BBM Artofdining.net (BETA) Reservations on the GO

We have launched in the last couple of months couple of services to help our members easily make reservations. One of these services is the BBM artofdining.net
With this new service there is no need to open your Computer or laptop, no need to fire-up your lovely BlackBerry browser, all u have to do is send us a Black Berry Messenger Message with all the relevant info for your reservation, and we will reply to you in the speed of light. Eventhough it has been couple of months since we launched this service, we are still working on bits and pieces of the technical issues, and it has nothing to do with ur reservation not being made (so don't worry) :)

For now; to access this service just add the following contact to your BBM:
PIN # 2627efb2
or
PIN # 258CFE19

Make a request by adding the following comment:

'art of dining [ur mobile number]"

The mobile number is matched to the number in your profile on artofdining.net and once verified, u will receive a welcome message and you will be able to try out our BBM reservations.

Best cup of espresso in Riyadh

I will start by writing, I am a coffeeholic to say the least. I love Coffee, every type of coffee, from American brewed, to Jordanian, and Saudi Arabian coffee. Coffee in all its forms is a piece of heaven for me. This time i am only talking about one specific type and it is :espresso.
I always thought i will never have a better cup of espresso than the one that the illy trained baristas in Java Time (used to be Coffee Time) make.

I will be boring for a bit, but I think it is necessary to describe what goes into making an excellent cup of espresso:

An excellent cup of espresso depends on many factors including the coffee that is being used. U can get the best espresso coffee and give it to an untrained person, and they will make you the worst cup of espresso you probably ever tasted. An excellent shot of espresso is made by the perfect adjustment of : the grinder, the amount of coffee, the tamping pressure, the amount of time a shot takes to get pulled, the water pressure, and the water temperature (the last two being the advantage of better machines) It takes weeks and lots of practice for a person to be able to pull a great espresso shot. An excellent espresso shot can be noticed as soon as it is served, usually from the crema on the top. The thickness of the crema as well as the color of it. I have seen baristas pulling shots that were half coffee and half crema, with crema that is lasting in the cup for more than 45 seconds at that thickness. A great shot of espresso should have dark reddish brown crema, not the light creamy one we usually see at cafes like Starbucks or the ones we see in many if not most restaurants all over the world .

Under Extracted espresso	Good Espresso

This was until I was invited to Anthurium for lunch. Anthurium is located on 'Satellite rd', in the same strip as Roma cafe. it is a California cuisine restaurant if i were to describe the food, with a new addition of sushi to the menu. I will not rate the food in this article, but will leave this to a later issue. at the beginning of our lunch and while we were waiting for the rest of our party to arrive, i decided i needed a cup of coffee. An espresso is what i ordered. it took some time to come. As i saw the waiter carrying the cup, I thought to myself this is going to be one of these one shot espresso's that i will have to swallow just to get my caffeine fix. But as it laid in front of me, my facial expression completely changed. An uncontrollable huge smile was setting on my face. I stopped the conversation at the table, and i said 'OH MY GOD, this must be an amazing espresso, it has been ages since i saw something like this' and i was only describing the look of crema the espresso had. It had tiger stripes.

Tiger Stripes can been seen on one of the pictures above. This means not only is the crema a dark reddish brown color, but it also has stripes of a darker shade. Hence the cup i got was as good as i can ever expect from the bean they were brewing. There were a couple of light spots on the crema, but i was willing to try that cup of espresso with no sugar at all. Something i forgot how to do after my last visit to Rome, where almost every other cup of espresso is an excellent cup of espresso. Everyone on the table was watching me, for i am not the type that compliments things easily. My first sip... no bitterness at all... It was superb. the smile on my face just got bigger... It was a heavenly moment. The rest of the cup was as completion of an outstanding shot of espresso. By far i am recommending giving Anthurium the emblem of "Artofdining's best espresso shot in riyadh', better than Jave Time, and better than any other cafe or restaurant i have tried in Riyadh.

By: Layth Sudairy

To reserve: Anthorium Riyadh

Intro

My name is Layth Sudairy and i am a co-founder of artofdining.net and i love to welcome you all to our new blog.

In the original planning of artofdining.net, a review section was planned. A place where we could write our own opinions about various aspects of the restaurants, as well as a section for our members to ad their own reviews. Yet along the way an aspect of a deal with an already established review website made us freeze that thought. We hoped we can achieve some type of complementary agreement with that website.
Obviously as everyone notices from our site, that deal never happened and we were too far forward in our web development to unfreeze the review section idea. Therefore we came up with a bit of a different idea now, a blog. It might be a real bad idea, but we at artofdining.net love to try everything. After all we launched a website where people can make reservations online! 'Why would anyone do that?' , is the question i hear the most after explaining what we do. I thought it was self-explanatory; it is a great service. u click couple of buttons and u already booked a table ii your favorite restaurant, all you wait for is an email or an sms that says 'your table is booked'. 'but why don't i just call them?', is the next question i hear. That is the harder question, I can even ask many international hotels and restaurant reservation websites the same thing. My simple answer: 'it is cheaper, actually it is free'. I personally think it is faster too. I don't have to redial if it is a new restaurant that always has a busy tone. Think of 'Burger Boutique' in Riyadh, such an instance where you think can i find some way to make my mobile redial faster when busy!!
Yet in our first, second, and third business plan we specified a unique goal with artofdining.net, and it was not just online reservations, our goal was to provide a unique service, one that is a fusion between online reservations, and Condé Nast service. Off course we are not expecting to be an all-out concierge service, but maybe just for restaurants we can be. So we launched couple of additional services, BB PIN reservations (where you can make your reservations directly through the BBM), an exclusive international restaurant recommendation email service, as well as couple of interesting newsletters such as 'hidden treasures' and 'Events'. I know many of you dont know about many of these features.
It is our fault, for we have lacked in our marketing and information department. We have been focusing on our sales department the last couple of months. After all we need to be able to sustain this company. No i will not be discussing the other question 'How do you make money?" let us keep somethings for ourselves after all :)
Riyadh has been our testing ground, and we thank all of our members for being part of this test. We did great so far: no reservation problems, no unattended requests. on the other hand with restaurants it has been difficult. The idea of an online booking does not seem to be understood or appreciated. So our struggle with restaurants continues. Few such as the Sheraton Hotel, and Pizza Amore, I enjoyed working with; for they seem to be the progressive ones, understanding the value of such service.
I will wrap this up now and both Mohammed Al Rashed, and I as the founders hope to start a relationship between us and our members. A relationship that can make artofdining.net flourish with your ideas, and feedback.