UAEssentials | Dining out
Dubai’s first fine dining restaurant
Forty years ago if you wanted fine dining in Dubai you had only one place to go - Venus at Ambassador Hotel
- By Mazhar Farooqui, Deputy Editor
- Published: 00:00 December 1, 2011
- Image Credit: Pankaj Sharma/XPRESS
- From left: Ramesh Whabi, General Manager, Milagres Dias, Kitchen Supervisor, and Kishin Dialani, maintenance in-charge.
DUBAI: Think about eating out and you'll be spoilt for choice.
Dubai has such an abundant wealth of restaurants, there is something to tickle every palate, regardless of budget or taste. But back in the day, the options were fairly limited.
There was just one fine dining restaurant in the entire city - Venus, a quaint little place at the 81-bed Ambassador Hotel near the Creek in Bur Dubai.
"In a sense Ambassador was the first brick in the city's hospitality industry. Venus was its centrepiece. It's here where all the high rollers of the city would flock every evening to enjoy international flavours in the intimate setting with live music. We used to fly in bands from UK, Germany and Denmark. It was so much fun. The restaurant faced the sea and had a great ambience. It was popular among the royals too. So much so that it was chosen over other destinations for a banquet dinner attended by all seven rulers of the emirates," recalls Ramesh A. Whabi, who joined the hotel in 1968 as general manager - a post he holds till this day.
Strict dress code
"The cuisine was mostly European and there was a strict dress code," says another almost equally long-serving employee, Milagres Dias.
As restaurant captain, his responsibility was to ensure that the diners got flawless and expedient service - no mean task considering the stature of the guests who ranged from royals and state heads to oil barons and celebrities.
"At Venus we routinely hosted banquets for royals from both within and outside the country. We have catered food for Princess Anne, former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and even Queen Elizabeth II when she came to Dubai in 1979. It's been a while but it seems like yesterday. We were thrilled as much at the opportunity to serve the Queen as for the new suits that were stitched specially for that occasion," says Dias, who reckons his biggest challenge came in the mid-'70s when Venus was commissioned for a defence gathering to cater for 5,000 people on the outskirts of the city.
Among the many high-profile guests who stayed at Ambassador is oil tycoon and chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller.
"He must have been obviously pleased because he wrote back expressing his gratitude and appreciation," says Whabi, pulling out a typed letter dated 1972, from a file.
"If I say all roads led to Venus it won't be an overstatement. It was the indeed the most popular hangout in town," says another veteran, Kishin Dialani, who has been with the hotel's maintenance department for over four decades now.
Venus has long since shut down. An Indian nightclub called Mela runs at the place where the popular eating joint once thrived.
Laxmichand Lulla who established the hotel passed away a few years back. And Dialani, Dias and Whabi who saw the glory years of Venus are on the verge of retirement after working for the hotel for over 40 years each. Dialani has already decided to bid farewell to Dubai. "I will be leaving for good in January," he said, pleased that he will be carrying back some golden memories.
Fresh eggs were non-existent in 1971 unless you owned chickens. Capitalising on the scarcity, an expat, whose brother owned a chicken farm in London, arranged for fresh eggs to be flown into the city daily on British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) flights from London to Dubai.
