Eating "Bitay Meal"

After eating chicken adobo for a couple of days, it was a great relief to finally taste a different food for dinner. My officemates decides to eat the so called "bitay" meal at Khobar area. Why bitay meal you might asked? Well, im curious as well for the term of endearment to the food but i have some ideas floating into my mind on whats the meaning of the bitay in the meal.

We make our journey to "bayan" or so called hte Khobar area, where the tamabayan of pinoys are, to make way to the restaurant at around 6:30. It was quite a walk, long walk actually, then running on the intersection (literally run for your life, no overpass and overspeeding highway here as in!) then walking past some small malls and alleys until we finally reached our destination.

(I made a serious mistake for not knowing the name of the restaurant, but if youre here in Al-Khobar I would love to take you there, that is if i still remember it hehehe).

Upon arrival, first thing to notice of this resto is there's a lot of pinoys here. As in puro pinoys!Great i say to myself, its like in Jolibee lang =D.

While waiting, we help ourselves in washing our hands.Curious why this people wash their hands, I did the same thing. Then I remember watching a Lonely Planet episode where the host travels to Jeddah and arrived in a feast and in that feast eating Arabian style is eating with your own hand. Yikes! Thank God I have clean nails or else I'll get sick by my own fault pala =P.

After good ol 10 minutes the food arrive and viola here it is!

Bitay meal is popularly known as Kabsa or Fried rice with meat (whether chicken, beef, fish) and some vegetables. We ordered barbeque chicken, which in fairness is very tasty. The rice I' ve learned was cooked using the oil from the chicken bbq..or wherever the chicken was cooked the rice was there to cook as well..tipid right!? But what caught really my attention was the vegetable, its like a kangkong or talbos ng camote but very very very juicy. Smelss like mint as well. And the onion is like a bayabas, juicy but not smelly. If i mad a trip to the market anytime soon I'll surely buy 1 kilo of this green and leafy vegetable. Come to think of it, Persians and Arabs have the same tast for food, the like their food served with vegetables. Though Persians are more conservative when it comes to vegetables, they serve with tomato, cucumber, lettuce, repolyo,and so many other vegetables that i dont know what's their name.In arab reso they only serve two type of vegetable (see picture above) hehehe.

Why bitay meal is because the meal is served in big serving. It's lke 5 cups of rice was served and 1/4 chicken. After eating you can die na for kabusugan, hehehe.

I've eaten my part for 20 minutes, without any leftover (sayang kasi!),and the cost was 15 Saudi riyals (or 180 pesos). Expensive yes, but worth it for a monthly dine-out.