last night in petra, the sun room

Salad
The custom in this part of Jordan (Petra) is when a guest comes to dinner the family sacrifices a lamb or a goat and serves you the entire animal with rice and bread.  You are supposed to eat this with your right hand, no utensils.  Also, they turn down the lights so nobody knows how much or how little you are eating.  I believe there is only one recipe because they serve the same amount to one person or a family of 5. 

Lamb
Our guide is from Petra and his family lives here as well as hundreds of cousins.  We had dinner at a local restaurant which serves the classic dinner for guests of the area.  I liked the whole concept.  You take the bread and then put the lamb, rice and sauce inside, roll up the bread (crepe), and eat it.  Like eating the Bo Ssam at Momofuko with much different ingredients or like eating mushu pork at a Chinese restuarant.  The dish has rice, lamb and toasted pine nuts.  Everybody wraps!

Sauce
I thought the food was quite good.  Greens above.  Then the lamb.  Then the yogurt sauce.

Bread
Here is the bread which is really big.

Cave bar
Afterward, Fred and I wandered over to the Cave Bar for drink.  The hukkah smells were a bit overwhelming and one drink was all we needed.  A nice end to our journey in Petra. 

Comments (Archived):

  1. Traceydjackson

    Looks great. A little like our lunch, but I had to ask for yogurt. Don’t miss the Pancake House in Cairo. It’s a bit touristy, but fun!

  2. Steven Kane

    the right hand left hand bias in arabic culture is very ancient and in some circles, still very strongnever never offer anyone your left hand – some people really, really care and can be deeply offended(i will spare readers the scatalogical details but to those who care, the left hand is considered unclean)

    1. Gotham Gal

      interesting. when we did the walk thru mt zion, the guide had us all choosethese cards which represented basics such as nature, love, harmony. it waspretty cool because we discussed the meaning of each card. we each had tochoose one to start with our less dominant hand. then later we could chooseonly one with our dominant hand. in the end we chose four with our lessdominant hand and kept one to ourselves and gave the rest out to familymembers based on what we wanted to give to them.

      1. ODANAWA

        YOU WELCOME MAM TO YOUR SECOND COUNTRY ,  AT ANY TIME . CAVE BAR CREW .