Weibdeh is the neighbourhood Amman's musicians actually live in, and on most Wednesdays and Saturdays somebody is playing. We start at eight around Paris Circle with a plate of mezze and a slow walk past the old apartment blocks and the Darat al Funun terrace, then take you to whichever of three small rooms has the better line-up that week - usually an oud and an upright bass pushing Fairouz and Abdel Halim standards through a jazz filter, occasionally a quartet doing something stranger. The friction, and there is some. Music rarely starts before half past nine and rarely finishes before midnight, so this is not an early night. Two of the three venues allow indoor smoking and it is heavy; if that is a problem, tell us when you book and we will hold you a terrace table or move you to another date. Line-ups fall over at short notice, because most of these musicians have day jobs - when it happens we change venue rather than cancel on you. And there is no dance floor. People sit and listen.
We started as four friends who kept getting the same question at dinner parties: where do you actually eat in Amman after eight? Not the hotel buffet, not the place with the laminated English menu. So we started walking people down into Balad ourselves. Between us we are two food writers, a former taxi driver who knows every one-way street in the valley, and an architect who will not stop talking about 1930s limestone. Every walk runs in the evening, because Amman is a different city once the heat drops and the shutters go back up. We keep the groups small, we eat standing up, and we will tell you honestly when something is overrated.
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