Abu Dhabi: ‘Walk into a hotel and dine at home’ is essentially what you experience at Le Royal Meridien’s newest culinary edition, Market Kitchen.
Laid back beige casual couches, roof to floor storage shelves dotted with kitchen trinkets, bench-top counters, timber flooring, cozy lighting – the comfort level will immediately make you feel at home. An olive tree perched right in the middle of the restaurant adds to the courtyard feel and completes the ‘hotel as home’ idea conceptualised by French celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Reinterpretation
The Market Kitchen menu is inspired by the classic Jean-Georges Vongerichten cuisine featuring fresh, bold ingredients used to reinvent a local flavour. Restaurant manager Bruno said their menu is all about reinventing.
For instance, try this. Grilled jumbo Gulf shrimps served with avocado, papaya mustard and cumin honey. A typical local produce gets a complete reinterpretation with a fruity accompaniment of papaya laced with sweet overtones of mustard and honey.
Likewise, the crisply fried calamari are topped with pickled chilies and pea greens and served with lemon rosemary dip. This unique permutation of flavours will endear the dish even to the most reluctant seafood eater.
“We do emphasise local produce. But a French or American dish can taste amazingly unique because we may use a different ingredient that is more readily available locally,” Bruno said.
As if to drum home the point, he served us a heart warmer of a sweet pea soup that was topped with parmesan foam and sourdough croutons. The menu features five categories: Simply Raw, Appetisers, Soups & Salads, Entrees, Simply Cooked with sauces and sides. You can choose from oysters, salmon tartare or crispy sushi from the Simply Raw section. Another interesting looking dish features a beetroot red tuna resting on a crust of crispy rice with chipotle emulsion. And it tastes as good as it looks.
For pizza lovers, the Black truffle pizza will be a revelation of sorts. Imagine a thin dough generously coated with black truffle paste topped with Fontina cheese and baked to perfection and served with frisée salad and truffle vinaigrette.
Coming to the mains, what blew me off was the slow-cooked salmon served on a bed of mashed potatoes and garnished with sugar snap peas and truffle vinaigrette. The salmon was soft and could be savoured on its own. The sweet and sour potato puree added a distinct flavour to the fish. The Simply Cooked section allows you to take your pick from salmon, lobster, chicken, or beef and also choose the sauce and side dish. I recommend the grilled grass-fed Welsh lamb chops with black pepper jam and soy-miso mustard sauce. Side dishes include creamed herbal spinach, grilled asparagus or Truffled Macaroni.
We wrapped up our meal with a warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, and a cheese-cake with crispy vanilla tuile tube filled with whipped cream, sour cherry sorbet and topped with glazed cherry compote. Time to go home? Well, if home is where your heart is, then that should be the last thought to occur while at Market Kitchen.
Details:
Meal for two: Dh250-Dh350
Location: Le Royal Meridein, Shaikh Khalifa Bridge, Abu Dhabi
Timing: Noon-11pm (daily); 7-11pm Sun-Thu; Fri, Sat until midnight
Contact: 02-674 2020
We recommend: Grilled jumbo shrimps, Black truffle pizza and slow-cooked salmon with mashed potato
