Restaurant owner says foreign tourists enjoy the burgers as it offers them a unique experience while visiting Jordan.
By REUTERSUpdated: FEBRUARY 9, 2016 15:41Jordanian restaurant puts camel burgers on menu
A restaurant in Jordan's capital has added camel meat burgers to its menu, hoping to attract both locals and tourists to try the unusual meat.Nestled amongst shops and cafes in Amman's busy city center, the Q restaurant stands out as the only place serving camel meat.Owner Zeyad Al Qusous opened Q in 2012 and decided to add camel burgers to the menu, calling the new meal a 'camburger', and targeted at foreign visitors."The idea was to open a restaurant in Amman and we thought of making something for foreigners, the most suitable thing was to make burgers because foreigners like burgers including beef burgers and chicken burgers so we decided to do something we called 'camburgers' which is burger made of camel meat," he said.Qusous said that foreign tourists enjoyed the burgers as it offered them a unique experience while visiting Jordan."The demand from foreigners for camel burgers is much higher than demand from Arabs, because foreigners come to Jordan to try something new, as the camel burger cannot be found in any place they have been to before, because we are the only restaurant in Jordan and the second restaurant in the Middle East making camel burgers, as the first restaurant is in Abu Dhabi," Qusous said.The restaurant's chef, Noor al Turkmani, encouraged more people to try camel meat for its health benefits, as it is lower in fat than other meat."I advise using camel meat because it is not heavy on the stomach and it is much better for you than normal meat because when you eat normal meat you feel it is heavy on the stomach but when you eat camel meat, after 30 minutes you feel it is gone from the stomach because it is not heavy. It is really healthy because it doesn't have much fat, it is very low in fat," he said.One restaurant customer, Sameeh Abu Shammala, said he was curious to try camel burgers after many of his friends had told him about the restaurant"My friends always come here to eat them and after I heard about them I decided to try it and see what its tastes like. It was a bit strange, the camel meat, when I ate it for the first time I found it very unique. It is good for your health and it does not have fat, it is low in fat," he said.
Qusous added that beef burgers in Amman usually sell for around 5 Jordanian dinars (7 US Dollars), but he is selling camel burgers for 10 dinars (14 US Dollars) as camel meat is more expensive to buy than beef or chicken.Qusous sources the camel meat from Madaba, a city about 40km east of Amman.