Time for a Pork Run (Craig's perspective)

[A guest post from Craig]

As we’ve both mentioned here before, pork is pretty scarce in the UAE, as one might imagine. Breakfast menus and buffets feature beef bacon, chicken sausage, and veal patties. Still, it’s not impossible to get pork, you just have to know where to look.

When we first arrived in Abu Dhabi we found the hypermarket (a giant grocery store and WalMart rolled into one) catty-cornered from us in the mall across the way. Lulu (the hypermarket) has televisions, luggage, clothes, sundries, furniture, a pharmacy, and food. So I was shocked that they had no Pork Room.

A Pork Room is exactly as it sounds—the place behind closed doors where one can purchase pork. Like the old adult videos section at the neighborhood video rental shops, you have to slide behind a curtain or through a door to get your kicks on chorizo, frozen real pepperoni pizza, hot dogs, and—oddly—things like Pop Tarts. Given our hypermarket doesn’t have a pork room I have to stop on my way home from work at a Waitrose, a UK grocery store chain that appeals to expats, because I’ve been to their pork room in the past.

So when we need something, it’s time for me to make a “pork run.” Parking at the Waitrose can take longer than getting what I came to buy, but eventually I get inside. Located in the back of the store (just like those “XXX Rated” video sections), a frosted glass door with the sign “NOT FOR MUSLIMS” delivers the sordid greeting. Press the button, the door opens, and in you are in a world of fresh, prepared, and frozen pork products. Interestingly, they carry our exact brand of bacon we like (well, not on this last visit, but normally), which is nice. I’ve bought breakfast sausages and chorizo from the pork room, too.

When we lived in Dubai for a month, our tiny little neighborhood “bodega” had a bit of a “pork room.” Nothing elaborate, but it was in close walking distance. Of course, when we were there, the largest mall in the world, Dubai Mall, was adjacent to our apartment (across about 30 lanes of traffic). In the basement of that mall was a Sainsbury’s hypermarket, another UK grocery chain. It was enormous and upscale and had a pork room to shame all other pork rooms I’d ever seen in the region. Easily, the pork room at Sainsbury’s was 40-feet long. Not only did it have fresh, prepared, and frozen pork products but it had a flippin’ PORK BUTCHER COUNTER. Of course, their pork room was so large there were products for sale that almost defied explanation—besides the things like Pop Tarts, which one figures is an issue if you have lard for frying?—they had gelatin products, felt tip markers (???), and other surprisingly pork-filled products.

When we were in Dubai we made “pork runs” of a different sort, as crossing those 30+ lanes of traffic was more akin to the vintage video game “Frogger” because we walked, as we had no rental car. Now, the Waitrose is (more or less) on my way home from site, so it’s easy to make a pork run.

To add sin to sin, when I take the different route back to the apartment from my normal route in order to do the pork run, it also makes it very convenient for me to stop at the windowless, unmarked liquor store.

But I’ll save that for another blog post…