Restaurants & Cafes   Where to Go When to Travel Suggested Tours Transport Accommodation Restaurants Your Purchases Museums Restaurants are also classified according to the quality of the establishment, and to a lesser scale, the cooking, as on this point the difference is not always striking between high class restaurants and small taverns where the chef is talented. In restaurants of higher category, whether or not attached to a hotel, it is well indicated to give 10% for the service. Tipping is expected, and is a question of personal appreciation (10-15%). Almost all people have a more or less pronounced taste for rich and sweet foods. Some resist this temptation, others not. Arabs belong by large to the latter group and Syrians are no exception, but do not like to mix the rich and the sweet, except in pastries. Syrians have, like their Jordanian neighbors, a tendency to seek desert scents, and it is often a pleasure to taste dishes perfumed with saffron, cumin and other perfumed herbs which are one of the delights of the cuisine of this country. You will enjoy in particular the Mezzes, an assortment that may be endless of small hors d'oeuvres served without much cooking complications, or that may be carefully cooked and perfumed. Fish, game, vegetable, and meat contribute to the Mezze of a rich table. The Syrians are extremely fond of hommos: chickpeas finely ground, to which is added Tehineh (sesame oil mixture) with garlic, lemon juice and covered with oil and parsley. Tabbouleh is also popular: it is a kind of salad made with Burghul (boiled, then dried and coarsely ground wheat), finely chopped parsley, onions, and tomatoes, with olive oil and lemon juice. The Mezze also includes eggplant crush, cucumber salad with yoghourt, white cheese puff-paste, rissoles with meat, etc... As you have not had the chance to live in Syria at the time of the extravagant Caliph El-Hakim (996-1021), you may have a desire to taste Mloukhieh. This delicious dish was prepared for Abou-Bekr, the first successor of Mohammed, and for Moawiya, the founder of the Omayyad dynasty. It was forbidden by El-Hakim. This sovereign, who from the age of 15 spent his time in promoting killings, when he did not require the extermination of dogs to stop their barking and forbade the manufacture of ladies shoes, an amusing but good way of keeping women at home, had the bad taste to forbid the cooking of the MIoukhieh, a dish made with a herb called the Jew's mallow, under the pretext that it had been four centuries earlier one of the favorite dishes of Abu-Bekr. This costly caliph's mallow is now served in season (end spring-early summer), accompanied with chicken cooked to a complicated recipe, or with mutton shin. Other dishes, undoubtedly less rare, but with a less perplexing taste, will be proposed to you, such as the Kebbeh, prepared with burghul, meat, onion and various spices. It may be eaten raw, grilled, fried, as well as grilled on skewers or boiled (this latter method is less tasty). It is a national dish. Cafes Cafes, where only coffee, tea and water are served, are a real institution in Syria as was the case long ago in many European cities when men liked to spend time with friends and street neighbors. Instead of cards the social game played mostly is backgammon, a game which may be very lively and as full of suspense as chess. As you may have guessed, it is the best place to observe and be observed. In these congenial places, crowds of passers-by are secured by people wearing the Keffiyeh or the Tarboosh and water-pipe fans, sphinxes without enigmas but not without mystery, so absorbed they are by their dreams, caused, or not, by their harmless tobacco. This very monopolizing occupation of watching other people is needless to say, exclusively masculine.
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