Binge on, Bahrain

At 8 in the morning, Bahraini capital Manama’s central business district is quiet. Even Manama Souq, which buzzes for much of the day, is yet to stir. But one of the alleys leading off the main road is alive with people, overlapping conversations, shouted orders and the muted roar of a traditional oven. For nearly 70 years, it’s been this way at Haji’s Cafe, a popular breakfast place.

It also epitomises the concept of a pavement café. Light-blue tables and benches line one side of the alley and a large wall on the right is packed with mostly black-and-white photographs of the café through the ages. There is a one-page menu in Arabic, and the waitstaff offers rudimentary translations in English. The locals order their food without engaging with either the list or the servers, but tourists do so with the help of broken English, gestures and pointing to other tables.

The waiter arrives at my table holding aloft a gigantic metal tray loaded with an assortment of small plates. From the oven room nearby, he fetches large and thin flatbreads that are more than a foot in diameter, and leaves with a smile. The sheer variety does, albeit only initially, pose a dilemma. What do I start with? There’s luba (spiced baked beans), baked beans mixed with scrambled eggs, foule (mashed beans), bayd tomat (scrambled eggs with tomatoes), plain omelette as well as one with herbs and vegetables, cubed potatoes fried with spices, grated cheese and jam. Meals are communal affairs and pieces of the bread, khubz or khubooz , are used to scoop up the many dishes. Though chicken and beef dishes are also available, breakfast is, surprisingly, predominantly vegetarian with eggs thrown in.

The food in Bahrain is probably one of the country’s best-kept secrets. It is a smorgasbord of tastes and textures and draws from a variety of influences starting from Arabic, Baluchi and Persian to Indian and Far Eastern cuisines. And nowhere is it as pronounced as at breakfast. At Saffron by Jena, an elegant café located inside a century-old heritage house in the city of Al Muharraq, breakfast is slightly different. A dish of plump dates with a dipping sauce of tahini is the ideal dish to begin with. And then there’s balaleet (sweet vermicelli topped with an egg), samboosa (samosa stuffed with cheese), zinjibari (small bun stuffed with spicy preserve), falafel and kebab rolls. The khubz is much smaller and more fluffy, and there’s also mihyawa , bread coated with fish sauce. To wash it all down, there’s karak , a sweet, milky tea laced with cardamom.

In the heart of Muharraq, amidst lanes and alleys of renovated and restored houses and other structures of the Shaikh Ebrahim Center for Culture and Research, is the Raazji House of Coffee. The cafe-cum-restaurant is airy, pretty and serves a plethora of traditional Bahraini dishes through the day. We start with platters of fluffy bread, hummus and tabbouleh, followed by a range of succulent chicken and lamb kebabs marinated in different kinds of spices, and machboos , a fragrant saffron rice with prawns, biryani and koshari , which is Egyptian rice with vermicelli and lentils. It is rounded off with a selection of desserts such as fried dough balls steeped in date syrup, mahalabia (condensed milk with flour) or the ubiquitous halwa, which comes in several flavours including saffron, fig and dry fruits.

Small bites: Tabbouleh and hummus at Raazji House of Coffee in Al Muharraq

At Al Abraaj (with branches across the country), designed like a traditional Bahraini mansion with a central courtyard, the emphasis is on hearty meat-based dishes. While the mezze platter with dips and salads was exquisite, the restaurant excelled in its grills. Whether it was the kofta kebab, sheesh tawook or tikka, it came to the table as tender and succulent morsels of chicken, lamb and beef. There is also chelo kabab, a sumac-sprinkled kebab served on a bed of buttery saffron rice, and ghoozi , aromatic lamb shanks on yellow rice speckled with dry fruits.

But as the sun goes down, there’s only one place to be in downtown Manama. Block 338 is a small grid of mostly pedestrians-only streets in the heart of the Adilya area, with hundreds of restaurants and cafés. Cuisines from all over the world vie for attention as music spills out of nightclubs and bars. Calexico’s Mexican rubs shoulders with Meisei’s Japanese; Masso’s European competes with Café Lilou’s French. There’s also CUT by Wolfgang Puck and Rasoi by Vineet Bhatia. Even a week’s worth of dining is not enough to scratch the surface of what Bahrain has to offer.

Anita Rao Kashi is a freelance writer based in Bengaluru

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