Mount Nebo

Last week went by in a bit of a blur.  On Wednesday we had supper with our Flashback Adventures friends, Guido and Rula Romero, and enjoyed the most amazing pasta I've had in a long time. After drinks and deep conversations in their very artfully decorated lounge, we all moved to the kitchen where Guido prepared a mushroom pasta dish, as well as spaghetti with olives, feta cheese and cherry tomatoes.  Homemade bread and a simple, but delicious salad perfectly rounded off the picture.  Yum!  As was expected, André cringed when the banana-toffee pudding was put right in front of him and, good wife that I am, I quickly sent it down the table without having some myself.  One day I will be rewarded, I am sure.  Of course, I had more than my share of the pasta so I had zero space left for any kind of pudding, but it did look good and I did mumble under my breath ever so slightly. 

Never a big olive lover, I have learnt to enjoy the milder Jordanian olive and can now recommend it to anyone.  Where I carefully picked it out and downright avoided it at all cost in the past, I now actively seek out olive breads and even order olives on my pizza!  Never thought that would happen!  Look, I still won't simply take an olive and eat it as is, but I have finally acquired a taste for the mild, green olives, provided it is surrounded by other goodies, of course.

Someone at the Romero's dinner unfortunately passed on the flu virus and I spent most of the time since then in bed.  This Southern hemisphere chicky has very little to no resistance to the Northern hemisphere bugs and I felt absolutely dreadful.  Happy to report thought that, thanks to some strong over-the-counter (yup, that's how it works here – prescriptions optional) antibiotics, I am feeling 100% better today.

You may have noticed by now that a lot of our activities in Jordan is somehow related to food.  On Friday André and I decided to go look for a restaurant called NE:BO (Don't ask me why, they obviously thought it would be cute to write the name like that), that came highly recommended by a number of people.  Two different sources even told André that the food was better than Haret Jdoudna!  As you know from previous posts, that is our favourite restaurant and with good reason.  Haret produces consistently excellent quality Arabic food at reasonable prices, so we set out on Friday morning, very excited, despite my flu-ridden state, expecting to have a culinary experience of epic proportions!  I mean, if the food is better than Haret...

Mount Nebo is situated about 7 kilometres outside Madaba and we were told that the restaurant is in the Mount Nebo complex.  I could not help but laugh at myself when we paid our one Dinar entrance fee and walked through the gates at Mount Nebo.  In November 2005, when we were still living in Riyadh we visited Jordan during the Eid holidays.  At those very gates we encountered vendors selling mosaics and Andre and I had a huge argument, as I wanted to buy a mosaic and he refused, saying that we would never be able to get it home without it breaking.  I remember fuming and saying  that he was an idiot, because we would never visit that spot again and would thus never have one of those lovely mosaics!  Shows you how much I knew, right?  I did apologise to André for that on Friday morning and we had a good laugh about it!

 

After a fruitless search for NE:BO we wandered around Mount Nebo and took a couple of pictures. Mount Nebo is the place where Moses was shown the promised land and on our first visit in 2005, the place felt... holy.  Back then, they had not yet started renovating the Byzantine church, so we could go inside and look at the mosaics in situ.  They are currently renovating the church and have removed all the mosaics.  The church is covered in a metal "skin" and is not accessible, heaven only knows when it will be again.  The mosaics have been carefully removed and is housed in Bedouin-type tents outside the church and while you still get to see the mosaics, the experience simply is not the same.  A bit of a letdown, really.   

No NE:BO there and as far as I was concerned, no Mount Nebo either, so we left after about 30 minutes, quite unhappy with the situation.  Then, to our left and not even a kilometre down the road, there's NE:BO!  The entrance showed a lot of promise and I still planned to take pictures.  Decorated in the Arab style of course: antique wooden benches, mosaics, water features, clay pots and woven rugs to complete the picture.  But...  Once inside, the restaurant resembled a very utilitarian, boarding school type food hall (and I am not referring to the Harry Potter one, trust me), quite soulless with cheap cutlery and bare, sticky tables.  Yes, NE:BO had an excellent view over the Musa Valley (Musa – Moses) and that, my friends, is the kindest comment I can make about this restaurant.

Now, I can bore you with how horrendous the buffet-only food was, and how expensive the beer (5 JD each!), but I won't.  I can tell you that I am convinced that something in the alleged fish dish winked at me, and how super annoying the waiters were, or even how the Baba Ganoush (Eggplant dip) had excessive Baba and very little Ganoush; that it formed an oily coating on my tongue and tasted extremely sour, but no need for that.  What I will tell you is that the over-solicitous head waiter who previously addressed us in perfect English, suddenly forgot that he could speak English when we complained about the forty-two Dinar bill for food we could not eat!  Forty-two Dinar!  That's about R525 or USD58.  For that?

Admittedly, it may have been the flu making me extra grumpy, or the nausea caused by the only thing I did try to eat on my plate, the Baba Ganoush, or it might have been the fact that this was daylight robbery!  Of course I ended up in a huge argument with the head waiter and by the time my voice reached a pitch so high that only dogs could understand me, Mr. Slick slammed a 10 JD note in front of André and stormed off in a huff!  Suffice it to say, we are never, ever, ever getting back together with that restaurant!

And that was the week that was.   Look out for Mount Nebo pictures later this week, internet connection permitting.  I hope you all remain fabulously flu-free and I hope to see you again next Monday!