Farewell-- Indian Style!

For an expat, June is the month of farewells.  There are LOTS of them, especially when one is moving.  These two farewells have something in common-- Indian food!

Shatha, Paula, Natasha, me, Beata, Aditi, and Angela

I really like Indian food.  The funny thing is that I had never been to an Indian restaurant in Muscat, before this lunch.  I guess I never knew just what to order.  This lovely group of ladies took me to Mumtaz, a beautiful and fabulous Indian restaurant.  It is located above Left Bank, in Qrum.  Aditi and Natasha did all the ordering, and it was everything was amazing.  A fun group of ladies and a wonderful lunch!

Now, this is truly a unique experience for me-- Indian breakfast!  My friend Caroline (she is the one who dressed me in a sari in an earlier blog post) wanted to spend the day with me in Ruwi.  Ruwi is the Indian part of Muscat, and an area I had spent very little time in.  We met at the church parking lot in Ruwi, and then Carolyn took me to this restaurant for breakfast.  Here is the cook, making our breakfast dosa.

It is like a very big and thin crepe, made of fermented lentil and rice flour.  I think that is what Caroline told me.  The one on the left (not ours) had a potato filling.

I cannot remember the name of this next item.  I would call Caroline and ask her, but she is out of the country at the moment.  Anyways, you take the same batter as the dosa, but a thicker version.  Then you fry it.  Fried bread, basically.  What's not to like?  :)

Here is how the dosa is served.  With a tomato chutney and several sauces.  One is minty, one has coconut, and the other is lentils.

Here is the other dish.  Served with lentils on the left and a potato mixture on the right.  It was all very tasty!  I asked Caroline if Indians ate anything sweet for breakfast, and she said not normally.

There were lots of dosa options!

This restaurant is part of a chain, and there are restaurants in Dallas and Houston!!!

Here is the way our coffee was served, in this metal cup and small bowl.  Notice how all the dishes are metal!  

So, one of the ways to drink this coffee is to pour it into the bowl, and back into the cup, thereby cooling it down.

After breakfast, we went shopping around Ruwi.  The only place I had seen Indian clothing was at Lulu's.  Think Super Wal-mart.  The saris, fabrics, and clothing here were beautiful!

The women's clothing was beautiful, but check out these men's suits!

Snazzy!

Parking is hard to find in Ruwi.  You just park where you can, and walk around.  Now the temperature on this day hovered around 125 degrees Fahrenheit, or 52 degrees Celsius!  And that is actual temperature.  Although it can be a little tricky to get an official temperature.  The Omani government likes to downplay the heat.  So yes, I happily used an umbrella in the sunshine.  That is pretty commonly done here.

Beautiful Caroline, as we pop into a store and cool off.

After a few hours of shopping, I was treated to another Indian restaurant for lunch.  'Woodlands' doesn't sound like an Indian restaurant to me, but it was!  :)

We had Butter chicken and a fish curry.  Yum.

Naan bread

Caroline and my lemon mint drink.

I will miss all my wonderful friends here in Oman!!