Dubai: It's rare to find a restaurant of the finest quality with live music that makes you want to get up and dance, but with food too tempting to ditch for the dance floor.
My last such experience ended in a salsa frenzy in the midst of dinner, a month ago. This time, with a jazz band playing their tunes at the far end of the restaurant, my partner and I made our way through the dimly lit American grill and bar West 14th restaurant on Palm Jumeirah.
While there was no denying that beef was going to be a large part of our menu, we still wanted to give the seafood and vegetables a fair chance. As a result, our mixed bag of starters, as recommended by Chef Edi, was enticing, engaging and epicurean enough to build up our hopes for the main.
We started our evening with a cold Tataki Stile Beef Carpaccio and Sticky Calamari.
One bite of the calamari and all my preconceived notions of being unable to consume chilli, not liking nuts with my foods, the squid not being cooked to perfection, disappeared.
The caramelised sugar and chilli, mixed with roasted nuts gave the dish its crunch and stickiness, making it spicy without attacking the tear ducts. But it was the Tataki Stile Carpaccio that had me at the gates of gourmet heaven. Drizzled in a warm soya-Ponzu dressing, the finely sliced beef was packed with flavour, each mouthful taking me further into my love affair with the soya-Ponzu flavour.
But it wasn't yet time to get carried away: The mains were yet to come. And little did I realise the enormity of that statement until it was too late.
My partner's order of the Tomahawk Steak was a surprise beyond measure. Billed as "a man's choice" on the menu, we were assured that the Black Angus hormone-free Australian Ranger's Valley steak came from a 300-day grain-fed cow.
Foolishly laughing off the warning, we went ahead and ordered the Tomahawk anyway, as well as the halibut for me. My white fish atop a herb risotto cake, softened in leek butter and lobster bisque, paled in comparison to the aptly named Tomahawk, a larger version of the French bone-in rib-eye. Weighing 1.3kg and measuring 40cm in length, with over 550 grams of pure meat, the Tomahawk was a challenge. To my partner's credit, he spent the next hour meticulously working his way through nearly 400 gms of the meat.
All that meat later, I wasn't so sure dessert was a good idea any more. However, a couple of twirls to the jazz, and we'd whipped up an appetite to indulge ourselves with some sweet nothings. Although the mango and lemon sorbet seemed the most refreshing choice on the menu, Chef Edi's disappointed face meant we needed to tuck into something slightly more substantial: such as West 14th signature cheesecake. The rich creamy taste of the white chocolate, combined with bourbon vanilla sour and mascarpone came with a medical dripper oozing liquid white chocolate.
If I had the ability to move after such an epic meal, the jazz strains from the band would have pulled me back to the dance area. Instead, I was content to listen to the tunes, my eyes half shut, dreaming of my next meal at this island steakhouse.
Meal for two: Dh749
