Dubai Restaurant Review: Biella, Times Square

Biella, as its name suggests is an Italian chain of casual restaurants - they're owned by Bin Hendi (same as Japengo, Cafe Havana and others). I have eaten at Biella many times and always had the salmon with salad and chips - usually followed by a lemon creme brulee and strawberries. I have always enjoyed my meal (except once when the salad was mouldy and had to be sent back!) Today I thought I'd try something else since all the salmon you get here is farmed and farmed salmon is quite negative on the inflammation index. Big mistake.

I ordered steak and salad and had to control myself not to spit my first mouthful of steak back out on the plate! That is how disgusting it tasted. The meat wasn't off but I think it had probably been frozen, defrosted and then cooked; I always find defrosted beef gets a really strong meaty flavour that turns my stomach. Either that or it was a very old piece of meat that was on the turn. Horrible. When I returned the plate the staff were very polite and apologetic but when the manager came over later he told me that it must have been because the meat had been pan-fried instead of grilled! Simon always pan-fries our steaks and they taste delicious...how you cook a steak can make it tough but can't give it a taste to make you sick.

Anyway, being extremely hungry I orderd a mozarella salad instead - only remembering afterwards that mozarella is dairy and I'm supposed to be avoiding dairy. The salad was edible but even when I make mozarella salad it is 10 times better presented. I had to lift half the lettuce leaves off the top in order to see if there was any cheese or tomato on the plate. All in all not worth the time, effort or money. I would love to include a photo here but, once again, I forgot my camera.

My brother, Struan, ordered a chicken panini but had to push the bread to the side because there was so much pesto put on it that the bottom piece of bread was soaked through and fell apart and the top part of the bread was extremely doughy and dry. All in all not a good experience at all. Struan has had pizza and pasta there before which he says were both very good. So maybe if you stick to the real basics then you'll have a good meal - if not, you have been warned!!