Dubai: The Michelin stars of a restaurant can sometimes warp your mind. Even before you have walked through the door you could be thinking, and perhaps forgiven for doing so, that you are there to love everything about them. At least those were my thoughts on my way to a brunch review recently at the newly launched dual Michelin starred Don Alfonso 1890 in the Shangri La Hotel and I wasn’t quite off the mark.
The venue marries a sleek, modern look and haute cuisine, matching Dubai’s insatiable palate for gourmet dining but it’s their cuisine based on their philosophy of ‘passion, purity and pleasure’ that makes them different. Founded in 1973 by the Alfonso Family in Sant’Agata, South of Italy, Don Alfonso 1890 comes to Dubai after successful and permanent stops in Macau, Marrakesh and Rome (1890 was the year when, at 21, Alfonso Costanzo Iaccarino opened a hotel-restaurant, the precursor to Alfonso 1890. He was the grandfather of Alfonso, the founder of the restaurant).
Their lunch menu centres around what they pride themselves on – a unique culinary experience made of Mediterranean fresh products and organic ingredients. You can order a main course (Dh75) for a quick dine and dash; two courses – starter and main course (Dh105) or main course and dessert (Dh95); or break bread over a lengthier lunch with a starter, main course and dessert (Dh125). Or you could opt for their full three courses and a glass of Italian bubbly for just Dh150.
Getting started
I had the choice between three light starters: a fresh garden greens selections with citrus and lemon dressing, a basil flavoured Caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella, tomato and watermelon and a red tuna tartare, guacamole and tomato sorbet.
However, I was more tempted to try one of their pasta dishes – rigatoni cooked Sicilian style with fried eggplant and topped with loads of mozzarella. The real taste of the dish lay in the chunks of the sautéed eggplant and in hindsight perhaps the reason why I overlooked an equally alluring home made Fettuccini pasta with lamb ragout and rosemary. The sauce cooked in fresh tomatoes and basil made it a perfect vegetarian’s delight.
Seafood lovers meanwhile could try their linguine, a fettuccine-like pasta more elliptical and wider than spaghetti, with shrimps and zucchini cream.
For me it was, however, time to select a main course and I picked their panfried yellow chicken breast over their sea bass cartoccio and beef tagliata. Both sounded exotic no doubt, one cooked Mediterranean style and the other with rucola salad cherry tomatoes and pecorino shavings, but I had decided on the chicken anyway.
I wasn’t disappointed. The thick slices, medium cooked with sautéed mushrooms, red bell pepper and black olives in a lemon confit, it tasted the perfect Mediterranean lunch with their sides – roast potatoes, sautéed green beans and grilled vegetable selections. The chicken could have been softer but full marks on the flavour.
All done, it was time for some dessert – perhaps the most exotic section of the brunch at this contemporary high-end Italian restaurant. The sweet nothings there came in a pistachio and passion fruit cake with strawberry coulis, a basil infused coconut minestrone, fresh fruit and green apple sorbet and a selection of home-made sorbets.
Personally speaking, none excite my taste buds, but acting on friendly advice from one of my fellow diners, I tried their lemon sorbet. Perhaps not my kind of dessert but if you are a lover of the tangy tastes of a frozen fruit (read lemon) purée, then this one’s for you.
Details:
Lunch for two: Dh250-Dh300
Location: Second floor, Shangri-La Hotel, Dubai
Timing: Lunch from 11am –3.30pm
Call: 04-443 8215
