What does Disco or Expo 2020 taste like?

1.2076325-4079753065 — Khalta juice, with chunks of mango drowned in a mug of avocado and strawberry juice, served at Juice World, Sharjah. Image Credit: Atiq ur Rehman/Gulf News

Dubai: What does Disco taste like? Have you ever had Sorrow of the Heart? Or knocked back a Computer?

Cafeterias in the UAE often give wacky names to their juice blends to attract customers — it is not easy to ignore Taj Mahal or Selfie listed on the menu.

Most names are random — there is no relation between Dubai Metro and fruit, for example — while others say something logical about the juice. For instance, 50-50 normally means half of one juice mixed with half of another.

And while the same names can be found in many cafeterias, the blends are different. Customers looking for something new —— beyond the regular orange, pineapple, mango variety — can expect surprising flavours from the list of strange names.

Each passion fruit seed cracks with a tangy burst in the mouth when having a Khalta, which simply means Mix, at Juice World in Sharjah. The drink also has small chunks of mango, all drowned gracefully in a big mug of avocado and strawberry juice.

In Dubai, Al Ijaza Cafeteria offers a long list of special blends. Expo 2020 is a blend of mango, sweet melon, chikoo, and carrot juice. It comes with ‘Expo 2020’ written in chocolate syrup, floating on top. Sweet and cool, it’s hard to pin down what fruit juice it tastes like. It just tastes good; it just tastes like Expo 2020.

Abdul Ghafur, who works at Ijaza, said they experiment with lots of blends. Once something goes down well with customers, it is given a catchy name — how about a tall order of Festival? — and a new drink is born.

At Zahrat Al Maisaloon cafeteria in Sharjah, you can enjoy some Disco. It is all mango juice, except for a band of red syrup in the middle. As you finish the mango at the bottom half, you enter a band of deep, rosewater-like sugary rush that elevates the drink to an entirely different level. Then it’s back to mango as you clear the top half.

Turning regular drinks into something special is the name of the game in today’s fruit juice business, said Mohammad Badsha, who works at Zahrat Al Maisaloon. It also pays to draw attention to the juice by giving it a nice name, added Badsha (his name means king in Urdu).

“I’m always looking for something new when getting a glass of juice. I like to be surprised. You want something to cheer you up at the end of hot day, and a new juice with a weird name can do just that,” said Salim Sanghati, a juice fan in Sharjah.

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