Kabsa
Food coma, Mee'ad, Tihama, Asir/ February 2014
a despised dish
"Kabsa". Anyone who stayed in Saudi Arabia for even a short time is familiar with it. It is the Saudi take on biriyani minus any hint of spices (or good taste). Kabsa is more or less boiled meat and rice with a little salt. Served piping hot, it scalds the fingertips of the unintiated. The meat used must be wildly "hacked up" (as opposed to properly butchered) and still on the bone, so one is never quite sure what part of the animal is being consumed. I was unfortunate enough to get spinal cord a few times.
Before oil wealth, kabsa was eaten very rarely and only on special feast days like the two Eids. With the increase in wealth, Saudis found they could eat it more often which morphed into it becoming a staple. My students ate it morning, noon, and night and were quite proud of that habit. There were apparently endless varieties of kabsa and everyone's house claimed to have found the best recipe (they all tasted the same to me). I sometimes felt a good comparison would have been Americans deciding to eat Thanksgiving Dinner EVERY DAY. The whole concept was extremely odd (and very unhealthy).
Kabsa was unavoidable. Any Saudi event that had food served the dish. I came to dread food at Saudi functions. In the winter months in Abha it was popular to drive down the winding "aqaba" road to the start of the Tihama's coastal plain (and warm weather) and eat kabsa at one of a myriad of roadside restaurants. One popular location was "Mee'ad" where I was treated to that singular Saudi dish numerous times. The photo is from the first trip with my good coffee shop friends including WBT. We ate a LOT and it was fun (mainly for the company). I actually didn't mind kabsa on such occasions because I was with friends.
What about kabsa at work when we all sat down together and ate from the communal plate with our hands? I didn't mind eating with my hands (well, I didn't like eating greasy kabsa rice with my hands), but sharing the experience with colleagues I didn't care for? The South Asian guys were the best at those events since they actually could manage to eat the food without getting covered in rice to their elbows as well as all over their clothes (like the Saudis). I am serious, the experience was disgusting each time. I always tried to join the South Asians at work functions but ended up getting dragged away by the Saudis.
To make matters even worse, in Saudi culture it is quite polite and acceptable to pick out a piece of meat with ones "eating hand" and present it to a guest. That same hand, that was digging in the rice and most recently touching someone else's mouth and lips, was then offering me a tempting bit of meat. Yeah, right... no thanks. Again, with friends, who cares? With people I barely knew? YUCK. One could NOT turn down an offer of meat from someone at the kabsa dish. The first time it happened, I was told "you have to eat it, otherwise it would be insulting". Again, whenever possible I stuck with the South Asians who ate their own food quietly and cleanly (with no sharing).
AND..... at formal functions, like a wedding, huge mounds of kabsa were brought out and eaten in waves. First the primary guests ate from the massive plate. They departed, and from the same dish the children ate. Finally, the women came and ate what remained. Again, YES, that really happened. I thanked God I was always in the first wave. Poor kids and even moreso, poor mothers and daughters! I can't imagine Thanksgiving where someone had to eat from my dirty plate what I didn't finish. "ewww" doesn't even describe it.
Perhaps that was one of my real culture shocks in Saudi Arabia. Many other people didn't get deep enough into the Saudi experience to understand all the subtleties of lowly kabsa, Saudi Arabia's favorite AND one and only meal. I am not so happy I did.