IT IS not easy being the only restaurant critic in Baghdad. “Before when I wrote, I would say when something is bad,” says Anas al-Sarraf, the entrepreneurial founder of the online Baghdad Restaurant Guide. “But I stopped six months ago because I got a lot of threats. Someone who is spending $2m to open a restaurant can spend $5,000 to order a hit on me.”
Mr Sarraf says he has reviewed more than 600 restaurants since starting his hugely popular Arabic-language Facebook page in 2012. These days, he is careful to give less opinionated reviews of new restaurants; he instead invites diners themselves to provide the more candid comments. Other obstacles face the intrepid reviewer. At a restaurant in Baghdad’s Sadr City, he once found himself surrounded by security people and had to convince them he was taking photos for a review, not to plan an attack.
Mr Sarraf estimates that a new restaurant—anything from a small cafĂ© to a multi-level culinary palace—opens in Baghdad every three days. Despite Iraq’s current financial crisis, he says, profit margins are around...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1VVn14T
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