FAMISHED EXPLORER

I had heard about this place since a long time and despite it not being too far from my house, I hadn't visited, until this day. We were just in bastakiya and decided to go here for lunch. The decor is lovely and is definitely insta-worthy. They have used a blue and white theme with plants giving a Greek feel to it. They have some nice Arabic dishes and we chose one of the classics - a chicken shawarma . It was served hot and the quantity was generous. It was cut into small pieces. We then had the Saloona which is chicken (or choice of lamb) cooked with tomato, potato, lentils and spices. The chicken was really soft, and the gravy was tangy. Along with it they also gave rice, bread, and salad. The quantity of the above two was quite a bit. It would make more sense to reduce the price a tad bit and give a smaller quantity so that people can try a wider variety of dishes. I also liked the glasses that they serve water in. Gave an old and traditional feel to it. ...

This is one the the most classy and upmarket Emirati restaurant that I've come across in recent times.  It is located in the Denim district in Dubai Mall, and they invited me to try out their food.  As soon as you enter, you'll see the lovely decor - the chandeliers, the mirrors - it's glittery, though not tacky. They also have a customized stand for cutlery, as well as one for the menu which is on an iPad.  They got us the complimentary bread and the chickpeas while we decided what to order from their vast and tempting menu.  We started with the kashk badmejan . This is a paste of eggplant and chick peas mixed with saffron, onion, and kish. It is topped with crispy fried onion. I took one bite of this and totally loved it, but my friend didn't like it at all. I think you need to have a taste developed for this one, and then only you'll like it. The next item was the Pizza Mbahar Deyay . It wasn't exactly a pizza, but something like a calzo...

Given the name, one might think that they mostly serve only karak tea, but they're definitely much more than that.  I had been here a few times before, but all I had was tea; this time though they invited me to try out a lot more items from their menu and I was pleasantly surprized when they turned out to be really yummy.  We started with one of their mocktails (which have interesting names). It was the bubble gum mini cooper . From the name it might sound like a shake, but it isn't. This is an orange based drink which has a flavour of bubble gum; and was quite good.  We moved on to the starters that they're famous for - no points for guessing - the rigag. I can loosely define rigag as an Arabic dish that is made from extremely thin filo dough, something like the Indian dosa. It can be had with different fillings - sweet as well as savoury.  We tried one of their hot-sellers which was the chicken pizza rigag . When there's pizza you can't really go wr...