Cynics out there may find it hard to stomach the idea of spending hard-earned money to mark Valentine’s Day for a fancy meal under the stars. They strike off the love-themed day as a smarmy marketing gimmick orchestrated by greeting card companies, but if there’s a restaurant that’s likely to break your resistance then it’s the Valentine’s Day four-course meal served at Royal China at DIFC.
Their crispy aromatic duck with plum sauce, a highlight of their tailored menu, will make your heart flutter, we promise. They had me at the duck’s crackling skin.
But feeling loved up doesn’t come cheap here. Be ready to fork out Dh899 per couple to bite into their delectable Far-Eastern delicacies.
Nowadays being healthy is hot and therefore their starter — seaweed salad garnished with sesame and red chillies — was a great way to ease us into the gastronomic journey ahead. Somehow eating that salad made us less guilty about the indulgent meal that was being served. We washed it down with some berry beverage and we were good to go.
Next up was the Japanese-style crispy cuttlefish, garnished with crab roe. We found food nirvana as we popped these perfectly fried golden globes filled with seafood eggs and squid meat into our mouths.
What we liked was that the dinner wasn’t cloyingly corny. There were no heart-shaped cookies on our arrival, just some spectacularly warm service by restaurant manager Supphattra and team. So, barring the dessert — a heart-shaped mango pudding served on a shell-shaped white plate — there’s little evidence of the meal going down the cheesy route.
The V-day menu seems to have been carefully handpicked to suit the current weather. To warm the cockles of your heart, a small bowl of creamy sweet corn chicken soup materialises in front of us. The consistency and the flavour of the soup was bang on.
From the main course, the star attraction was the diced fillet steak with black pepper sauce. Try it with the chicken fried rice and it’s a union that just makes perfect sense. It’s piquant and that rice-pepper steak combination is the epitome of comfort food.
Our tryst with the second main-course dish — sauteed seafood with cashew-nuts, baby corns, mushrooms served in a bird’s nest — was underwhelming. It was bland and didn’t rock our taste buds.
The third dish, a pan-fried sea bass that needs to be enjoyed after dunking it in spicy soya sauce garnished with chillies fared a lot better. But the magnetic pull came from the perfectly cooked steak in black pepper sauce. It was a knock-out dish of the evening.
While the mango pudding dessert wasn’t overly sweet, it was the appropriate ending to our romantic evening.
If you are in the mood for a no-fuss, but intimate and classy evening then be sure to plan a date in Royal China.
The details
Where: Royal China, Balcony Level 2, Building 4, DIFC
What: Valentine’s Day meal on February 14
Cuisine: Chinese/Far-Eastern
Credit Card: Yes
Cost: Dh899 per couple includes a glass of berry-based beverage for the couple.
