Kargeen: A Jungle in the Desert
The Kargeen is a little difficult to categorize. It's hard to say whether it's a restaurant, a coffee house, or a bistro; the food ranges from French onion soup and Salade Niçoise to homous and mezze. They serve pizza, but they also serve Chicken Tikka... What it gets down to is that they're most likely to have something on the menu that you'll like... The Kargeen we go to -- and there are three of them -- is just possibly the most attractive "watering-hole" in the Capital Area. Built in the courtyard of the Madinat Qaboos Shopping Centre, the oldest (I think) of its kind in the city, you sit under large tents on benches and on cushions covered with Bedu woolen weavings among potted palms, frangipani trees, ironwood trees, and bougainvillea. In some ways, it reminds me more of a funky restaurant on Bali or Java than it does an Arab-run restaurant (The owner is a Bahraini woman, who is,...
