The open-view kitchen is starting to get busy, with the chefs rushing to get orders out as the customers started coming in groups.
I am at Rivington Bar & Grill at Souk Madinat Jumeirah. A group of women in party dresses saunter in, taking a table next to mine. They look like they are headed to the bar on the upper floor after having their dinner here. At a corner, a family is celebrating a teenager’s birthday.
As the space filled up with customers, so did the sound of excited conversations and the occasional burst of hearty laughter from each table. It feels loud but alive.
My companion and I give up on the idea of a quiet conversation. You simply don’t come to Rivington Bar & Grill for just dinner. As their motto suggests, you come to “Live. Love. Laugh.”
A waiter promptly approached the table and handed us the menu. There are some salads, grilled meat and seafood selections.
To start, we ordered the crispy baby squid with cornish salt (Dh55) and the roasted scallops (Dh95). My roasted scallops with cherry tomato dressing were divine, but I had a bout of food envy as my companion’s crispy baby squid was served with devilled tomato mayonnaise. It was calamari delight and it was simply appetizing.
For our main course, we had to try the restaurant’s specialty rib eye steak (Dh260) with meat from Black Angus cattle grain fed for 250 days. My steak was 300g and it was beautifully served well done and well-flavoured, with a side dish of creamy mashed potato and a large, grilled Portobello mushroom. I hardly touched the Bearnaise sauce that was served with the steak since it was already full of flavour.
For dessert, we ordered the sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream (Dh40) and cheesecake (Dh35). The crunchy cheesecake with warm chocolate sauce was a winner, but so was the pudding. They were just the right amount of sweet.
Finally, when it was time to head out, we passed by the open-view kitchen again, and unexpectedly one of the chefs looked up, smiled and said, “Thanks for coming! Have a wonderful evening.” In my book, this loud but lively place deserves another visit.
