Our New Favorite Restaurant

If anyone had asked us for the pros and cons of life in Amman, we would rave about the beautiful weather, Jordanian hospitality and the innumerable day trips out to antiquities sites. But we'd acquiesce that we hadn't found any restaurants that we LOVE for the food. There is admittedly very good Lebanese food and we really, really like shwarma but that is about it. But now we have eaten at the Four Seasons and discovered that there is good food in Amman. It sounds like a bourgeois cop-out - but we've had similarly expensive bad (or underwhelming) food at the Sheraton and the Grand Hyatt. Coincidentally, I have now eaten at the Four Seasons 3 times in 7 days.

Our first meal (and indeed my favorite) was the Four Seasons Friday brunch. It was this month's destination for our dinner club (and the poshest and most expensive destination by far at $50 per head. Last month we ate mansaf at a cafeteria for $6). It is set up like the Kennedy Center brunch (do they still have it?) where you are welcomed into the kitchen and there are different stations set up - last week the kitchen featured:

- Carving station with beef and lamb

- Risotto station

- Falafel (which you can get for 2 for $1 elsewhere and which none of us ate)

- A taco bar which likewise I could not bring myself to eat given the hefty price tag of the lunch but which fellow diners swore was the best they have eaten in the Middle East

- A German stuffing/pork casserole thing

- An Asian station

- A sushi bar which I think all of us visited at least once

- A bloody mary bar

There was also a salad bar, a raw bar, a tapas display, a grill making kebabs and a buffet with Indian food. After this we ate dessert and I was able to show off my pastry training by being able to identify a "charlotte."

My favorite food items: raw oysters (which I probably should avoid anywhere else in Jordan); a delicious spicy soup; and the prime rib. I don't know where they are importing their non-vegetable ingredients from - but clearly no one else in Jordan uses their distributor. It was a wonderful meal.

Two more meals at the Four Seasons:

That evening, Dan and I went to the Marine Birthday ball which was also held at the Four Seasons. Amazingly, the hotel was able to serve 350 people delicious food - we weren't at all hungry having just had an enormous brunch but then happily ate our seafood salad, steak, and homemade ice cream with delicious butter cookies for dessert.

Last night, I had a work dinner welcoming a business delegation from Michigan. It too was held at the Four Seasons and again delicious. I'm not sure I will ever eat anywhere else - except the Four Seasons probably doesn't make shwarma and come to think of it, $50 falafel is a bit much, so maybe Jordan's other restaurants will still get our patronage.

Disclosure: the Four Seasons' owner's son is a friend, but please, Jordan is a small country. If we didn't visit (or write about) places where I know the owner, there wouldn't be many places we could go.