Life & Style | Food
In the best taste
What better way to spend a chilly winter's evening than sampling delights at the Taste of Dubai? As we bunny hop from one goal to another, what is it that makes us stop and stare?
- By Anupa Kurian, Readers Editor
- Published: 00:45 February 10, 2008
What better way to spend a chilly winter's evening than sampling delights at the Taste of Dubai?
We live, work and aspire. Some seek fame, some love, for most it is money. All very true but what about the in-betweens?
As we bunny hop from one goal to another, what is it that makes us stop and stare?
I am not very sure about the vast majority, but know for certain that for a significant few it would be a giant billboard featuring some kind of food or another.
At least, in my case the Wordsworthian moment is reserved for images of all things edible.
I know, it has been said that we are much more than what we eat, but it cannot be disagreed that good food makes us sublime. I seek forgiveness from Adelle Davis.
The world of culinary joy suffers from no discrimination or prejudice — it is my universe.
So, on Wednesday night, with a skip and hop I was off to the Taste of Dubai festival in my pumpkin carriage.
The destination was the Dubai Media City amphitheatre, which is a stretch of shag-pile grass sloping into a manmade lake with the occasional wooden bridge curving across.
Dellas
At 9.30pm, as icy fingers tugged at my spine, I shivered along the winding path to the festival entrance to collect my food currency or "dellas".
A bit of a nifty trick that, because when you buy food for four dellas and cheer at the single digit number, you forget that one della is equivalent to Dh5.
Who wants to be plagued by thoughts of the cost of living when scooping up creamy, warm risotto near the firelight?
Flush with 30 dellas, I marched on, ready to be made acutely aware of all that is great and glorious about fine dining in 14 of the top restaurants in the city.
Taste Festivals were first held in London. It has now moved on to Dublin, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Johannesburg. Cape Town, Amsterdam, Brussels, Sydney, Cork and Melbourne are expected to follow.
My first stop was The China Club featuring signature dishes by Chef Shiyang Xu "Sunny" — vegetable dim sum and fried chicken balls in sweet and sour sauce, followed by Indego Chef Vineet Bhatia's offering of coconut and truffle lamb korma and gulab jamun.
Heat and balm
The korma was smooth but with enough heat to blow a hole through my head, the gulab jamun in saffron rice pudding acted as a balm.
To further help my cause, I tried the raspberry and vanilla bean trifle from Chef Matt Pickop of Verre by Gordon Ramsay — simple, classic and delicious.
Tents lined one side of the grassy venue while a shisha lounge and cushy red beanbags took up the middle.
A live band at one end and a lone female flautist further down the path added to the ambience.
The only thing that seemed to be rather uncooperative was the weather, as the air clinked with single-figure temperatures.
As I walked with my face in the direction of the firelights, desperate with fear that it would chip off, most seemed oblivious to the cold.
Fusion
They chatted, tasted, sipped, scooped and ate from the wide range of cuisines surrounded by the aroma of sizzling meat, coffee beans and seafood.
My final stop included fusion British and Iranian. White tomato soup and braised beef with caramelised onions by Chef Gary Rhodes of Rhodes Mezzanine was a light, persuasive education for the taste buds.
Jojeh kebab by Chef Heider Shirazi of Shabestan was a bit of what I call "extreme subtle".
Overall, it was an interesting experience that lasted over 90 minutes — a journey of taste that succeeded.
Taste of Dubai ended its four-day run at Dubai Media City last night.
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