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  • Asian Restaurants, Eat, Qatar Restaurants

PROVOK Asian Project, Doha: You Sense More is Possible

  • Asian Restaurants, Eat, Qatar Restaurants
  • June 20, 2023
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PROVOK Asian Project, Doha: You Sense More is Possible

PROVOK Asian Project, Fairmont Doha, Marina District, 33/34 Floor, Fairmont Doha 6th Street Lusail, Doha, Qatar. Menu: sushi from QR 30, starters from QR 30, mains from QR 95 and desserts from QR 55. Information is correct as of publication. You can find the latest information via PROVOK Asian Project’s website or call +974 4030 7200.

PROVOK Asian Project offers a clearer vision than your typical Pan-Asian restaurants, thanks to Chef Taimoo Sun.

Written by Liam Collens // Find other reviews here. Liam was an invited guest of PROVOK Asian Project by Raffles Doha.

The Highs

The Lows

The Highs

The Lows

PROVOK Asian Project, Doha: You Sense More is Possible.

Hotels, more or less, follow a certain dining mould. Let them eat steak. Endure, I mean, enjoy all-day dining. A cafe spot for cakes, coffee and whatnot. Of course, you’ll see a Mediterranean restaurant, usually Italian, possibly Greek, rarely ze South of France. De rigueur, there will be “Asian”.

“Asian” is an amorphous badge for Chinese, South East Asian or something Japanese. Seldom do we see just Thai. More often, it’s ‘a bit of everything’, Pan-Asian if you will. Give them katsu curries and siu mai. I struggle to identify such an establishment positively after MANY years of corporate travel siloed in hotels. Do prestigious Asian hotels clobber together “a random scrabble of Westerner stuff”? Steak tartare, croquettes, fish and chips and Caesar salads. Oh, wait, that’s a gastropub. Gosh, Westerners do it to themselves.

So you understand my light-but-weighing scepticism as we shuffle towards PROVOK Asian Project during a luxuriant stay at the Raffles Doha: a restaurant name that implies it is a work in progress, but one intended to test you.


“Unreal Wagyu” served at PROVOK Asian Project: kobe gyu in bernardo sauce with refreshing daikon kimchi

PROVOK Asian Project plays to the gallery at times

PROVOK Asian Project is a capacious space. Actually, two spaces. The twin concept of fire and ice – ice at the bottom, fire on top with a two-part menu to match. The fire floor resembles a set in The Fifth Element. In 2023. Ask your mother about that movie if you’re under 30. There’s plenty of Aperol spritz sipping, including one lady *cough* wearing sunglasses *cough* indoors and so outstretched on her chair, she’s practically lying on the floor. It’s Instagram pageantry, as are so many things these days. She gaupes over maki rolls like she’s never seen cold rice before, right next to a guy carving an ice sculpture in real-time. OK, yes, we did visit during brunch.

I start to worry that PROVOK Asian Project is “all show, no substance”. There is space for such places in the world, but I am increasingly tired of them.


PROVOK Asian Project upstairs Orange and Red Chairs in the restaurant’s “Fire” section overlooking the Doha skyline.
He is a lean man, commendably courteous, quiet and profoundly respectful, brimming with a thoughtfulness that translates into his craft. I admire the way he carries himself.
icon quotations


PROVOK Asian Project’s food and menu

PROVOK Asian Project’s Chef Taimoo Sun emerges. He is a lean man, commendably courteous, quiet and profoundly respectful, brimming with a thoughtfulness that translates into his craft. I admire the way he carries himself. Well-travelled, his experiences find expression in PROVOK’s menu, which, when combined with flourishes from his native South Korea, impress with its breadth and execution. This bang-on-trend Korean influence shines a clear voice that chaperones you through other culinary influences. Let’s see more of that, Taimoo.

In discussions, I sense Chef Taimoo is capable of more than PROVOK’s current incarnation. Our tasting menu reinforces it. I’m restless to see more. In places, Chef Taimoo presentation is simple and usually elegant. His “Unreal Wagyu” (actual name) exhibits cooking ‘less is more’: gossamer sheets of kobe gyu in bernardo sauce with refreshing daikon kimchi. A “Game Changer Ceviche” (again, actual name) is a puddle of fermented red chilli chojang with morsels of judiciously-cooked shrimp. It’s a refreshing alternative to traditional ceviche. A lobster tteok-bokki is a hearty seafood bowl of squid, lobster tail and scallop bathed in a pool of Donny Sambal under an onion crisp (QR 450). A KATARASIA salad lightly folds miso truffle dressing, dried doenjang (Korean soybean paste) and pecan nuts (a strikingly similar salad on the menu by a different name costs QR 75).

Chef Taimoo knows how to cook seafood and, in the case of beef and salad, knows when to not.

Of course, Pan-Asian restaurants will occasionally pander, offering something for everyone. Not everyone wants to eat new things, unrecognisable things. Things they need to Google. So restaurants still need to make money by peppering menus with predictable stalwarts. You need to run a business, after all. So the menu oscillates between the old guard and the new, but even familiar dishes are primped with mixed results.

A Qatarfornia roll of crab, avocado, Arabic coffee aioli and sesame is pleasant but lacks the progressive touch seen elsewhere in the menu (adding Arabic coffee adds nothing to centuries of maki rolls nor decades of California rolls, QR 95). A hatcho chocolate cheesecake of hatcho miso and Valrhona sadly lacks the focus evident in other dishes and mostly remains on the plate (QR 75).




First to last from PROVOK Asian Project: “Unreal Wagyu”; Game Changer Ceviche; Lobster tteok-bokki with scallops and squid; KATARASIA salad; Qatarfornia roll of crab, avocado, Arabic coffee aioli; Hatcho chocolate cheesecake.

PROVOK Asian Project, Would I Go Back?


The provocations emerge unexpectedly, but I am also a peculiar man, perhaps less tolerant of things. I’m a man of a certain age that doesn’t need the constant diddling of high-octane decor and live performances. Shruggable, eye-rolling menu references to “Game Changer”, “Game of Thrones”, “Da Vinci Code Edition” and “Unreal”. Fire and ice themes, ice sculptors and this ever-present injection of ‘isn’t this great!’ throbbed into proceedings. Call me Chief Marshall of the Anti-Fun, but it’s hard to believe that is all helping.

Those things I found provoking, but the core menu was the most interesting spectre at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Tasty moments lacquered in gochujang, the funk of kimchi or a Sour cocktail of fermented tea and yuzu (QR 95). I would go back to PROVOK. Maybe I’ll close my eyes.


First to last from PROVOK Asian Project: Otoro Nigiri sushi and Himalayans’ sashimi with raj salt, dashima-jime & ike-jime.

PROVOK Asian Project, Who Should Go?


Qatari residents or visitors to Raffles Doha or Fairmont Doha looking for a pulsing good time and views. People who are curious about Korean or Korean-influenced dining food.

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