The "Paradise" restaurant is not the restaurant's actual name... but the waiter that seated us said "Welcome to Paradise!" before going off to get our drinks. We'd found the place during our wanderings around the Great Bazaar and came back for dinner. They had told us there would be music at dinner time, and they weren't kidding.
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| Shortly after we sat down, a group of patrons in the restaurant, obviously father along in the dining experience, went dancing around the restaurant to the music. | Once they had sat down, the musicians played for awhile more, then finally started walking around the room on their own. | |
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| The band was made up of several drummers and other percussion instruments, a Turkish-style guitar player and this fellow playing lead... the instrument is much like a clarinet, using a single reed, but is made of steel. The sound is part saxophone, part clarinet - a bit metallic and whiny, and very Turkish. | The playing strategy seemed to be playing an endless version of a particular tune, moving to a table and playing until the table produced money to get the musicians to move along to the next table. The tambourine fellow was the Secretary of the Treasury. | |
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| The food preparation area of the restaurant was right in the middle of the room, and above that area was a hole in the ceiling. Around the perimeter of the hole were several sets of small chimes, which could be rung from the floor... | Ringing the chimes would cause someone from above to pop their head over the edge, where the order would be given... a short time later, a silver plate carrying food would be lowered to the prep area below. Here the plate is on the way back up, being unloaded. | |
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| A peek at one of the people in the upstairs portion of the restaurant. At this particular moment, it appears they are arguing over a meal of some sort. | A better look at the plate raising and lowering process - here a plate of food on the way down to the cooks below. | |
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| At some point during the meal, the waiter placed a fez on Richard's head. | As we were leaving, we got a good look at the food preparation area of the restaurant. The three women do all the food cooking, preparation being done above. |
The food wasn't particularly amazing, but it was tasty, inexpensive, and the restaurant was entertaining. We wandered back to the hotel late in the evening, quite content.