Vegan Southern Feast: Sausage Okra Gumbo, Bacon Cornbread, Maple Bourbon Sweet Potatoes, Perfect Brussels Sprouts

As you saw in the Oman travel posts, we had a wonderful time in Muscat and the amazing sites Wadi Shab and Bimmah Sinkhole. But I know what you really care about, because it’s what I really care about (“that’s who I am, and that’s who I care about”): FOOD! and HOTELS! Specifically, how easy is it to eat vegan in Oman? Where should I eat and where should I stay? How many pools can one human swim in over just a few days? As always, I’m here to tell you the truth about traveling here. We ate well, as you always should be able to when in the Middle East (hello have you heard of hummus? because I am 60% hummus). And we stayed well. While our first hotel – a city-center base for the busy sightseeing days – was just fine, we then moved onto a fancypants resort for literally the first time in our lives. It was glorious. You’ll see! (“OR YOU’LL PACK!”)(anyone who says the next line gets a gift.)

First, let’s talk about the food in Muscat. It’s not exactly a vegan hotspot, but as I said, it’ll be semi-easy to find your standard Middle Eastern classics. You definitely won’t go hungry, but, like so many places that aren’t European cities, knowing some good tips will help enormously. My first tip is the most important one, and really the only one you need if, like me, you’re happy to eat hummus at every meal. Your first order of business when you arrive in Muscat is to find Arax, a small regular-ol’ falafel joint in a shopping center. It’s literally my favorite restaurant in Oman. We tried basically the entire menu (and it was a pretty extensive menu for a counter-ordery place, like a kebab shop. I mean I guess it is a kebab shop).

Arax lives in the Oasis Centre, Shatti Al Qurum, a shopping center right on the beach that’s filled with restaurants, shops, and even a Costa Coffee! Just like home! Except for the beach part. Oasis’s parking lot is a nightmare, since the center (centre) is basically tons of shops and restaurants around a giant, cramped parking lot and drivers here aaaaaare aggressive, so be warned. Since our first hotel (below) was right next to the shopping center, we thought it would be easier to walk there, but we forgot that this region in the Middle East is often not made for pedestrians. They really don’t expect people to walk! I guess because of the heat? But still! Let us walk! So frustrating. It was like trying to leave a Vegas casino, trying to walk what should have been 5 minutes just next door.

We checked the menus at every restaurant in the centre, and while most had vegetarian options, few were actually vegan-friendly. Enter Arax, with its reliable staples of hummus, pita, falafel, foul, everything you could want. The falafel wraps were good, the hummus is good, the fried cauliflower and pickles and fries and tahini sauce and fun fresh juices, all so good. I definitely recommend the lemon mint juice they do. Pictured below is one of the amazing-looking-but-too-sweet-for-me color-blocked mixtures of like orange and berry smoothie topped with avocado. Pretty cool!

We went to Arax several times since it was so convenient, cheap, and delicious. We would have gone one last time on the day we moved to the resort, but they were closed for prayer. I never got to say goodbye!

Instead, we went next door in the shopping center to a place called Just Grilled, which seemed innocuous and decent for lunch when I just wanted simple things. They were called Just Grilled yet had a definite Italian-food theme, so it was a little odd, but I decided to be optimistic for a change. Obviously, I was right before and it’s better to be a pessimist. Even though the menu painstakingly lists every single ingredient for every dish – something I was thrilled to see so I could check veganness – the cooks finish each dish with cheese anyway, even when it’s not listed!! WHAT THE ACTUAL TWO-PRONGED FORK, GUYS.

I ordered a basic af “Mediterranean” salad that was just a small pile of lettuce and bell peppers (ew) as well as a bowl of basic minestrone and both came covered in cheese! I said to the guy, “wait these are covered in cheese? it didn’t say cheese on the menu! I can’t have cheese!” and he said “Yes it did not say on the menu, but because this is an Italian place, everything then gets cheese on it.” I SHIT you not. I was like “but it didn’t say! Anyway, sorry but can I get these without the cheese? because I can’t eat it” and he put up a fight and was like “but it’s Italian, so it needs cheese” and I was like “not to be rude but you are not Italian and like…I am, soooo let’s not argue about whether ‘Italian’ and ‘covered in cheese’ are synonyms, because they’re not” and he was so weirdly unwilling to redo the food cheeselessly! He reluctantly took it back after he finally understood that if he didn’t, we couldn’t eat there (like wtf) but what a weird hill to choose. And then of course the food wasn’t worth all that trouble. I highly unrecommend this place – stick to Arax and just wait for them to finish praying (they had originally said it would be a 20 minute break but it was well over an hour, sadly).

Luckily, other places in the Oasis Centre are much better than Just Grilled (wtf with that name). A lovely place we found was the Turkish place on the beachfront right next to the Costa; I think it’s Twins Turkish Cuisine. (I mean you can’t miss it; it’s the Turkish place on the beach next to the Costa.) Although their menu was divided in the traditional animal-products-heavy manner, they had a fantastic ‘salad bar’ selection that was all the traditional cold and hot mezze of that region’s cuisine. I had all my favorite hits: the best ever dolma, sauteed spinach, stewed eggplant and tomatoes, enormous salads, and lots of amazing fluffy bread.

I was thrilled with this turn of events! This salad was HUGE and really good! I love having giant fresh salads when traveling. We had a crazy amount of really good veg-heavy food here. It was nice to sit out on the beach but that means that jerkos were smoking a lot, which sucks. I guess you can’t really get away from smokers outside/in the Middle East/anywhere in the world really, so I still recommend a visit.

I also definitely recommend a visit to Bait Al Luban, a more upscale, very touristed (like the first Western tourists we saw) restaurant right on the water, so you can stare at the sultan’s pleasure yachts (biggest yachts in world? cool use of money). We stopped by the restaurant early in our trip to make a reservation, since it’s quite popular. It’s pretty centrally located so it’s not inconvenient to do that. (It’s right on the Muttrah Corniche.) Outside it kind of looks like a weird bank, but inside it’s really nice, with very ‘fancy traditional Omani for tourists to enjoy’ vibe and decor. We sat outside on the terrace to look out on the water, but it’s pretty dark out there so you only really see the busy street and the fish market; maybe it’s better to sit inside. It was also really stressful outside because there were lots of wild dogs who kept running across the busy street! I was so unbelievably nervous for them to really focus on anything else.

Bait Al Luban is used to/made for tourists, and they have a well-marked menu for vegetarian dishes and enough knowledge to help determine which dishes are vegan. I started with the house specialty salad called Gheleambe, “a healthy salad from the Sharqiya” so I was in even though I don’t know what the Sharqiya is. It was a mix of watercress, shallots, and cherry tomatoes in a dried Omani lemon dressing. You know how I feel about salad! It was really good!

For mains, they have a whole page of vegetarian curries, casseroles, even an okra stew. I was tempted by my old faves like the fava beans and the okra but Z pointed out that I have those all the time, so I took the waiter’s suggestion and had another specialty, the Mahrage, which is red kidney beans in coconut curry. It was great!

Of course we also had a basket of pita! They don’t have vegan desserts (or maybe they had like fruit and sorbet but I’m forgetting because I don’t count that) but husbo’s coffee came with a plate of dates! So I won!

So definitely book a nice dinner at Bait Al Luban while in Muscat. The whole lovely traditional vibe is worth it since we didn’t see much of that elsewhere, but the food is really good too.

We also had lots of luck in the chain of supermarkets called Lulu Hypermarket. There’s one big one in the city (well they’re all big; they’re called hypermarkets!) that we went to several times to stock up on giant water bottles (a must-do when traveling so you don’t have to buy little craps when you’re out and about, wasting more plastic and money) and snacks (and tons of good dates to bring home!). We also went to a big one outside the city on the way to Nizwa, so we could get lots of prepared food for a lunchtime picnic. We got pita and hummus (obvs) and a ton of little salads and veggies from the prepared section. There were so many options and honestly it was all really good! The Lulu’s on the way to Nizwa is in a gigantic shopping mall-sort of building with bathrooms too so I was happy. The perfect rest stop on the drive if you decide to go to Nizwa (which I guess I did advise against in the previous post but you do you).

HOTELS

As I said in the Muscat post, we stayed at first at the Intercontinental Muscat, which you know now is next to the Oasis Centre with your new favorite falafel joint. We knew that this hotel was being renovated and that, though clean, the rooms were outdated and nothing special. This was true, though the lobby was pretty cool.

The hotel was nice enough, but we didn’t mind a lesser-than room since we were going to be so busy with sightseeing. It was still rather expensive for such a blah room but that’s Muscat, apparently. But the location was excellent, and even though we weren’t lounging around the hotel all the time, we did manage to enjoy the pool! You know a pool is my favorite thing.

The IC Muscat also had a great gym, probably one of the best hotel gyms I’ve used, which means of course I didn’t take a picture for some reason. Oh it was pretty crowded with Omani men; that’s probably why. Several asked me what sport I played which is hilarious. There are a lot of restaurants on the IC grounds too, because I guess it’s a resort, including a Trader Vic’s (which has nothing vegan) and a pizza place (which looked good but we always have pizza at home). I think it would be a great choice for a sightseeing base now that the rooms are (most likely) refurbished. Overall though it was fine.

But once we were done sightseeing, we made a prettayyy prettayyy good move to one of my favorite new places.

The Shangri-La Muscat. OH DIP! It’s pretty far outside the city center, because people who come here are not sightseeing anymore; they are staying put and enjoying resort life. Husbo and I have literally never done ‘resort life’ before this, but everyone said to take a few days to relax and enjoy it, so we did. We had two nights and two days here – that’s really all we could muster, given that we are not the laying on the beach doing nothing type (and really all we could afford). The grounds were endless and so gorgeous. There was so much endless luxury to enjoy and appreciate. (However, we agreed that the Four Seasons Dubai seemed classier and more luxurious.) It seemed like it was situated it its own private world, backed by a mountain on one side and the ocean on the other. Our own private ocean fortress (shared with hundreds of strangers)! It was pretty amazing. 

We had to wait about a half hour for our room, so we wandered the grounds and took pictures. Everything was so beautiful and even though there were tons of people there, nothing seemed too crowded. There were also like, five pools??!! I swam in so many pools!  Oh so the Shangri-La is actually made of three resorts: the main one, the family one (Al Waha), and the super-even-fancier-one-for-super-rich-people-who-need-their-own-elevators (Al Husn (which we had fun saying because it’s how my nephew said his name at the time)). These are rough guides, because there were kids at ours, fancy people at the kids one, &c. They’re all connected and they share (most) amenities, so it’s not really strict. We were at the main one, the Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa. We saw the Al Waha a lot, since some of the restaurants and beach activities we experienced were closer to their end of the beach, and it was nice but definitely better for kids. It’s closer to the more kid-friendly pool and the busier beach end, things like that. (We weren’t allowed to see the fancier one, which I think is just part of the main building but with all private entrances and stuff. Well who really knows what else they have up there.)

But regardless of what they have over at the Al Husn, I loved the Barr Al Jissah, and it’s probably because things kicked off on a super high note. So I’m always that person who is like “wahhhh I’ve never been upgraded on anything why don’t I ever get an upgraaaaade let’s tell them we’re on our honeymoooon” and Husbo, being a Decent Person, is like “no we aren’t lying” and I’m like “fiiiine lying is wrong FINE but I want FANCY THINGS, GOD UGH” so anyway we arrive at the Shangri-La check-in (the fanciest check-in area man alive) and well first we have to wait and we take our photos of the grounds and we explore the interactive computer screens telling us what’s going on and we see THIS hilarity:

And when the check-in staff called us back over to the desk, the guy was like “are you celebrating any special occasion”? And husbo and I had a legit ESP-style discussion where I was saying “OMG no one ever just sets us up like that, we HAVE to say yes” and husbo was like “no we’re not lying” and I was like “but he’s asking for it!” and before he could ESP answer me, husbo told the guy “no we’re not, just here on holiday!” and I said “dammit!” (internally) but then the gods rewarded us for not lying because I am not even joking when I say the LEAST likely turn of events happened next: The staffer said “well, since you aren’t celebrating anything special, we want to ensure you remember your time here as special so we have upgraded your room.” I mean, WHO DOES THAT? What are the odds? I was hysterically laughing. Like come on. That doesn’t happen. I’ll take it.

The standard room we had booked was still very expensive, so getting a GODDAMN INCREDIBLE SUITE felt like some kind of sweet justice. It was awesome and ridiculous.

They also did my favorite hotel activity of leaving me edible gifts! We got daily fruit bowls and a lovely box of dates.

So yeah I was a little overexcited you could say! I love a nice hotel room that’s bigger than most apartments I’ve lived it! Man alive.

The Shangri-La never stopped surprising us with hilariously over-the-top amenities. The best by far was that the Al Jissah resort was linked to the Al Waha at the other end of the beach – by a lazy river. A LEGIT LAZY RIVER between the two hotels, from one pool to another (with 3-4 other pools around the grounds, of course). AMAZING.

We lazed on the lazy river so many times because when are you ever going to be staying in a place with one again?? We also swam in all the pools, went in the ocean, lounged on the beach, swam in more pools, explored the grounds by lazy river, explored by foot, and lather rinse repeated everything…and that was the first afternoon and we were like ‘okay now what’. We aren’t used to being resort people!

We decided to take advantage of literally every aspect of this experience, starting with…the turtle ranger! The Shangri-La has an on-site expert dedicated to the protection of native hawksbill and green sea turtles, and he’s called the TURTLE RANGER and he gets to live here and do this and man does that sound amazing. We went to his evening guidance jawn and made plans to go snorkeling with him the next morning to look for turtles in the ocean!! We were the only people interested the morning we went so it’s like we had a private snorkeling session and sea life lesson all for free! I obviously don’t have pictures of that experience, but it was incredible. The three of us met on the beach in front of the Al Waha section of the grounds, snorkeled up, and swam out under the resort’s ocean barrier ropes, around the cliffs, and out into the ocean out of the view and out of the safety of the resort. Now, I’ve been swimming my whole life, but not like, TO SURVIVE. Just for funsies! This was HARROWING. Have you ever swam, like literally swam doing swim-class strokes, no treading or bobbing or touching down, in the ocean for an hour? It is HARD! I was so not used to using a snorkel to breathe and so not used to swimming against ocean currents, so I was focusing so hard on Not Dying that I missed seeing the sea turtle! Sads! I saw a lot of beautiful fishies though, and like, didn’t drown, so I’m happy overall.

Those of you who read about our amazing spa exploits in the Dubai post will know what’s coming next: more spa exploits! It is called “Resort & Spa” for a reason! Sadly, there was a tennis court we didn’t make use of (tear), but we did use ALL THE THINGS in the spa, which is located outside a gate near one of the pools; you need your room key to get to the spa and fitness area. Like the Four Seasons Dubai, the Shangri-La spa had a jacuzzi, steam rooms, weird rain shower areas, weird air shower areas (I still don’t get these but every future spa requires them), a lovely lounge area, and lots of rooms for massages and treatments if you so desire. We had fun just skipping from random feature to random feature. 

They also had a very good gym, which seemed to be in a legit fitness center like open to outsiders? Or else it was just surprisingly busy! They had a lot going on – yoga center, classes, I wanna say a squash court?, as well as an outdoor mini-golf course! I used the main gym floor and the upstairs studio when it was not class time (I put videos on Instagram in the Muscat highlights section!). My only complaint is that the rowing machine wasn’t properly secured to the ground (I was like legit rowing across the room this way) but now we’re getting into niche complaints, which means we’re done with this section.

Since we were staying in here for a few days, that means we ate all our meals inside the grounds, as everyone does. There are lots of restaurants, and you have to make reservations for them since there are hundreds of guests looking for dinner at the same times. There’s the main hotel buffet, which looked good with decent vegan options, but it was expensive considering I’d be eating the cheapest food. Like, don’t charge me $60 when I’m going to be making a salad. Vegans should get buffet discounts! Regardless, the main buffet is pretty much what’s open for the (included) breakfast, so I got to try all the greatest hits anyway. We checked all the menus of all the restaurants, and hilariously, the seafood restaurant had the best vegan options!

The seafood restaurant is about halfway between Barr Al Jissah and Al Waha on the beach. They offer a chef’s marketplace salad and grilled asparagus as starters, and veggie paella, three bean casserole, and tortellini for mains. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot but I’m telling you, finding a restaurant at this resort with beans felt like a huge success.

I had the salad (obviously) and the beans, and they were really good! The chef’s salad said it would have caramelized dates in it, though, and mine clearly didn’t. I didn’t actually care because I was so full of dates by this point in the trip, but I’m annoyed at the misrepresentation.

For my main, of course I got the three bean casserole. The only thing better than a bean is three beans! It was actually really good.

A friend who had stayed here before told us that the breakfast buffet was seriously fantastic, and I was like “sure Jan” because I’m not a hotel breakfast person, but man alive! Just look at everything available at the breakfast buffet:

The breakfast buffet had a whole Arabic foods section! After I had all the fruit and juices and cereals (with soy milk on display!) and a plate from the enormous salad section, I could eat all my best friends – the hummus and the foul and the salads and the pita!!

And then I found this:

On the bread wall (yes there was an entire wall of breads) there was a soft pretzel box!! It’s like they saw me coming. There was also a diy soft-serve machine – yes, at the breakfast buffet – but of course it was not vegan. It’s okay I’m okay!

Honestly though, my favorite meal was room service! True, this could be because it was truly incredible food, or because it was actually the most economical option (and cheapest room service I’ve ever seen!), or because it was my first time ever getting room service (I KNOW!). It could also be because we got EVERYTHING vegan on the menu! And it was so nice to have a reason to use our fancy living room! The staff who brought it and cleaned up (you just call a number when you’re done and they come back and take the table away it all just folds up it was like magical) were really great, and even though I was embarrassed at how much we ordered, they were like ‘what’s up have fun’. So much food, so amazing.

We got lentil soup, we got curry, we got rice, we got dolmas, we got hummus and pita, and we got fattoush and another salad thing and a basket of rolls and some kind of vegan spinach puff ball and man alive this was a lot of food now that I write it all out knowing I’m forgetting something additional. (That coffee pot looking jawn is the lentil soup container lol.)

The morning we flew back to London, we had to leave the hotel at like 6 am (egads and oh no). Since we would be missing breakfast, the hotel sent us off with a bag stuffed with tropical fruit containers and salads! (Sure the salads had feta but I could eat the fruit! So nice!)

This was an incredibly special holiday as you can see, and not just because I had my first upgrade (yasss), or my first room service (yassss), or because I didn’t drown in the ocean. Muscat might not be a vegan mecca, but it has a lot to offer tourists in terms of history and culture and overall great experiences, and vegans will definitely be more than fine. And if you read this whole thing, you deserve a stay at the Shangri-La.

Stirring shit into melted chocolate, as I do

Our ingredients

MARSHMALLOW-LESS RICE KRISPIE TREATS Ingredients: 5oz semi-sweet or dark chocolate 1/2C peanut butter 1/3C brown rice syrup 2T maple syrup 2T agave syrup 3T Speculoos Dash salt 6-8C crisped rice cereal Directions:  Melt your chocolate and butters over low heat in a large heavy-bottomed pot Watch and stir gently a few times When things are melting, add your sweeteners and salt When everything is melted, turn off heat and add your cereal. Mix it through until fully coated, adding more cereal if needed, and then press contents into a large baking pan.  Let cool in the fridge until set, or if you are like me just eat it with a spoon while it’s still warm. It’s really good on ice cream this way.

See the sugar stream? Fun! Mix the cereal into the gooeyness

Still warm; I am a child