Paul’s – Terminal 3, Dubai Airport

In a nutshell: Good simple food with speedy and efficient service
Score: 4/5

Dubai’s new Terminal 3 is massive but it is totally lacking restaurants! Why? This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. The old Terminal 1 has a food court, a buffet / a la carte restaurant (Safi I think it’s called) that does a great breakfast buffet plus the Irish Village. Terminal 3 has Paul’s, Burger King, Costa, a buffet restaurant for transit passengers and an appalling buffet restaurant for the general public. Millions of passengers travel through Dubai International Airport so it is unbelievable that they haven’t included some great restaurants.

If you’re passing through T3 then my strong recommendation is to avoid the buffet restaurant upstairs (poor service, cold food, ‘chef’ couldn’t speak English) and head to Paul’s. They have an efficient system set up to get as many people through as possible and it really does work. I queued for only a few minutes before placing my order, the pastry items I wanted (selection of mini croissants) were bagged up immediately, I paid and I then went to the end of the counter to wait for the hot drinks and omelette. Omelettes are cooked to order – not just reheated in the microwave – and took less than 5 minutes to come out. The staff worked really well as a team and it was obvious they’ve had excellent customer-service training.

The big question though: was the food any good? A resounding yes! The croissants tasted just as though they’d been made in France, the bread served with the omelette was a lovely wholemeal rustic loaf, the omelette itself was light and fluffy and the salad (a bit of a strange accompaniment at 06:00 I have to admit) had that amazing French dressing that I never seem to be able to replicate. Once we boarded the plane and received our flight meal I was so relieved to have had this ‘starter’ meal or I would have starved.

The only thing to give a miss to would be the hot chocolate. It tasted strongly of cocoa and was far too sweet and sickly – I couldn’t drink it and ended up throwing the entire cup in the bin. Nothing beats Cadbury’s hot chocolate at Costa I have to say!