Dubai: Fed up with the usual flavors and toppings? Got loads of money? Then the 3rd Avenue Café at Dubai Mall may just have the pizza for you.
The extravagant wood-fired, gold-leaf lobster and truffle pizza is called Astice e Tartufo and costs a whopping Dh459, making it the second most expensive pizza in the world after a Dh560 signature pizza at Gordon Ramsey’s Maze restaurant in London.
But Third Avenue Café’s Italian chef, Fabrizio Pellegrini, 34, is hardly apologetic about the steep price. “This is a signature dish made of very expensive ingredients sourced from Europe, so it cannot be cheap. The blue lobster, for instance, is from France, not from Omani or Canadian waters. It costs Dh200 per kg and weighs 700gm. The cherry tomatoes are from Sicily, as are the truffle and asparagus. And then there’s the gold leaf.”
But why couldn’t he buy the tomatoes and asparagus locally?
“The difference would have been like day and night. It’s almost impossible to match the nutrient richness of Italian vegetables and fruits with those produced elsewhere. I am saying this as a chef, not as a patriotic Italian. Because if that were the case I would have purchased the meat from Italy as well. For that it’s always France,” says Pellegrini, who previously worked at the Armani Café.
Since it opened last December, the plush restaurant has won many customers, mostly Emiratis.
Astice-eTartufo is not their best-seller, of course, “We sell around 4-5 a week,” says Pellegrini.
Among the more affordable pizzas are Margherita (fresh cherry tomato, buffalo mozzarella and fresh basil, Dh59), Tonno e cipolle (tomato, olive oil tuna, red onions and black olives, Dh79) and a Dh89 camel pizza, flavoured Arabic style and topped with mozzarella cheese. The exhaustive menu has no Alfredo Chicken. “It has no place on our menu simply because it’s not Italian,” says Pellegrini.
Promoted as a combination of three European tastes in one sophisticated venue, the 220-seat restaurant is on the first floor of the mall’s fashion avenue and has fantastic views of the Dubai Fountain from the terrace.‘
