Happy Birthday!

Actually… it’s “Happy Anniversary!”, But Brad and I are celebrating 18 years this year so it feels more like a birthday. Our marriage is ready to get out there and go to college, vote, buy its first car of its very own… snif snif! Our baby is growing up!

Year 18 is the porcelain anniversary. We weren’t exactly inspired by that. Instead of gifts, we went out to dinner.  First anniversary in a new place.. where to go? In Cairo we usually went out to Steaks at the Four Seasons, where we always received impeccable service and enjoyed the most amazing steaks you can imagine. We broke tradition one year and celebrated at Fusion, which is located on the Nile in Maadi, and although we didn’t get steak, the beef and chicken, cooked and served Teppan-yaki style, was heavenly! But what to do in Amman? We haven’t been here long enough to have ‘favorites’ yet. We looked through a couple of guides, thought about finding a steak place, but ended up going out to a place Brad knew of from a work event.

We ended up at a lovely Lebanese restaurant called Tannoureen (2nd link has a map; it’s near 6th circle and easy to find). We started with fresh bread and soft cheese, and a bowl of ripe olives. We ordered a variety of mezze dishes, including mutabbel (an eggplant dip, nicely decorated with pomegranate seeds), hummus, an amazing cauliflower dish, and a traditional fattoush salad (tomato, cucumber, greens, including mint leaves, a light oil dressing, and toasted chips of flat bread). It was all very lovely. We never had a chance to run out of warm bread, as a waiter with a basket would arrive with another piece whenever he saw us running low, and I only had to reach for a dish for yet another waiter to appear and serve me more of whatever I wanted. Self-serve mezze, with excellent service! For a main course, we shared a mixed grill. Lamb, chicken and kebab … it was all cooked to perfection, and fork tender. We enjoyed a glass of local red wine with our entree as well as a glass of frozen mint lemonade. Our water glasses never ran low, and offers to refill our other drinks were just as prompt, although we declined these in a vain attempt to save room for the food! The only problem was that everything on the menu looked delicious and we had to narrow it down and choose what we could actually eat! We didn’t make it to dessert, but did enjoy an after-dinner coffee, Turkish style, made even more delicious by the chocolate mints offered on the side.

After dinner, we went for a short stroll down the road near the restaurant. Ordinarily, the street is a busy jewelry area, but this was a quiet Sunday night, and by the time we finished our meal, the sidewalks had been rolled up. An ice cream shop had a few customers, there was a cute little Mercedes on display in one place for us to admire (no, we don’t want one, but it was cute), and a friendly man from a men’s hair salon we passed said hello and offered Brad their business card, but other than that, the street was quiet. 

All in all, a lovely way to spend the evening with the man I love!