Auberge - Downtown Amman

It was a Tuesday night and we had been working like dogs all day!  Our beautiful friend, Lina, suggested we all go to this amazing fish restaurant downtown, Amman.  It sounded great and I read this review on BeAmman:

1. The Auberge

The Auberge is a traditional downtown café, here you can enjoy a truly authentic Jordanian experience. In busy hours, you will have to make your way through the tables in order to reach the balcony, which overlooks the main street and is a particularly good place to smoke a nargileh (JD2). The atmosphere is typical of the balad with old pictures on the wall and impressive ventilators on the ceiling. The food is good quality Jordanian fare but with more varieties than some of the simpler restaurants you find in the area.  The Menu is relatively varied within the cannon of Jordanian cuisine. You can enjoy an excellent mashewy (grilled meat) and a wide selection of traditional mezze. The restaurant is clean but not to international standards. The staff is really welcoming; however they only have a moderate command of English. Despite not being the cheapest restaurant of downtown, it is reasonably priced as there are no pretensions to luxury and wears a certain downmarket authenticity as a result.

Many things happened this wacky Tuesday night.  We decided to travel in 2 cars.  One car had the GPS (the men), the other  car (the ladies) had Arabic speaking Lina who was the only person to have visited this restaurant.  The driver of the car of car #1 lost her wallet and then found it on the back of the car, on the trunk.  Driver realized this and pulled over to get it.  Meanwhile, the other car drove off, unaware of what wass going on.  We tried to contact the other car, but soon realized that no one in the other car had a phone!  Or, the only one that did have a phone, didn't have any battery life in the phone.  We lost car #2, but were hopeful that they would find the fish restaurant.

We were all thankful that driver found wallet and now we needed to find a parking space.  Hang on, first of all, we needed to find the restaurant!  Thankfully, Lina spoke Arabic so she asked for directions.  Great!  Now we could find the fish place.  But first, let's find a parking spot.  Bad idea to drive downtown at night!  The place is PACKED.  Thankfully, lady luck was shining down on us and we found a spot.  Now let's find the fish place.ed

As we meandered our way through downtown Amman and asked where the fish place was, I soon began to realize that we were on a wild goose chase to find this place, and Lord knows what had happened to car #2.  Arabic men told us to go this and back again that way.  Finally, we found a back street and a tiny shop that sold fish.  We were told that Auberge had closed down for a bit, but the fish would  be cooked and sent to another restaurant.  I can not tell you where we ended up or what the name of the restaurant is, all I know is that it didn't fit the description above.  The food and fish were great!  The shrimps were amazing and covered in the best lemony sauce.  I'm sorry, but I would not be able to find this place again.

As for car #2, they found a different fish restaurant.

Thankfully, I didn't get sick from the fish.  I thought I might have done because it looked pretty dodgy - back street alley fish!  But, it was all good.