If they can build an indoor ski slope with 6,000 tons of snow on it, and grow vast, garish gardens, all in blistering parched desert, then why shouldn’t Dubai invite the world’s greatest chef to put his name to a restaurant where each ingredient has to be airlifted in from a very specific region of France, twice a week?
It may – for many – come somewhat low down the list of reasons to dislike it, but Dubai is not a destination for those wary of food miles. Think, then, of Pierre Gagnaire’s Middle East outpost as farm to table, but with substantial frequent flyer privileges.
“These arrived today,” averred our waiter, as two impressively robust and verdant pieces of Pertuis asparagus were paraded around our table in a basket, then whisked away to be turned into something peculiar, but quite amazing, involving whipped burrata ice cream (with lime and Jacquesson champagne), served with a glass of white Taylor’s port. This was the fourth course of a long evening’s seven-course (ish – it never works out that way, does it?) tasting menu.
Given his style of cooking and the intellectual rigour that goes into every aspect of every dish, I’m sure Gagnaire was making a deeply cerebral point about texture here, but for me clingfilm is clingfilm
As a salvo, an array of amuses-bouches was served, inexplicably, on taut clingfilm, wrapped around the top of a golden bowl. Given his style of cooking and the intellectual rigour that goes into every aspect of every dish, I’m sure Gagnaire was making a deeply cerebral point about texture here, but for me clingfilm is clingfilm. We were nonplussed. No matter, these were still impossibly clever, surprising mouthfuls and flavours: marshmallow with tandoori spices; fresh apple with paprika; squid ink… And bread, of course, served with citrus as well as plain butter. Dish after dish followed: rock lobster in a lightning-fresh lemongrass and verbena consommé and fruit-scented oil; red mullet with comté cheese; pigeon with mustard and avocado tart. In many cases, ingredients were impossible to identify, transformed in Gagnaire’s kitchen into Something Else Entirely. Gagnaire may be the greatest, and certainly most influential, of all molecular chefs. But it’s never just technique for technique’s sake.
This is, by all accounts – and in my limited experience to date – the best restaurant in Dubai. But you have to be in the mood for it. It’s showy, but not the place for a big, noisy, business dinner. The food may (still) be avant-garde, but the ambience is romantic, or as romantic as things get in this city: every few minutes a dinner cruiser floats past outside, lit up in neon outlines. This is a place that’s all about the food, and this is food so good, and so meticulously and ingeniously prepared, that it would still be justified at twice the price (which would, in case you’re wondering, be about £350 a head).
The room here – hidden away somewhere within the pleasing but vanilla corporate sheen of the Intercontinental Hotel in Festival City – is jam on jam: there’s a thick, electric raspberry carpet, and gothic leather Le Dome chairs. There’s a lot of silver, and mirroring, and there are violet Murano glass chandeliers. “It reminds me of a sophisticated gay bar in Manchester,” said my dining companion, who, as it turns out, used to work in a sophisticated gay bar in Manchester.
I could see his point, but it’s nicer than that suggests. I could do without the flower petals scattered along the hallway, but I liked the narrowing mirrored entrance to the toilets, which smacked a little of the visual anarchy of Sketch –Gagnaire’s London outpost. I wished there was more of that kind of clever chaos here. The room – peculiarly underpopulated on my visit, given its reputation – suggests something luxurious but safe, which the food absolutely isn’t.
It would be tiresome to pick apart all of Gagnaire’s magic over the umpteen dishes that I had, but there were some things that warrant special attention: a small mushroom crêpe, rich with a Jura wine, was outstandlingly lush. The aforementioned burrata dish with asparagus was – while oversized – magic. It was also a little weird, but then what would an evening of Pierre Gagnaire dining be without a little weirdness? He’s the king of the unexpected, fiddling with temperatures as well as textures and the index of the taste thesaurus.
And clingfilm, apparently.
The most impressive dish of the evening was a watercress soup: green – obviously – but almost supernaturally bright in shade, and singing with umami. There was a lot going on – “chantilly of caviar from Aquitaine… perfumed cockles velouté… cubes of Manzanilla and Pata Negra” – but the flavours were focused and perfectly balanced in an act of culinary alchemy. This was a dish with a real life force to it. De-bloody-licious.
And to finish? Le Grand Dessert de Pierre Gagnaire. Just when you think you’ve had enough, and you’re wondering whether you can manage even the smallest dessert, out come six, all at once, in pots and on plates and in jars. They’re all delicious – particularly the chocolaty, salty, caramel little number in a martini glass – but, like the clingfilm and the fiddling with temperatures elsewhere, it’s the abundance that seems to be the point here. It leaves a strong, perhaps confrontational impression. Gagnaire’s food is so much more than the sum of its parts. C
Reflets par Pierre Gagnaire, InterContinental Hotel, Dubai Festival City, Festival City, Dubai
04 701 1111; diningdfc.com