronomical figure for it. They went out of business two days later, so it was probably their last chance to make some money. It was annoying at the time but quite funny when you look back on it.

More recently, a group of us went to eat at Fishawy (a local restaurant). They are situated on the same road as BestWay in Sahl Hasheesh, so we ordered and then saw one of the guys go out and then return with a whole load of bags from BestWay. I guess it’s better than the food being out of date.

I have also finally tried one of the major local dishes – stuffed pigeon. I only had it because the restaurant didn’t have any duck (and were clearly not able to run out and buy some). Stuffed pigeon was a pretty good bet as it’s very popular here and is unlikely to have been hanging around. As it was, it was cooked fresh for me.

I’m glad I’ve tried it and I believe they did it very well as it was nicely presented and they made a big fuss of how they’d cooked it from scratch for me. I’ve also been puzzled as to how many you should eat as a main course; mine was two and that seemed fine.

My main impression was that there was very little meat; so little that I’m not even sure I can tell you what it tastes like. It was also astonishing as to just how much rice they can cram into such a small space. It seemed to go on forever. The meal was fairly spicy, but not hot spicy. Picking at the meat was quite an exercise. In the end, I would rather have duck. If you’ve never had it, though, you should definitely give it a try.