It's just the taste of a proper English Chinese. Sweet and sour pork, proper prawn crackers...you know, the works.

In gloopy pink glaze?

I miss having a proper Chinglish so much.
Massive greasy pancake rolls, BBQ spare ribs (dry, sauce separate), char siu pork curry and special fried rice. All with added soy sauce and salt. Mmmmmm!

You know it. Was a bit more yellowy than the usual super-pink. But was still delicious.


We just added sensible things to our mains like;
Pork fried rice and Crispy pork.

Drool.

I've just had a Subway sandwich with turkey "bacon"

How long afterwards were you hungry again?

Hmm....sigh....I could do with fried pork dumplings right now.

Champions? yes, nasty sports bar indeed, what to do, it's Doha right. You could order one of their MSG burgers whilst you're there

Avoid Chinese restaurants in Doha would be my advice, along with a whole load of other places, really risky if you're not cooking it yourself or it's not a 5* hotel (and even then...) It's no wonder they have an 'app' for restaurants closed for health violations.

Yep. Champions. Good old Champions I have a membership at the Marriott so I do get 10% discount on food in the bar. It's an odd bar - half the time I go in there's a cluster of sad looking old men sitting at the bar staring morosely at the screens while nursing their beer and fags, then the other half the time I go in it's a rousing crowd.

Mind you, it's nowhere nearly as bad as that awful sports bar at the Radisson Blu The air in there is absolutely lethal even if no one is smoking.

So far I've been told to avoid all Indian not in a posh hotel, avoid all Chinese not in a posh hotel, avoid all Arabic not in a posh hotel (understandable, I got food poisoning at Turkey Central), avoid all Thai not in a posh hotel, avoid anything that isn't in a posh hotel....except Korean. For some reason there's a bunch of Korean joints in Doha and having tried most of them they're pretty good.

Erm. I wasn't....but I'd had 5 pints before dinner and a beer with so was starving. Then had a couple more after the Chinese, so walked to the hotel very comfortably full.

The problem I have with Chinese is that I stuff myself completely and then a hour later I'm hungry again that's the apparent downside of MSG.

There's a good Japanese/Korean place Yee Hwa on Al Kinana. Always seems to be full so worthwhile phoning ahead. A, seemingly, new Thai place on Salwa Road, Sawasdee Thai, how original, right hand side heading out of town a few hundred metres after the Midmac roundabout. Not tried that yet but looks clean and will be visiting at some point.

Raddisson Blu

Yee Hwa is my to go place when I don't want to eat in a hotel. The meat they use is actually quite decent quality and I like the table top grills. Not cheap but good value by Doha standards.

I've heard of Sawasdee Thai but I need to meet people who've actually eaten there and survived

I hate to make another unavoidable comparison between Dubai and Doha but for a city of 2+ million people it's amazing how lame the dining scene. There's nothing like the Indian joints of Bur Dubai/Karama, the scores of Thai, the leagues of pretty good Lebanese / Arabic grub, the pretty decent mosque cafeterias that won't kill you with their schawaramas. I suspect it's because the Emiratis actually like food whereas the Qataris are totally indifferent and that reflects itself in the emphasis on food standards and inspections in the UAE compared to Qatar.

I've got my ticket on tonight's Doha booze cruise, the 1:40am QA flight to Edinburgh. Friday 13th, Halloween party at row 13 (the galley) with Al Baker's grannies

Yes, since he took you up the creek...

Got a text of an offer of a free case of half decent Provence rose with a spend of 2,500 at Al Hamra cellar in RAK. We should score 2 cases if we do the usual spend!

I'll use that as a pretext to get 'im indoors off the couch to go check out all the destruction on Jebel Jais with the new road and zipline and what not (trying not to emulate these people). I know in most houses the mountain trip would be the pretext for the trip to the booze shop but that's not the dynamic in our house!