The worst and the best of food in Jordan

Here we were, in Jordan, not exactly a culinary flagstone of middle eastern cuisine but nevertheless I was intent on trying to find something worth documenting. The meal we had in Karak after getting off the bus was worth documenting but not because it was good. It wasn't good, not at all. I ordered the Mansaf, which is the national dish of Jordan. It is usually served at celebrations, and not really very often served at the everyday table. Mansaf is seasoned lamb cooked in a fermented yoghurt sauce served over rice with nuts. It was supposed to be a dish to celebrate something special, the only thing this dish celebrated was how you could cook lamb so terribly tough that it was inedible. The yoghurt suace wasnt actually that bad, it had a nice flavour but that was its only saving grace. There were supposed to be pine nuts, but these were peanuts, and not even shelled. Rubbish. Just goes to show that you can pick a restaurant based on how close it is to your bus stop.

 Then there was the polar opposite of the terrible food in Karak. I was taken out to a restaurant by my tattoo artist. We didnt get to this place until after 11pm and it was packed. We stood around for 15 mins waiting to get a table until finaly we were sat. There were at least a hundred people in there all locals, all men. almost all of them drinking arak.

 What you see here was our first course. a pile of fresh spinach like greens doused in lemon juice and paprika. Four dips, one was a Jordanian hummus, very different to the hummus that we had in Istanbul, much whiter and much thinner, very tasty, less lemon and more garlic. There was a tomato based sauce with stacks of veges and chilli, a great yoghurt capsicum and onion dip and then a cucumber and yoghurt mixture. I was told that eating this meant you could drink as much booze as you wanted and not feel its negative effects. I gave it a whirl, but didnt succeed.

 This dish was an amazingly tasty but simple lamb casserole, I just cant say enough about how much flavour these guys had jammed into this food. It such a shame that I didnt get the names of any of this stuff, but if you know, then please comment.

 Of course here we have the shish kebab, a great barbeque of chicken pieces and kofta with charred onions and capsicum. This was great, and well cooked but to be honest it had nothing on the kebap that we had at Hamdi

Then there was the final dish, the piece de resistance. This was kind of like a stroganoff, a delicious lamb mince at the bottom of this large dish then topped with potato and onions and then all covered with a delicious creamy sauce that i think was probably made from labneh. This was easily the best dish i ate in Jordan, you can see all of us jumping in to get our flat bread into the plate. Truly an amazing experience in what was otherwise a fairly unexciting city gastronomically speaking.