It seems that aside from spending major time with family, our stay in Qatar was also about eating, eating, and more eating!!! Fortunately for us, that’s not a bad thing at all! 🤪
When my sister-in-law asked what we wanted to eat first – our answer was immediately, Jollibee! Yes, Jollibee is a fastfood and yes, it’s not the best food out there, but any true Filipino knows what Jollibee is all about. I don’t know a single Filipino person who is living abroad who hasn’t missed Jollibee at one point in their life. I know I do, in a major way! It’s hard to explain what it is about Jollibee, there’s just something about it. It’s got the taste of my childhood.
Being in Doha, at times, felt like being back home in the Philippines. There were a lot of Filipino restaurants and stores. I couldn’t help but think of all the Filipino OFW’s and felt happy for them to have a place like Puerto Gallera Restaurant for them to go to. How I wish we had a Filipino restaurant where I currently live! I know on days where I particularly feel nostalgic, I like to eat a good Pinoy meal. I try to cook Filipino food as much as possible at home, but sometimes because specific ingredients are just not available, it is just impossible. Think –bangus, malunggay, iba, chicharon, and etc …
Filipino supermarkets, yes (!!!), there are Pinoy supermarkets in Doha. Of course, I made a mental note to come back on the last day for a little shopping. Near the supermarkets, there was a little Filipino eatery, which I unfortunately forgot the name.
In this little eatery, we enjoyed their Siopao and Cheese Bread. Back in the Philippines, I was never really a fan of Filipino bread. I guess it’s true when they say – you don’t know what you have till it’s gone.
As promised, my sister-in-law and I went back to the Filipino supermarkets on our last day and made a little detour to this eatery. First to get bread, but also to eat lunch. The Fried Bangus, otherwise called Milkfish, was simple but particularly exquisite. To this day, I still think of this meal.
One of my quick go-to fave meal is Filipino white rice and Spanish-Style Sardines. Give me a bottle of this and I will love you my whole life. My father-in-law kindly brought 2 bottles back from the Philippines. Obviously, I had no patience as I opened one during our vacation.
But enough of Filipino food. We were in Qatar, after all. At some point we had to eat some local cuisine. What better way to do that then go to the Souk Waqif, the local market.
After walking around the Souk, we finally stopped to eat at Shujaa Restaurant. It was a rather simple and cheap restaurant. We ordered their grilled specialties, accompanied by bread and arugula salad. If I’m not mistaken, we also had some dips like Hummus, which I forgot to take a photo of.
My sister-in-law insisted that we get freshly made bread not too far from the restaurant. What a brilliant idea! It was quite fascinating to see the preparation, the cooking process, and then have it warm in our hands. Yum!
On one of our last nights, we decided to walk along the Katara Beach. This was a beautiful area. It’s difficult to explain, but I felt a sense of peace walking there. Qatar was a really nice surprise.
During our long walk along the beach, we stopped by several food stands. One of which we ordered Potatoes on a Stick. I had cheese powder with mine.
We stopped at another stand and ordered 2 Falafel Sandwiches, as well as ….
…. a bowl of Koushari. This was made with lentils, macaroni, rice, chickpeas, tomato sauce, and spices. As a first-timer, I thought it was a bit on the heavy side, but not bad.
On our way home, we stopped by a smaller local Souk to get dessert.
Kanafeh is a dessert made of cheese with a sweet syrup. It was topped with thin noodle threads and chopped pistachios. This was amazing!
Unfortunately, we couldn’t go too long without eating Filipino or rather Asian food. LOL. For our last night, good friends invited us to eat at a Chinese buffet, The Great Wall Chinese Restaurant.
There was a wide variety of choice and we did not go lacking for anything. On the contrary!
I loved, loved, loved the Crab! I think that at some point I might have had a little hypertension from eating too much crab.
We were given these refreshing drinks. Sadly, these were not freshly pressed, but I loved the fresh fruits that were sliced and added to the drink.
Soooo … there goes the first Qatar post. These are just some of the food that we had during this trip. I’ve also included some more food photos in the next upcoming posts.
What do you think? Personally, looking back, we ate a lot of Asian / Filipino food during this trip, but like I mentioned earlier, at times it seemed like we were back home in the Philippines.
Anyways, I’m off to work on the next post. See you soon.
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