Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Habits & Customs
The main meal for most Peninsula people is usually a home-cooked family affair involving
rice but there the similarities end. There is huge diversity in terms of the kinds of food pre-
pared and the habits practised across the region. Here are a few selected customs that may
give insight into the important place that dining has within the Arab community as a whole.
Shopping
Catering for food is largely a man's job and brothers are often dispatched to Thursday
wholesale markets to find fresh produce. Giant shopping malls, like Carrefour, have met
with instant success among city locals, perhaps because they resemble an air-conditioned
version of the wholesale market. For many, however, buying meat from the livestock mar-
ket is a matter of male pride and the animal will be taken home live ready for dispatch un-
der specific Islamic guidelines.
Cooking
Dining is essentially a communal affair and it's traditional at the weekends for many famil-
ies who work in the city to travel long distances back to their villages to enjoy 'mum's
cooking'. Women almost exclusively prepare food: grinding spices, peeling vegetables and
plucking chickens is seen as an opportunity to chat with female relatives and catch up on
the news.
For an exquisite tang on the palate, dates should be eaten half ripe, biting the fruit lengthwise and savour-
ing the bitter zest with the mellow ripe part. Don't forget to discard the pip discreetly in a napkin: Sinbad
spat his out and blinded a genie's son who claimed mischievous revenge.
Eating
In more traditional towns and villages, men and women will eat separately with the eldest
son helping to serve the men first while the women await their turn in another room. It's
considered good manners for men to reserve the best parts of the meal for the women. Arab
people assert that eating is enjoyed best, even by city dwellers with Western-style furniture,
on the floor from shared dishes using bread and the right hand as utensils. This makes eat-
ing very easily transferable to an outdoor setting and indeed picnics are the number-one re-
gional pastime.
