I would just like to bring everyone’s attention to the fact that The Black Iris will unfortunately be down till Monday it seems (it’s thanksgiving holiday in the US), due to technical difficulties from the stupid web host. Thanks!
Close your left eye and focus on the star, moving closer to screen until your blind spot kicks into gear and the circle disappears. Pretty nifty, eh? For more, check out this little interesting flash game that makes you think more about blind spots.
Taste
Style
Vibes
Price
Parking 
Staff
Location: Mekkah Mall, soon to open in Abdoun mall
Reservations: no
Phone: (06) 583 3098
We would recommend the kabab dish, the seeneyeh kafta, and the “Beteinjan Rehaneh” aubergines dish.
Roba: Located in the 3rd floor of the Mecca Mall extension, this stand-alone Lebanese restaurant might as well be the best Lebanese food place in town, minus the fact that they don’t serve kubbeh nayeh (darn).
Their food though is quite delicious, very flavorful and always cooked to yuminess. We usually order their Kabab and kafta dishes, although we have tried their arayes and most of their cold mezzas, which are similarly pretty delicious. Yet yumminess aside, my favorite part about Rehaneh is that they always go the extra mile so that their food is made to not only please your taste buds, but to also please your eyes.
Add to that, Al-Rehaneh is the only suggestion that might make the mall-despising Moose agree to go to the mall.
Definitely recommended, if not for the delicious food and great prices, then for the friendly staff.
Moose: Other than the fact that it is in the mall, and malls are just plain evil, this is one of the best dinning options in Amman. The food is excellent – a family member who was visiting from overseas rated their food much higher than Tannureen (a fancy-shmancy Lebanese restaurant), and the menu offers some options that are hard to find at other places; the “Sinyyett Koftah” dish that is as close to home cooking as possible. The complementary stuff – a plate of boiled almonds, a collection of fresh vegetables, and a dessert plate – add value to the already cheap prices and gives a feeling of being an appreciated guest. The atmosphere is not bad at all, and if you ignore the little kids jumping on the trampoline right outside, it is very similar to any fancy restaurant.
Finally, the fact that they don’t even have the 10% service charge added to the bill (I always wondered if this addition even makes it to the pockets of the waiters), paired with the excellent service, has you feeling pretty happy about giving a generous tip.
Total:
I had just started the fourth grade and I was excited about the new year. The fourth grade at my elementary school spelled the ultimate change from being a child to becoming an adult; you started having to wear the “abaya“, you started taking real classes, and you started being treated like an adult.
My favorite addition though was the 2 weekly hours on the day before the weekend called “Activities”, where you had a selection of out-of-curricula classes to choose from. Being an art-aficionado from an early age, I naturally picked art. The teacher was an Egyptian called Ms. Maha, very tall and rather big, with your quite-typical Saudi-school idea of what art is- a lot of tin carving, dry pasta pasting, burlap (kheish) bags, ceramic flowers, and yarn beads. But that was still a lot better than the mosques they had us draw in third grade, and I was excited for the new use of material.
During our first class, she sat us in the basement of the school and told us how we are going to do some gorgeous adult art. Our first project: bedouin-style necklaces made from Pringles can-tops, which we were going to carve with ballpoint pins and then glue colored beads on. Then she pointed to the stack of glue piled up on the table.
Butterflies fluttered in my stomach when I realized that it was adult UHU superglue. The liquid type that my parents would never let me use at home. The liquid type that my dad would glue everything with. And I was finally adult enough to be able to use it.
I proudly stood in line behind my fellow classmates to put my hands on a tube all for myself, and spent the entire two hours carefully exploring the amazingness of UHU superglue, which was actually strong enough to stick the beads to the tin. Ahhh… even now, two decades on, I can clearly recall those hours. I glorified in its sweet caustic smell, which remains to this day one of my favorite scents in the world. I covered my hands with it and peeled it off carefully when it dried, making a mold of my tiny fingers. I learned how to put very small portions of it using hairpins. I glued the most random things ever, trying to test its limits, which seemed endless.
I went home in ecstasy that day, carrying my tube of half-finished UHU superglue proudly to show my mother. I was in love. I was an adult, and it was my savior.
From that day and for the next 10 years, UHU superglue was my best friend. I carried it around wherever I went, and actually kept that habit throughout college too. You never know when the circumstances call for some superglue here and there.
I developed the habit of gluing everything that needs to be fixed, as well as gluing anything I thought would look good somewhere where it wasn’t supposed to be.
I superglued my shoes together, I superglued the phone to my desk so no one would remove it, I superglued the door knobs to make them less slippery to open when my hands were wet, I superglued my dolls to my closets, I superglued my glasses together to make them more tight, I superglued my torn jeans, I superglued papers instead of stapling them, I superglued bookshelves and scraps of fallen paint, I superglued my Barbie-furniture to the dollhouse, I superglued photographs to the door, I superglued my backpack, I superglued the wheels of my bed, I superglued my hands together when I was bored, I even superglued broken furniture.
I remember when my dad was moving our furniture to Jordan, he called me up and told me with amusement that he had discovered that most of my drawer-panels were glued together with superglue. I told him I knew that. He asked me why didn’t I just tell him and he would have nailed them back together. I shrugged and told him that he taught me to love superglue. He shrugged and told me that he had had them fixed at a furniture store properly.
And that, Manal, was my first crush. I still go doe-eyed when I see a tube of brand new UHU superglue.
Croatian creative agency Bruketa & Zinić have designed an annual report for food company Podravka that has to be baked in an oven before it can be read. Called Well Done,
the report features blank pages printed with thermo-reactive ink that,
after being wrapped in foil and cooked for 25 minutes, reveal text and
images. Pretty cool.
I especially like the foil its delivered in.
