The spread of foods crowding my table at Ali Thani represents Oman’s cosmopolitan history as a seafaring superpower and offers an insight into its population’s ebb and flow. Another local favorite recipe, paplou (a turmeric-citrus fish broth), is thought to pay homage to the Al Lawatiya tribe who came to Oman from Sindh in Pakistan centuries ago and whose descendants still live in a walled quarter behind Muscat’s corniche in what remains a semi-closed, curious enclave.
Cut off from the Arabian Peninsula by a sea of sand on its land border, Oman relied on its long coastline for trade, with sailings to Persia, India, and as far as China by the 15th century. After the Portuguese invaded Muscat in 1507, the Yemenis, Ottomans, and Persians took turns controlling parts of the country’s straggling coast. Oman then defeated the Portuguese and went on, in 1698, to control the East African coast from Mogadishu to Mozambique, including Zanzibar, bringing migration, marriage, and a mixing of culinary traditions.
While my mother’s and father’s families are from Oman and Zanzibar respectively, I grew up in Portsmouth and spent my childhood summer vacations in Muscat, trying not to feel out of place. Since then, food has given me a better understanding of what it means to be Omani. On countless trips across the sultanate, I’ve tried to work out what defines Omani cuisine, only to find diversity and difference. Dining out here is stripped back and real, but the experience is consistently welcoming.
In 1964, Zanzibar’s revolution forced some Omanis there to flee to towns in Oman, such as Seeb, where residents, including my grandmother, Bibi, still remember their island past. “In the ‘70s and ’80s it was so easy to travel around Muscat and not even speak Arabic, so many people were speaking Swahili,” she tells me. “Our food was the best, and so new that everyone wanted to eat it.” Beyond the sun-faded red-and-white-striped awnings of Seeb’s Africa Restaurant and Coffee Shop, dishes are presented behind glass screens and patrons place orders through circular cut-outs. I pick a little of everything, Zanzibari style, including creamed spinach, cardamom bread, and sweet potato ice cream.
