Bahrain
The Gulf's old pearl island, where sweet date rice meets the day's catch and coffee comes from a silver dalla.
Bahrain eats from the sea it was built on. The dish that tells you where you are is muhammar, sweet rice cooked down with dates and sugar and served against a fillet of fried hamour, the local grouper — sweet and savoury on one plate, the taste of a pearling island that always looked seawards.
Alongside it sits machboos, the Gulf standard of spiced basmati with fish or meat and dried lime, and a parade of small things: samboosa fried crisp, saffron-yellow balaleet that can't decide if it's breakfast or pudding, warm khubz straight off the griddle. Manama's back lanes still smell of cardamom coffee poured from a silver dalla into thumb-sized cups, and the classic finish is jelly-soft halwa Bahraini, gold with saffron and studded with nuts. Come hungry, and let someone keep refilling the cup.
- Machboos (spiced rice with fish/meat)
- Muhammar (sweet date rice with fish)
- Hamour (grilled Gulf grouper)
- Balaleet (sweet vermicelli with egg)
- Samboosa (fried savoury pastry)
- Halwa Bahraini (saffron jelly sweet)
- Gahwa (cardamom coffee)
