Elements, Wafi City Centre

In a nutshell: not bad but wouldn’t race back

3/5

I couldn’t quite work out what the design of Elements Café in Wafi City Centre is trying to achieve. The tables and chairs are fairly standard issue, the ceiling is open so you can see the AC ducts and water pipes, the music was dancey Arabic but the paintings around the walls weren’t Arab-influenced and there is a very random selection of objects around the room that include an old-fashioned mantelpiece clock, sculptures, some metal sheep (see photo) and various little statuettes. To my mind…a bit confused!

The menu is quite varied with a large selection of saj (Indian bread filled with a choice of ingredients either savoury or sweet), dim sum, tapas (all meat though except deep fried mozzarella), salads, soups, pastas and main dishes (i.e. steak and chips, grilled salmon etc). I was there at lunchtime though and unfortunately most of the menu is only available after 4pm – until then your only real choice is the buffet. At 45 Dhs for unlimited food and 1 soft drink, it is not bad value though.

The restaurant wasn’t overly busy and I’m always a bit dubious about buffets where there isn’t a high turnover of food. Nevertheless, I took a bit from each chafing dish and actually had lovely chicken satay (it looked spicy but wasn’t, it just had that great peanut-y grilled flavour), stir-fried beef, some fried fish, rice, salad and coleslaw. There was also fresh fruit salad and nutty chocolate brownie for dessert. Apart from the great satay, the rest was edible but not worth going back for.

If you’re in Wafi and want to eat somewhere that’s quick and easy on the pocket then I would certainly give it a try (it beats KFC and co any day). I wouldn’t choose to go there again for lunch but may try it for dinner since the saj sounded interesting and I’ve never tried it before. Maybe once the summer’s over since they have a large outside terrace area – unbelievably there were some men sitting out there having lunch, wouldn’t want to stand too close to them once they came back in though!!