Bu Qtair Cafeteria

"There's a child inside of all of us" is a phrase that expressed the childish behavior all of us do every now and then but when it comes to my little sister, it's a whole different story. The other day her colleague asked her what does she want for her birthday and my sister innocently said "an airplane". My sister became 24 years old a couple of weeks back.

She came home with gifts and flowers from her colleagues but she was mostly excited about The Airplane! Actually both of us were. But after a couple of hours I got bored and its sound became annoying and forgot about it.

My sister keeps recharging the batteries and keeps annoying me with its sound. I shouldn't have given her the rechargeable ones.

Anyways… to celebrate her birthday, I made some sweets and bought a cake. Then she only wanted us to spend the rest of the evening at Bu Qtair, a seafood restaurant. I don't know what words to use to describe the place and if the word restaurant is applied to such places. This is our second visit but since the place was dark it was hard to get a good photo. Everything was blurred. So let me try to describe.

First of all, we heard about the place from mom's colleague who been there and said it's The place where you taste the Best Fish Ever. She heard of it from an article in one of Dubai's Luxury Magazines and shared the article with mom.

We drove for two hours to get there, only to be disappointed about the bad lighting, seating and the horrible smell of the neighborhood, since it is in Jumaira Beach area. If you happen to walk in Main Street of Jumaira, you'd feel like walking in Cannes Street; it's the best neighborhood in Dubai people dream of living there. But back to where we dined; It was literally a cabin that was located in a Kharaba (abandoned land with remains of a building and usually a lot of garbage here and there). On the same piece of land there were handmade small boats and fishing nets. The only light of that kharaba are the avenue lamps.

The plastic tables and chairs are scattered on the sand of the kharaba. Some people are sitting at tables and others are waiting to be seated. Some are waiting in their cars and others are standing and waiting for their takeaway meals. With this inconvenient setting, it is not easy to get a table. There are no reservations, mind you.

In our first visit we were accompanied by my brother-in-law. After the two-hours-drive, expressions of disappointment were visible on my sister's face as well as mine. He whispered to us "just pretend it's alright and let's wait and see. If you didn't like the food I'll take you to another restaurant". Mom and dad went inside the cabin to order. After about half an hour, a man came out of the cabin and called my Dad's name and took the plates to a different table. We were in a shock! Why he's ignoring us if even if we're saying we're here!

The man disappeared and came after a while. He called a different name but came to our table and to place our order. That was hilarious. In our second visit, we saw a family who looked shocked just like us in our previous visit when his name was called and the food went to a different table.

The plates are plastic but the second time they were disposable. They serve you salad that's made of white cabbage, onion and lime slices. In addition to that, they serve you a spicy red sauce that I have did not even dare to taste. The shrimps made fire comes out of my ears but the taste was too delicious to stop eating.

But the fish! The look was not encouraging but the smell… Oh. My. God. Never tasted such a thing before and I don't think there's a place that cook such delicious fish and now I'm sure if the kharaba was even darker and the smell of the shore way much more horrible, people would still come to taste Bu Qtair's seafood.


Bu Qtair :)


Bu Qtair kitchen inside the cabin


fish


the spicy sauce

That all for now...
Happy belated birthday sis