Hadramout - Special Arabian Lunch

Yeah yeah.. This is the first time I try an Arabian Cuisine.. I went to Hadramaout Restaurant near Mangarai, with some friends (Yogi, Calvin, Rahmat, Siska, and Andre).. We went to a same faculty with different major.. Lately we chat a lot about food and culinary things, and also any other things that sometimes made me crazy. How could we chat among each other? First of all, Yogi asked me if I know any place where sold Arabian food in Jakarta.. Then I remember a person (my mentor in my intership program) have told me a nice arabian restaurant, named Abunawas. After that, I recommended it to Yogi, as he also asked by Calvin to search any arabian restaurant. Since then, Yogi invited me to join their small chat group in LINE messenger and made a plan to go to Abunawas. But then I read Bondan Winarno's review about arabian restaurant and he said Hadramout is a good one, so we decided to go to Hadramout Restaurant.

We planned to leave our campus at 11a.m. but because some of us were late, we start our journey at 11.40 a.m.. Hmmm.. At the beginning of the journey we really want to listen to any music that could make us sing along, then Calvin asked Andre to play any music from his phone and Andre played 60's and 70's song -___-'

While listening to some oldies song, Rahmat take out 2 kinds of chocolate that he bought in Singapore (if I'm not mistaken). Hershey's Special Dark Luscious Pearls of Chocolate and Toblerone Mini Dark Chocolate. It's all taste great! Here's some pics of them

Hershey's Special Dark Luscious Pearls of Chocolate

Toblerone Mini Dark Chocolate

We got some traffic jams on our way because we past several Mosques which are conducting Friday Prayers, but it was not really bad and we arrived at the restaurant after about an hour of journey.

restaurant's billboard

Interrior decoration

Room No. 9

The Menu

Siska - Calvin - Andre

Rahmat - Yogi

Rahmat - Yogi - Me - Siska

Yup! We didn't sit on a chair with dinning table, we sat on a carpet! They divided the restaurant to some cubicles like this. That is the uniqueness of this restaurant, they set the interior decoration so we could experience an arabian atmosphere. :)

We ordered some special arabian food and snacks. The first food served is Maamoul, which is Bakpia looked alike with different ingredients and different kind of filling. Lol. The waitress told us that this maamoul was imported from United Arab Emirates. Maamoul was filled with black dates, and it was not as sweet as I thought before. haha

Maamoul

Second, Hadramout Sweet. When we saw it on the menu, Hadramout Sweet was pictured as a small piece of sweet cake, but when it arrived we could see it as a pudding, obviously. When I try to eat it, I can clearly taste it as a caramel pudding with Marie Biscuits on it. -__-'

Hadramout Sweet

For the beverages we ordered Arabic Pot Tea with Moroccan Tea. Besides tea bag, they also use mint leaves and it's all served in a pot plus arabian signature tea sets.  

Moroccan Tea

 Here's another food we ate. Arabic bread with Homous, Mix Grill (chicken & lamb meat kebab), and Tabouleh. At last Ramadhan month, I read many articles about how Arabian people break fasting, and I found that they usually eat Homous for break fasting, so I want to try to eat it. Homous was made of some kinds of nuts and olive oil. It's appetizing! 

Arabic Bread and Homous

Then our mix grill came and all of us just laugh at the shape! Yes, I know what you're thinking about! :D
At the beginning we also feel like don't want to eat them, but after tasting it, we found it great because it's contains many spices that make it tasty. Then, we try to eat the kebab with bread + homous.

Mix Grill

Tadaaa! Arab Bread + Homous + Kebab

After eating the kebab, we still have one more arab bread, so Yogi and Rahmat decided to order Tabouleh to be eaten with the bread :)

Tabouleh

The Bill

A day before, Andre said he want to go for karaoke after this lunch, Yogi said he want to go to The National Library, I said I want to go home earlier because I wanna bought a birthday cake for my mom, but all of us not really sure about what are we going to do after lunch. Then, we just go around the area and Calvin suggest me to buy AJ Bakery's Cake, but it's too far away at Kelapa Gading.. After going nowhere, almost for one and a half hour, we have Calvin driving towards Kelapa Gading area and he really wanna go to AJ Bakery to buy Pizza Bread.. Calvin said the cakes there is good too, but I wasn't really interested with the cake display.. Then, Rahmat suggest me to buy Maison Annalita Cake's Ice Cream Taart so we went there and I got the cake.. Vanilla - Choco Ice cream with chocolate cake.. :)

The Cake

My lovely pretty mom :)

I can't wait to have another fun time with them, maybe we should go somewhere to eat Indian Cuisine, Chinese, or try any other arabian restaurant and many more :)