‘Saudi Arabia’s food is a reflection of the country’s history and its people’s customs, religion and ways of life.’
—Ni’Mah Isma’il Nawwab, The Culinary Kingdom
Traditional Saudi food derives from ingredients that were available in historical times. Milk products, including yoghurt and cheese from goats, sheep and camels were animal-based staples. Dates, rice and millet were vegetable-based staples. Meat was scarce, but appreciated. Sources of meat for the Bedouin were their own animals and the occasional wild game that once lived on the Arabian Peninsula (and has since been hunted nearly to extinction). Fresh fruits and vegetables were available at oases and in the high country in the south-west.
Nowadays, diet tends to feature meat, mostly imported, as the main ingredient. Cooking methods derive from the open fires of the Bedouin. Meat is generally flame-cooked, roasted on spits, either vertical or horizontal. Dishes are often served with a rice base and served with various spiced and spicy vegetables and sauces. Most main dishes are accompanied by a great variety of pita or khboz (flat) breads that are cooked to order and eaten fresh from the baker’s oven. The most common ingredient in sweets is dates, which is really Saudi Arabia’s traditional foodstuff.
Saudi Arabia’s water supply is a mixture of ground water (rapidly depleting) and desalinated water. Depending on the area, you may be advised to use bottled water for both drinking and cooking. Bottled water is widely available across the kingdom.
Stuffed Camel and Other Favourites
To amuse themselves during their not so busy hours, a group of expat women on a construction site in Saudi Arabia wrote and published a cookbook, Stuffed Camel and Other Favourites. The book is not currently in print, but one of the authors has a rare copy, thought to be priceless due to its scarcity value. This sample of dishes from the book is a representative sample of a few Saudi favourites:
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boiled flavoured rice with chicken or mutton (probably Saudi’s number one dish) |
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thinly sliced lamb or chicken rolled with pickles. |
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deep fried balls of ground chickpeas, flavoured with garlic and herbs |
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hot pepper dip |
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aubergine appetiser |
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stuffed pastry squares |
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lentils with lemon juice |
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chickpea and sesame dip |
You can get most foodstuffs in Saudi Arabia, but the one item definitely off the menu is pork. For those who must eat bacon or pork, the nearest source, at least for those on the east coast, is across the causeway in Bahrain.
As a country that caters for its international workforce from most parts of the world, you can probably find a restaurant to enjoy your own cuisine—or anyone else’s—in Saudi Arabia. Western, other Middle Eastern (e.g. Lebanese) and Asian (Indian, Thai, Filipino) food of various styles—even fish and chip shops—are all readily available. Most globalised fast food outlets are also represented in the kingdom; McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Wendy’s are just some who have operations in Saudi Arabia. In recent years, Saudis have adopted McDonald’s strategy and created fast food outlets of their own, thereby undercutting the US fast food chains.
Food is inexpensive in Saudi Arabia, bearing in mind that it is mostly imported. Restaurant prices are generally reasonable. Budget meals can still be obtained for about US$ 4–5. Prices in classier establishments go up from there. Tips are not generally expected by table staff. Most restaurants levy a service charge, generally thought to be appropriated by restaurant owners instead of waiters, who tend to be underpaid.
As in most things, dining out imposes restrictions on women. The general rule is that women who are out and about should be accompanied by a male who is a close family member. Women not accompanied by an appropriate male may not be served. Arrests of women dining in restaurants unaccompanied by males, or accompanied by the incorrect male, have been reported. Many restaurants will not admit a group of women without a male guardian in attendance. Fast food outlets like McDonald’s have separate sections for men and women.
The act of eating poses problems with the female dress code requiring that the only parts of a woman’s face the outside world allowed on display are the eyes. Lifting the corner of the veil to allow passage of food to the mouth violates strict rules on covering. To overcome this difficulty, when dining at restaurants, Saudi women are customarily positioned at tables so they are facing the wall, whereas the men of the family will sit with their backs to the wall facing outwards. This, in theory, avoids the problem that a stranger might catch a glimpse of prohibited flesh when a female lifts her veil to allow the passage of food to the mouth. Alternatively, to ensure seclusion, individual tables in restaurants may be curtained off from other tables.
Like people elsewhere in the world, a Saudi may derive much pleasure and pride from his house. Once a Saudi gets to know you, an invitation to his home is likely to follow. Such an invitation may not merely be to enjoy the pleasure of your company. Like people elsewhere, Saudis may also be displaying to their visitors and new friends a statement of their assets, their skills at interior decorating and their status in life generally. Appreciative comments you make about the quality of the structure and the standard of the appointments will be highly valued. But be cautious with your remarks. Arab culture errs on the side of generosity. After effusive praise of some item that’s not bolted to the floor, the next thing you know your Saudi host may try to give it to you! It is better to restrict your compliments to immovable objects like architecture, dining tables and carpets.
Saudis, it is probably fair to say, have a different idea of interior decorating to much of the rest of the world. Value of the artefact rather than consistency of style is the major criterion. Saudis enjoy decorating each room in all the colours of the spectrum and displaying objets d’art of many different styles. Clashes of colour and culture are the norm, not the exception. You are likely to find a valuable vase bought in Florence, coloured blue, next to an antique bronze Persian coffee set displayed on an ultra-modern anodised bronze setting in a room painted in four different colours with a patterned carpet that includes all the colours of the rainbow. Needless to say, the hospitable thing to do is to praise the display lavishly, as Saudis would of the contents of your home, whatever they really thought of them.
Central to the entertainment area of some Saudi Arabian homes is a bar. A fair number of, though not all, Saudis take an impish delight in flouting their country’s prohibition laws. If a bar has been installed, it is likely to be incredibly well stocked. In a country where the street value of spirits is over US$ 100 from a black market supplier, your host will probably offer you anything that an upmarket hotel would supply.
The finishing (or lack of it) is another cultural aspect that is likely to catch the eye of those who are being invited to comment on the splendours of a Saudi house. Saudi building contractors are remarkably slack about finishing their jobs. The million-dollar display of family possessions is as likely as not to be illuminated by a naked 100-watt globe hanging from the ceiling by a frayed electrical wire. Electrical switches may protrude from the wall supported only by their wiring. On the porch of the house may lie a pile of masonry waiting collection by a civic authority that may have disbanded some years before.
Saudis seem oblivious to such incongruities. The country has not adopted a culture of tidiness. Litter abounds. Piles of masonry are likely to lie scattered beside and on the streets of expensive suburbs. Exteriors of buildings tend to have panels missing. Saudis are not maintenance conscious. If bits fall off their buildings, they are unlikely to be replaced in a hurry, if at all. Saudis are notorious in failing to service their cars, then abandoning them by the roadside when they break down.
Perhaps the attitude stems from the country’s appearance as one huge building project: a nation that seems perpetually unfinished. The population of the country is growing at nearly 1.5 per cent per annum. City construction is proceeding at a prodigious rate to accommodate this burgeoning urban population. One of the most common vehicles on the road is the ubiquitous Mercedes truck, usually coloured grey, carrying loads of fill material to reshape the Saudi landscape in accordance with the requirements of man.
Arabs are traditionally hospitable, outgoing people. Some of this tradition stems from the Bedouin days when custom required that any visitor who might stumble onto the campsite be offered a meal. In the days when water and food were scarce, nomads relied on mutual support for survival.
Some Bedouins adopt their nomadic ways only on a part-time basis, spending the rest of their time living a life indistinguishable from the rest of the population. A Bedouin may be a geologist, a doctor or a bell hop. Or he may be the Saudi working at the desk next to yours who will one day surprise you with his Bedouinism when he invites you out to meet his extended family camping out in the desert nearby. If you accept his invitation, your colleague may arrange a lunch in your honour. He may take you to the family tent pitched somewhere in the desert. When you arrive at the destination, having probably travelled by minibus rather than by the more traditional camel, you may observe that many of the traditions of the tribe are still in place—the tents, the goats, the sheep, and camels. Blended with traditional items are the inevitable accoutrements of the modern age—motor vehicles, portable TVs and today’s most ubiquitous mandatory accessory, the cellphone. Most likely you will then spend an hour or two sitting around an enormous tray bearing a spit-roasted sheep resting on a bed of rice flavoured with raisins, nuts and spices. The meal will be washed down with cardamom-flavoured coffee served in tiny cups.
Dining practice Bedouin-style is an area where things are pretty liberal. The custom is to take food with the right hand, tearing and rolling them up in bread, rice or whatever other absorbent foods might be available, before transporting them to your mouth.
Saudis are not sticklers about their table manners. Since they use their fingers as cutlery, they are not too fussy about licking their fingers clean, though finger bowls are often provided. Eating heartily when invited to dine is considered good manners. Over indulgence isn’t one of the seven deadly sins of Islamic culture. Burping appreciatively after an expansive meal verges on good form. Take your cues from the other diners in this area.
Meals and coffee drinking are central to traditional Arab hospitality. Most people visiting Saudi Arabia have heard the story, thought to be factual, of the sheep’s eye. According to this account, the eye of the animal being eaten is offered to the most honoured guest. The guest accepts this delicacy since refusing would create offence. (Western visitors knowledgeable on this point of etiquette will most likely endeavour not to be the honoured guest.)
On the other hand, if you charge unannounced and uninvited into a Bedouin camp (according to an Australian senior diplomat), don’t be surprised if your initial greeting is a bullet, a warning shot whistling past the windscreen of your pickup. Gun culture ranks Bedouins as one of the world’s most heavily armed societies. Most guns and explosives that enter the country for illicit purposes such as trading to Saudi Arabia’s jihadi are smuggled across the 1,300 km border from Yemen. More traditionally, the smuggled commodity has been qat, a leafy stimulant grown in Yemen and, like the guns, also illegal in Saudi Arabia.
After the sound of the shot across the bows of the pickup dies down, the recommended procedure to demonstrate, for Arabic speakers is to announce your peaceful intentions by shouting, “Salaam Alaikum!” (‘Peace be with you’). One word of caution though. Protocol regarding the use of the phrase Salaam Alaikum is rather controversial since the greeting was prescribed as a declaration of peace between believers, rather than between believers and non-believers. To avoid such cross cultural complications, it may be safer to say “Hi” or “Hello” when trying to make friends with a Bedouin pointing a smoking AK47 in your direction.
After such an intimidating introduction, the situation will most likely improve. Survival in the desert has long been precarious. The code of the desert was, and still is, to lend a helping hand to other nomads, knowing that one day you might need the favour returned. After the exchange of greetings is completed, you will most likely be invited inside the tent to drink tea or maybe partake of a feast if one is available.
Street scenes in Saudi Arabia have a European flavour, though perhaps not everyone would agree that downtown Al Khobar resembles the left bank of the Seine. But Saudi Arabian towns do share with the streetscapes of Paris the penchant for coffee shops. The sidewalk tables of coffee shops seem to spill out carelessly in all directions.
Saudis camp at these tables for what seems like an entire day sipping coffee out of tiny cups and perhaps smoking with their companions through a common rosewater filled hookah. Coffee shops are one of the major social outlets for the not-very-well-off of Saudi male society. These shops are the Saudi equivalent of a bar or pub in the West. A recent variant has been ‘parlours’, separated into booths containing a hookah that can be shared between its guests.
Coffee is a central feature of Saudi life. Arabian coffee is thick and sludgy, and taken in tiny cups. Other types of coffee—Turkish, American or French—are generally available if preferred. Traditionally, coffee is served in decorated brass coffee jugs with long slender spouts and delicate metal handles. The modern version of this item is a thermos flask that replicates the traditional shape. When you are offered Arab coffee, your cup will continually be refilled unless you make the appropriate gesture of refusal—shaking your cup to show you have had enough. The custom is to drink two or three cups. If you drink only one cup, you may send an unintended signal that the quality of the coffee is not quite up to scratch.
The Arab world has some claims to the invention of coffee as a beverage, although its origins are uncertain. Arabian legends of antiquity mention a ‘black and bitter beverage with the powers of stimulation’. The Ethiopian region of Kaffa, according to most historians, originated coffee and supplied the basis for its name. According to this account, Arab traders brought the beans across the Red Sea into present day Yemen, to the port of Mocca (Mocha), which also became a word synonymous with coffee.
Arabs call coffee gahwa, a word that later became Arabic for ‘that which prevents sleep’. The first coffee shops in the world were probably those which opened in Mecca around the mid-15th to 16th century. This is, in itself, curious. Under strict interpretation of the rules of Islam, consumption of coffee is prohibited since it is a stimulant. Saudis of rigid orthodoxy will not take coffee. However, the bulk of the population maintains a steady intake of the black and bitter beverage, and may, as an additional vice, even chew coffee beans while at prayer in the mosque.
In its first days as a multiracial society, prohibition against drinking alcohol in Saudi Arabia applied only to Muslims. In 1930, after a passing drunk assassinated the British Vice Consul in Riyadh, prohibition was extended to the general community, including guest workers.
Like other countries that have practised prohibition, the consumption of alcohol has not ceased but merely gone underground, in Saudi Arabia’s case, not far underground. Though Saudi Arabia is a prohibition state, the authorities tolerate discreet consumption of the evil fluid of the infidel provided its production and consumption does not become too obvious. Saudis don’t really care all that much whether alcohol addles the brains of its guest population. Everyone, including the Ulema, knows that violation of prohibition measures is common among the expat population and even Saudis themselves.
Amateur beer and winemaking in Saudi Arabia is a minor industry and a major interest in the lives of many expats. Supermarkets in the kingdom sell vast amounts of the four principal ingredients for home brewing—sugar, hop-flavoured malt, alcohol-free beer and grape juice. Hop-flavoured malt, ostensibly for making bread, is the key ingredient in locally brewed beer. Grape juice, sold in resealable bottles to store the final product, is the key ingredient for locally brewed wines, and provides the container for both home-brewed beer and wine. Expats organise competitions and award each other accolades for the best in home-made wine and beer. The increased security levels has made it more difficult for people living in different compounds to visit each other and a consequence of this is that illicit activities like the brewing of alcoholic beverages has been driven further underground.
In addition to home brew, a full range of spirits are available in the kingdom to all and sundry through an extensive black market. Wine is not quite so easy to get. Black market booze is a highly profitable business for the whole supply chain from the importer to the final distributor. The operation to flout the government’s laws, a multi-million dollar import business that has been running for decades, could hardly be conducted without the knowledge and involvement of the highest authorities in the Department of Customs.
The Case of the Tipsy Piano
On one occasion, the story goes, a shipping container, ostensibly containing pianos, was inadvertently dropped on the wharf at a Saudi port, with remarkable side effects. The pianos appeared to be leaking. A strange liquid that smelled remarkably like Scotch whisky dripped from the base of the container—one of thousands of cargoes that have entered the country under false documentation.
Commercial spirits of every conceivable kind—whisky, gin, bourbon, whatever the market demands—enter the country by the container load and are distributed through an extensive network of dealers to consumers paying US$ 100-plus a bottle. Various stills in the country produce large quantities of hooch called sidiqui, which in Arabic means ‘my friend’. T-shirts proclaiming, ‘Sid Diqui is my friend’ are popular apparel amongst Western expatriates working in the kingdom.
Discreet drinking of alcohol in the privacy of your home or someone else’s home in a compound is fairly riskfree. Authorities are prepared to tolerate the home brew alcohol industry provided activities remain within expat communities. Even so, it’s not a good idea to indulge in selling home-made booze, even to other expatriates. It’s a much worse idea to sell booze to the Saudis. Expat ‘bootleg bandits’ who sell alcohol to Saudis take a big risk and, at the same time, may jeopardise the entire home brew subculture by attracting the attention of the authorities. Driving while under the influence is also a very serious offence and a very bad idea. Penalties for drugs offences are more serious again —the penalty for drug trafficking is death, and there are no exceptions.
Home Brewing and Poisoned Microbes
Though the authorities have reached a tacit agreement amongst themselves to leave the home-brewing industry alone, the Mutawa’een can be unpredictable. Occasionally people get caught and are charged. One acquaintance tells of living in a compound of expat Westerners in which wine- and beer-brewing was an established subculture. Wine and beer tastings were an accepted form of entertainment, as was an annual competition for the best wine. People had hundreds of bottles of wine and beer in cupboards around their houses, fermenting and reaching a drinkable condition. One day, a rumour circulated that the Mutawa’een were intending to raid the compound looking for alcohol. Residents were advised to unload their stocks—which they all promptly did by draining their bottles down the sink—with little thought for where the product might end up after it had been discharged into the drainage system. Shortly after a slug of alcohol arrived at the sewage treatment plant, it killed those bacteria whose role in the grand scheme of life is to eat waste products that humans must produce to stay alive, and thereby convert active sewage into harmless constituents. As a result, the sewage plant was knocked out of action for a month.
Capsa