Dubai restaurant review: Mahiki — come for the food, stay for the music

It’s a favourite of high-flying Londoners and royals, and since it moved to the UAE last year, Mahiki has not wasted any time in finding fans, with queues of club-entry hopefuls leading out the door on most nights. Most of these platform-heeled partygoers are headed there to try the cocktails, which come served in varying sizes, from a mug in the shape of a Polynesian dancer’s head, to a large shell, up to a treasure chest. What they might not know is that before the dial on the DJ booth gets turned up to “party”, it’s actually a pretty good restaurant.

Mahiki is a Polynesian-themed club, bar and restaurant, but don’t expect too many South Pacific specials here, although seafood and fish dishes, such as a tuna tartare, do make a good showing. The menu is really a shortlist of premium ingredients (truffle, wagyu beef, heirloom tomatoes) in modern and often tasty combinations. For example, what drew me to the restaurant was the advertised truffle egg toast (Dh75). Not exactly something you’d expect to find on a club menu; in fact it sounds like the brunch dish of my dreams. It lived up to expectations — a hefty slice of country bread with a runny egg in the middle and a thick, crispy layer of nutty gruyere cheese, carpeted with black truffle shavings. I’d eat 10, although my ability to dance to Bananarama’s Venus later might be affected. Also scoring high were the sliders (Dh95). Like most things at Mahiki, the dish was well-executed, each flavour given its due. Consisting of three mini burgers — chicken with pineapple chutney, lamb with mint-pea puree, beef with a quail’s egg — the plate was a filling meal, especially with the triple-fried chips (Dh40) served with rosemary salt (the aioli that also came alongside was lacking in the promised garlic, although that may not be a bad thing in a club). The lamb burger, which is actually slices of medium-rare roast, is the standout. Crab cakes (Dh75) are gigantic spheres stuffed with meat and a good level of spice.

Not scoring as high was the wagyu beef satay (Dh260). Slices of hot, rare beef sat atop a very cold noodle salad with long shreds of carrot that were rather inelegant to eat. The cold-hot thing didn’t work, and the dish as a whole was lacking in flavour and left me wishing I’d chosen the tuna tartare. This number of dishes was plenty to feed two hungry adults, and dinner here comes with an added benefit: those booking a table get to keep it after dinner, and food counts towards the table spend requirement (a good idea, as the club often sells out). Saturday nights have a live Cuban jazz band during dinner service.

Where: Mahiki, Jumeriah Beach Hotel, Dubai. Call 04-3807731

Decor: Where Jack Sparrow goes to drown his sorrows

Atmosphere: It’s a restaurant in a nightclub. Cheesy tunes on demand — in every sense.

Must-have: Truffle egg toast

Rating 3.5 bowls