Dubai: The first thing that strikes you as you walk into the Metro restaurant at Deira’s Hues Boutique Hotel is the cool ambience of the place. Modern and contemporary in look, the frosty white-coloured walls and the black and white furniture exude a sense of serenity. The soft lighting adds to the tranquil mood.
Accompanied by a colleague, I was there to check out the all-day buffet. A staff told me that Metro has the ‘all-day dining’ tag because it’s open from 6.30am until 10pm and offers buffet breakfast, lunch, dinner and also a la carte options for those who are buffet-shy. The buffet menu changes daily.
But on this day, the cuisine was Mediterranean. The spread looked attractive and featured an array of dishes from the Mediterranean region. So it was no surprise to find items such as paella, medallions of salmon in saffron gravy, chicken with tarragon sauce and Greek salad, besides varieties from the Levantine areas.
And if you’re a fussy eater and find the spread not enticing enough, you could always ask the chef to whip up something from the menu card. Metro also organises special theme days wherein the entire outlet and the cuisine reflect the theme.
As we walked towards the buffet table, chef Mohammad stopped us in our tracks and urged us to wait awhile as he picked a few of his specialities for us.
We started our lunch with a cool mint and lemonade drink. I found the green-coloured, minty concoction, served with lots of crushed ice, extremely refreshing and an ideal choice to beat the heat.
Next we tried the cream of mushroom soup. The rich, creamy preparation was strong on taste and a variation of the regular, smooth cream of mushroom.
After this, we dug into the chef’s special: grilled beef tenderloin stuffed with spinach and corn for me, and a spicy Asian vegetable curry for my colleague who has sworn off non-vegetarian food for quite sometime now. The grilled meat was succulent with the veggie stuffing blending well with it. The dish was accompanied by new potatoes tossed in parsley and butter and a demi glace sauce (brown gravy).
The vegetable curry with its creamy, nutty gravy tasted like a variation of the popular Indian navarattan korma minus the fruits and nuts. My colleague was pleased anyway.
Following this, I tried some items from the buffet spread including paella, grilled salmon in saffron cream and the medallion of chicken in tarragon gravy. The taste was satisfactory, nothing extraordinary though.
However, I found the salad section quite interesting. Featuring a wide choice including chicken liver terrine, mezze, fattoush, hommous, mutabal, tabouleh, German potato and Russian salad and grilled veggies with feta cheese, this section had ample variety.
Plus there was also a variety of dips and sauces to go along, such as Arab dressing (olive oil with lemon), blue cheese dip, thai dip, mustard and honey sauce, and more.
For dessert we tried the Boston cheesecake and the velvet tiramisu. The cake was yum. Soft and spongy, the cheese was delicately blended and delicious enough to encourage you to go for more. A sweet ending indeed to our ‘Metro ride’!
