Worth its salt

I've been doing restaurant reviews for years now at tabloid!, but the Hilton Jumeirah's Italian restaurant Bice represented several firsts for me, the main one being: I was discovered.

tabloid! does all its reviews anonymously, including the one we did at Bice recently. Yet halfway through the meal, both my colleague and I sensed that something was afoot. A chat with the manager at the end of the meal confirmed it. He knew we were reviewing, but what irked us most was how. "I know the signs," he told us cryptically.

We were furious - with ourselves. We could only applaud the staff's incredible attention to detail and almost supernatural understanding of their customers.

That attention to detail - in addition to some superbly executed Italian dishes - was what I loved about Bice. The crammed trolleys of cheeses, seafood, desserts - even an alchemist's trove of olive oils - reminded me of the smart restaurants I would be taken to as a child, usually wearing a sailor-girl dress I was wrestled into by my mother. The oil trolley, wheeled round to us along with a variety of breads at the start of the meal was staggering in its variety: we were recommended a fruity, punchy Italian oil, a spicy chilli-infused one and - dreamy! - a long drizzle of heady truffle oil.

While we dipped (and double-dipped), the seafood trolley - one of summer's centrepieces at Bice - came around, heaving with peachy langoustines, shiny-eyed seabass and a majestic, still wriggling lobster. It certainly beats those glum, lonely fish you see in tanks at some restaurants - everything was glitteringly ocean-fresh. We selected a seabass, to be encased in salt and baked, for our main course.

For our starters, we selected from the summer prestige menu, where I found what is probably one of my favourite starters in history. I do not exaggerate. Plump scallops, seared to perfection and sliced in two, and layered on top of grilled asparagus. So far, so good: top ingredients, cooked perfectly. Except the asparagus is topped with grilled cheese! Salty, stretchy, slightly crisp - like the best toasted cheese sandwich you've ever had. Then there's the shower of truffle over the top - can't knock that. What takes this into the stratosphere for me is a really under used ingredient that I love, and never expected to see here: stem ginger. It's preserved ginger in syrup, sweet and spicy, and adds a pop of surprise to this dish. Don't be put off: you have to try it to believe it. And please do, even if you go to Bice for this one dish.

My colleague's lobster salad was a study in seafood simplicity: the lobster meat (which I often think is overrated) was served slightly warm, not tooth-chillingly cold as usually is the case, and there's heaps and heaps of it.

My pasta dish, a gigantic lobster ravioli had silken pasta sheets encasing the chunks of meat, bathed in a richly flavoured, yet lightly textured seafood sauce. But I quickly became jealous of my colleague's spinach and ricotta ravioli, ping-pong-ball sized, extremely rich dumplings in a truffle cream sauce.

Our main course was classy simplicity, as all good fish dishes really are. The technique of baking whole fish is used regularly in Milan, where the original Bice is situated, and sea bass is usually the fish of choice. The waiter brings the fish, encased in its hard, snowy carapace, uncovers the sweet flesh - which is not at all salty - and piles it on plates with potatoes and steamed vegetables. In Milan I had this will deep-fried shreds of courgette, which I missed here - steamed vegetables are a little too school canteen for me.

We found room for cheese (just a couple of slices of a young pecorino) and the trio of desserts they brought us (try the ice cream).

I went back a couple of weeks later to try that starter again, just to be sure (all for you, dear reader). It was just as surprising and delicious, and this time, I'm sure my cover wasn't blown.