Dubai Restaurant Review: Thai Chi, Wafi

In a nutshell: mediocre food and disappointing service.

2/5

I was really looking forward to dinner at Thai Chi as it's a restaurant that has been on my list for years, however I was sorely disappointed. Their slogan is 'two restaurants under one roof' as they offer both Thai and Chinese food - hence the name. The decor is decidedly more Thai than Chinese (temple style ceiling details and pale wood tables with leather chairs) and the restaurant is huge with a massive outdoor area as well as indoors - we sat inside since Simon was only in shorts and t-shirt and it was a little bit nippy. They seemed fairly busy outside but we were the only people inside so there was a distinct lack of atmosphere, I did like that they were playing Thai / Chinese music though.

Not being ravenous, we decided to share a starter and then order 2 main courses to share. Plus, we had our Entertainer voucher so we needed to order 2 main courses in order to get one free! The table we were ushered to initially had no light above it - we noticed that numerous ceiling lights had blown all through the restaurant and not been replaced - so when our satay arrived I couldn't get a good photo of it. Not only that but I was not 100% confident that the centre of the chicken pieces was cooked through as they had a slightly pink look, although it was hard to tell properly in the dim light. When I told the waitress that I'd left a fair bit of chicken because it didn't seem to be cooked properly but that I couldn't see properly in the dark, she didn't seem too worried about the chicken issue although she offered to move us to a different table. To be fair to her, she was a trainee - although after 4 months I would have expected her to be out of her training period and this just shows to me that she hasn't been getting an appropriate amount of training.

At our new, properly-lit table, our duck pancakes and sweet & sour prawns with lycee and pineapple arrived. Peking roasted duck should be slow-cooked so that all the fat melts away leaving crispy skin and succulent duck, sadly their duck had a thick layer of fat on it - similar to my experience at Noodle House a few months ago but at least there the price was not a 5-star one. The pancakes were also all stuck together which always adds a tricky edge to your meal as you attempt to pry them apart without ripping them into shreds! The prawns were tasty but I didn't find them any better than the almost identical Noodle Factory dish we had a couple of months ago - at shopping mall prices.

In terms of Thai Chi's prices, their starters were all about Dhs 60 or so and the strange thing was that all their side dishes of vegetables, noodles and rice were also about Dhs 60! Main courses ranged from Dhs 90-120 which is what you'd expect from this sort of restaurant. My biggest shock came when I saw they had added 10% service charge to the bill - to my understanding this is not allowed in Dubai anymore. I only realised this after I'd paid but I decided that questioning it would only bring blank stares from the staff and irritation on my part so I didn't bother. All in all a disappointing experience that I won't be repeating.

Dubai Restaurant Review: Zahr El-Laymoun, Souk Al Bahar

In nutshell: lukewarm food, rude staff but reasonably priced and good location

2/5

Souk Al Bahar is designed in a similar way to Madinat Jumeirah so that it creates an 'old Dubai market' style of shopping arcade. The unfortunate major difference between them is that Madinat is the only shopping centre in its area and is surrounded by 3 large hotels whereas Souk Al Bahar is opposite Dubai Mall (the largest mall in the world outside North America) as well as being in the centre of town with a plethora of other shopping and dining options within easy distance. The result is that almost all the shops were boarded up with 'opening soon' signs outside, so as a shopping destination it really isn't worth a visit. There are a large number of restaurants although we found many of them appear to only open for dinner and most also had very much hotel prices as opposed to shopping mall prices - the souk is attached to The Palace Hotel. We finally found a restaurant with lunch prices that didn't take your breath away and settled down outside enjoying the view of the artifical lake.

Zahr El-Laymoun is a Lebanese restaurant so we of course had to start with hummous, which was very good. Fresh juices came in glass or pitcher quantities so for only Dhs 20 you got a great little jug of tomato juice - this was one idea that I really liked about the restaurant. When we arrived at 12:30 the restaurant was quite empty and the manager was very friendly but as it filled up with diners and the rest of the waiting staff came on duty the service went downhill. It was extremely difficult to catch anyone's attention, none of the staff were welcoming (I think they'd all forgotten how to smile) and we even saw a large Egyptian waiter smack a much smaller Filipino waiter around the head!! A complete overhaul and retraining of the staff in this place is very much required.

Amongst our party we ordered a variety of main courses that included jumbo shrimp (for me), chicken taouk, chicken shawarma platter, halloumi skewers and a chicken kebab sandwich. We had been told that the chicken shawarma sandwich was a regular rolled shawarma but the platter included additional side orders and was bigger. Disappointingly, the meat on the platter had been placed on top of the bread but in such a way that you couldn't actually roll it up as a shawarma and it meant Simon had to eat it with a knife and fork - not quite what he had imagined. All of the mains were delivered lukewarm, particularly the grilled vegetables which turned out to be a corn on the cob, a whole onion (!), a piece of courgette and a piece of aubergine. The prawns themselves really were jumbo-sized and were very good but the baked potato had clearly been sat in a warming oven far too long and was very black and tasteless.

You don't expect to pay a lot for Lebanese food and at Dhs 40-50 for each main course (the prawns were Dhs 68), this held true here. The location is very good as it is right next to the bridge to Dubai Mall and from there you can watch the Dubai Fountain which comes to life at 1pm, 1:30pm and then hourly from (I believe) 6pm. You can't see the entire water display from the bridge but you can see a large part of it and with the Burj Khalifa behind it, you have the perfect 'New Dubai' backdrop. Down near the Fountain is a great place for lunch, especially with visitors, but just make sure to choose a different restaurant or have some drinks and mezze at Zahr El-Laymoun and then move on.

Dubai Restaurant Review: Saladicious, Jumeirah

In a nutshell: Friendly staff, bright colourful decor but disappointing salads.

2/5

As the name suggests, Saladicious offers a long list of different salads - plus homemade soups, sandwiches and main courses such as grilled salmon. Sadly the 'delicious' part that the name eludes to remains elusive. I would expect that a restaurant that is focussed on salads would provide Dubai's most amazing variety and choice of them. Unfortunately, Saladicious does not deliver and if a great salad is what you're looking for then I would recommend going to either Zest in the Ibn Battuta food court where you will find a fabulous salad selection which allows you to select exactly what you want in your salad and what dressing or to Paul's Cafe where there is a truly delicious range of mixed salads.

I ordered a crispy prawn salad with mixed lettuce, mango and wakame (a type of seaweed). It was only when I left and was thinking about this article that I realised there had been no wakame in the salad at all! I didn't count how many slithers of mango I had, but I would estimate there were maybe 6 small slices and the rest of the salad was just lettuce. In France I will happily eat a bowl of lettuce because the dressing they put on it is so tasty (no matter where you eat) but there was no dressing at all on mine. This is partly my fault because I had asked for the dressing to be on the side since it was a chilli dressing and I told the waiter I was concerned it would be too hot for me. What I would have done in his position would have been to bring my guest a bit of the dressing to try and if the guest didn't like it then I would have suggested an alternative. But that's just me. The prawns were extremely generous - 2 skewers of jumbo prawns - and they were succulent and fresh. If only the salad had matched up to them.

The other meals around the table were equally mundane. My Mum had a chicken liver salad and although she said the liver was nice (I took her word for it since you couldn't pay me to eat liver!), it was also served on a big bowl of lettuce with no other salad items and barely any dressing. One of the other's in our party had a salad nicoise which had the requisite tuna, beans, potatoes, tomatoes etc. but each item was placed in a small pile and there was no dressing - it looked completely unappetising. One of the nicest salad nicoise I've had has been at Paul's where there was, yes, a divine dressing on it and it was all tossed together with the tuna broken over the top so that it not only looked good but tasted great. I think Saladicious could learn a few things about how to make salads by visiting them.

Apart from the disappointing food, the decor of the restaurant is bright and airy and for a cup of coffee and a pastry it would be a nice place to sit and have a chat with friends. If you want to check it out for yourself then you'll find it behind The One on Jumeirah Beach Road, if you turn towards the carpark of The One but continue straight down the road you will see it on the left side underneath an apartment building. You've been warned though...don't bother with the salads!

Dubai Restaurant Review: Outback Steakhouse, Dubai Festival City

In a nutshell: Pseudo-Australian diner-style restaurant with mediocre food and service

2/5

Festival City is not a mall I go to very often but when I do it always leaves me with a sense of frustration. I like an easy to navigate shopping centre, which is a category DFC doesn't fall into since the area with all the restaurants is split up so that you can't walk along one corridor and see everything that's on offer - the restaurants seem to encompass the corridor so you need to go outside the mall and enter another set of doors for each section. Very strange and annoying when you are hungry and just want to sit down. I almost gave up and plumped down in Japengo, but for the sake of Bon Appetit! I wanted to try somewhere new.

The Outback Steakhouse is just down from the fast food court and apart from the name and decor of digeredoos and pictures of Australia, it is basically the same as a Chilis (not a good thing in my opinion). In terms of cost that means it is very reasonable - Dhs 72 for a steak including 2 sides and a sauce - but in terms of quality of meal I suppose the old adage 'you get what you pay for' holds true. We were initially impressed with the menu due to the prices, plus there were some original items such as an appetiser of spinach & artichoke dip, fried coconut prawns and a whole fried onion split out like a huge flower. However, numerous dishes included Monterey Jack Cheese which is extremely American and there was a New York cheesecake but I wasn't unduly worried.

The cranberry juice was a cheap, sickly-sweet one that I could barely drink (I really believe restaurants should only sell Ocean Spray) and Simon's Berry Freeze was a mixture of packeted juices - no comparison to the fresh juices of Japengo. Our shared starter of grilled prawns came on a bed of roasted cherry tomatoes. For Dhs 38 we had a grand total of 6 tiny little prawns, all liberally seasoned with cajun spices. The flavour wasn't bad but the portion size was disappointing. Our main courses then arrived, quickly followed by a look of disgust from me.

My sweet potato hadn't been scrubbed so it still had those strange strands that grow on sweet potatoes on it! Instead of butter on the potato, they had put some sort of whipped cream with cinnamon and the sauce (luckily on the side) was really sweet as well - sweet and savoury...NO NO NO. My steak should have been cooked medium-well done but was so overdone that it was bone dry and the spices that had been rubbed into the steak were quite hot on the palate, plus the steak had that strong meaty taste that it gets when it's been previously frozen. In a word...dreadful. Simon's meal fared better than mine as he had ordered a combo of chicken with coconut prawns. The prawns were the size I would have expected our starter ones to have been and he said you could really taste the coconut in the batter and the chicken was coated with melted cheese which gave it moisture and flavour. It didn't blow him away, but it was edible.

Throughout our meal a multitude of staff seemed to congregate together by the main cash till and it seemed there were only a couple of waiters actually bothering to look after the diners. Our waiter, Ahmed, was very friendly and efficient but the same can't be said of his colleagues. My impression was that there was a real hierarchy so when we asked a 'supervisor' for the bill, he didn't clear our plates since that wasn't his job and I had to ask him to take them away when he brought us the bill. The place was full of families with children and for them it would probably be a step up from Burger King, but you certainly won't be seeing me there again. Try it at your own risk!

Dubai Restaurant Review: Chop Chop, Mall of the Emirates

In a nutshell: lukewarm food, not quite fresh fish and no discount!

2/5

I wanted to try something different from my usual Japengo's so decided to try Chop Chop since the menu looked really nice. The restaurant is right next to the ski slope in Mall of the Emirates but it faces away from the snow which I found a little strange. I ate here a few years ago when they were having a ventilation problem (so I left stinking of food) but they seem to have fixed that now. It is open onto the mall concourse - same as most of the restaurants - so you can people-watch as you eat.

As the name suggests, Chop Chop is a Chinese restaurant. It is owned by the same group that owns Biella and sadly this experience was on a par with that disastrous one! They have an extensive tea menu, with the tea served in little Chinese teapots. A nice touch but the service lacked a smile and whilst the staff weren't rude, they were clearly just doing their job and that was it. We started with crispy spinach with carmelised cashew nuts. Sounded great, but there was a huge mound of crispy spinach and only a tiny sprinkle of nuts.

Mum and I both decided to go for the red snapper: mine steamed and hers crispy with a black bean sauce. The crispy one had vegetables cooked with it, the steamed one was literally just the fish in a sauce - luckily we had ordered stir-fry vegetables to go with it. As I picked up my first mouthful of fish I thought it smelled very fishy (fresh fish really has no smell and it certainly doesn't smell strongly of fish), then that it tasted strange. After sniffing at it for a while (maybe I was a dog in a past life since I seem to have such a sensitive nose!) I decided the smell was like smoked fish and that it was definitely not fresh. I sent it back and ordered sweet & sour prawns instead since I needed something quickly and prawns cook in minutes. The prawns were actually very nice with mango and pineapple mixed in with them, however they weren't hot. If they had just come out of the wok then how could they not be 'burning your mouth hot'? Mum's snapper was also not piping hot and we couldn't understand how. Is it all pre-made and they just warm it up in the microwave?

Real Chinese food shouldn't pose any problems to me in terms of intolerances. However, this food all seemed very much the fast food variety with packeted sauces full of wheat and MSG. The sauce on both the crispy snapper and the prawns tasted really good, but I just got a strong feeling that the kitchen had not made those sauces from scratch. I didn't suffer any negative consequences from eating them but I wouldn't go there again. The one good thing I took away from the meal was the idea of cooking prawns with pineapple and mango - lovely combination.

When we ordered the bill I expected that my meal would at least have been taken off, by which I mean the snapper (of course since it was off) and the prawns as a gesture of goodwill / apology. I was wrong. The snapper had been taken off (there would have been a real scene if it hadn't) but nothing else had. I didn't say anything but thought this was a prime example of the lack of customer service evident throughout the restaurant. The manager did come to apologise about the fish but a gesture - even offering us a free dessert or tea/coffee - would have gone a long way.

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!!

The Retreat, Premier Inn DIP

In a nutshell: tasty food but very smoky atmosphere
2/5

Premier Inn has a bar and restaurant chain in each of its hotels: The Retreat is the bar and Bedouinn's is the restaurant (don't know why they have such a strange spelling for the word bedouin though!) We live 5 minutes from the Dubai Investments Park hotel (and I used to work there) so we’ve eaten there quite a number of times. The Retreat is a sports bar with big TV screens dotted around the walls, although the seating lends it a more lounge-y feel. They also have a great outside terrace and used to have a weekly BBQ before the weather got too hot. Although the décor is attractive, there is just something about it that gives it a ‘hotel cookie-cutter’ feeling as opposed to being funky or stylish, it’s hard to put a finger on though.

For the last 2 years, the menu has never changed but finally a new menu has just been launched which is a great improvement. The bar menu is extremely limited but they were happy to serve food from the restaurant in the bar as well so we ordered off that menu instead (although it is also not extensive). There are special offers for fixed price multi-course lunches and dinners which make eating there that little bit more wallet-friendly. They also had special offers of buckets of chicken and platters of loaded potato skins for the World Cup.

I saw they had “French-style” steak and chips so I ordered that and the cut of meat was very much the ‘entrecôte’ cut you would get at a café in France. It tasted really good except that I’d ordered it medium-well done and although half the steak was medium-well done, the other half was medium-rare; good job I can eat bloody meat or it would have ruined the meal. Simon had their burger and he said it was one of the best he’d eaten! Soft bread and juicy meat.

We've always found the service extremely slow but it was pretty quick that night, another improvement it would seem. The only negative I found was that I didn’t hear anyone except the managers use any guest names. I used to work in the hotel and the waiting staff didn’t even use my name so what hope is there for anyone else?! As a regular guest, being greeted by name is a real ‘wow’ factor and it would be nice to see the team making the effort to learn and remember those names.

The biggest (and I mean HUGE) negative point was that the manager has decided to allow smoking in The Retreat during the World Cup. I’ve become so used to being able to go out for dinner or a drink without coming home reeking of cigarettes that it was a real shock entering such a smoke-filled room. I’m sure he has his reasons – although I would seriously question their validity, could it be that because he smokes he wanted to be able to sit at the bar and have a cigarette himself? Hmmm.

If I was rating The Retreat purely on the food, taking into account this is a sports bar and not a fine dining restaurant, then the score would be 3/5 for the meal we had (the underdone steak causing the lower score). However, the whole meal experience was ruined by that fact smoking is allowed and I wouldn’t go back for dinner again – maybe I’ll give it a second chance once the football is over. In terms of price it was reasonable – my steak was under Dhs 100 – and during the World Cup select drinks are only Dhs 25 (previously a beer was a very steep Dhs 36) so hopefully they’ll keep that reduced drinks price to go with the improved menu!