Nom nom nom

I think I've grown out of my picky eating phase. Unlike 8-year-old Lauren, I now eat mushrooms, onions, thin crust pizza, Subway, most fruits, etc. I still won't eat tomatoes, but that's beside the point.

Finding food in Iraq that I love has been easy. (Good thing I love carbs!) Here are my Top 3 Food Preferences in Iraq:

1. Sara (long a sound) is my favorite restaurant in all of Iraqi Kurdistan. Claire, who wrote a blog post solely about her love for Sara, would agree. We eat there somewhere between 2-4 times a week - no exaggeration.

What I eat at Sara:

• Sada - beans, rice, and mystery side (you'll either get cooked eggplant or cooked apricots)
• Naan - delicious flat bread. Fun fact: Kurds don't like the fluffy edges of the bread; they eat the dry insides. We Americans do the opposite.
• Chicken tikka - chicken kabob. First of all, note the Kur-English. The word for chicken is mareeshk but if you order mareeshk you'll get a whole chicken. The owner of Sara knows us - though, we can't talk to him because we're women - and he knows what we mean by chicken tikka. But seriously, this chicken kabob is the best chicken I've ever had in my entire life! It's cooked with yogurt and tons of delicious spices. There's no way I can replicate this at home.

2. Pizza Plus. Alex, Claire and I found this gem a few weeks ago. First of all, the cashier is a hunky half-Kurd half-Arab that flirts with usgirls. But not in a creepy way, I promise. Secondly, there's only one English menu and it has the oddest spelling. Gaseous = soda. We still don't know what a "sheet" is.

The atmosphere's the best. Pizza Plus has huge TV screens, perfect for watching the World Cup, and country flags hanging from the ceiling, A/C, banisters, etc.

What I eat at Pizza Plus:

• Roll chicken - chicken, peppers, onion and tomato rolled into a delicious naan wrap with special mayo-based sauce
• Chips - the BEST French fries I've had anywhere. Perfectly seasoned.
• Cheeseburger - decent, but not worth the 6,000 dinar. French fries on top
• Margarita pizza - wonderfully cheesy pizza. Worth the 6,000 dinar between two people
• Coke in a bottle - ultra fizzy
• Smoothie - they make incredible fresh smoothies and freshly squeezed juices
• Cake - when I got my cake from Pizza Plus, the nice man behind the counter put an L on it, just for me!

3. Cookie's Attack [sic]. This is the best ice cream I've ever had. It's your basic cookies and cream in a tiny carton. (Side note. "Tiny" is an adjective we use a lot. That and "small." Tiny water. Small brother.) The cookies taste like Oreos and the ice cream tastes like the inside of an Oreo - not plain ol' vanilla ice cream. When Ferdos (the market down the street) runs out of it, chaos ensues. We're stuck eating the less-tasty Magnum bar.

Honorable Mention:

• Magnum bar: ice cream covered in white chocolate and some sort of nut. Tastes like a Dove bar. 
• Bravo: the exact same thing as a Magnum bar
• Nut City: think Nutella, but BETTER
• Melody cafe: free Internet, but kind of smoky. Their ice cream is delectable.
• Blue cafe: delicious kiwi milkshakes, but kind of pricey. Free internet.
• Food Land: conveniently in PLC's building, but the food is just so-so. A hamburger is cheap, so is pasta. If you order chicken and rice you get a big piece of chicken, rice, beans, soup and bread - totally worth the 6,000 ID.

Lauren