Omani Cuisine

The food we ate in Oman couldn't have been more different from Nepal.

For a start, it was mostly all meat. Omani cuisine is typically Middle Eastern, full of mixed grills and kebabs. Many restaurants had brick ovens and bbqs to produce their meat and bread and it was rather tasty, although in some cases a bit much when you’ve recently been on a veggie diet.

The main challenge we had was not knowing portion sizes. For our first lunch, we ordered chicken and rice, which in South East Asia would have come as one plate all mixed together. Here though we each got a massive plate of rice (complete with delicious crispy onions!) followed by another plate with half a chicken. We could easily have had one between two.

Another night, we ordered what we thought were just some bread starters and two kebabs, but it turned out to essentially be two pizzas! We had to take a doggy bag home, so at least we had lunch sorted for the next day!

One of the nice surprises was having falafel and pitta for breakfast. The falafel was doughnut shaped so that it was cooked all the way through and was a much nicer option than the McDonald’s across the road that we had been heading to!

The best meal we had was the first night we arrived, where we had some deliciously rich sauces covering chicken stuffed with dried fruit and nuts and a rack of lamb. This was the perfect introduction to Oman; having spent all day travelling, this restaurant was attached to our hotel and was absolutely delightful.

We were only in Oman for a few days so we didn’t have much time to sample all the cuisine, but I think if we’d been there longer, we may have got meated out. There weren’t that many vegetables (unlike in Iceland, we didn’t see any greenhouses growing anything) so it would probably have become difficult to have a balanced diet. Still, it was nice for a few days!