Abu Dhabi - Talking about the Food first

Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab of Emirates, is a fairly new city - developed probably since 30-40 years ago. If you are a cultural & heritage buff, chances are you won't find anything old like you would in Europe. What you see in Abu Dhabi today is civilization, advancement and metropolitan.

Over the years, Abu Dhabi and its neighbour, Dubai, have attracted a vast population of foreigners to live and work in the cities. The vast choices of international cuisines from different parts of the world is the best testimony of this fact.

I went to Abu Dhabi to visit my sister and her family who live there. They don't really care too much about the local cuisine. So most of the time when we eat out, we usually have Chinese or Southeast Asian cuisine.

Breakfast/brunch is usually a Western affair with my sister and her family. This is one of those restaurants which you probably won't see any locals but Westerners only.

The luxurious Shangri-la Hotel with its Chinese restaurant, Shang Palace.

We had the Peking duck which is a crepe wrapped with crispy duck skin, vegetable sticks and hoisin sauce.

Some of the dishes we had at Shang Palace. The restaurant manager is also a Malaysian who treated us to desserts at the end of dinner. My sister and her family are regulars at the restaurant that many of the waiters know them by name.



A fusion restaurant we went to - The Noodle Factory - that serves Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Thai cuisines. It's kind of weird as it sounds but the food is delicious!

Another fusion restaurant, Japengo Cafe, that serves all kinds of cuisines. I finally get to have Shish Tawouk as shown on the lower right.

Another interesting item I found when browsing in the supermarket was the fact that people here eat shark meat. The Chinese feast on the shark fin, so the Middle-Easterners can feast on the meat??