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Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai: Yes, It Deserves A Michelin Star
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Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai: Yes, It Deserves A Michelin Star
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai, Atlantis The Royal, Crescent Road, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. All information is true as of publication. You can find the latest information on Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai’s website or call +971 4426 2444. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai, starters from AED 105, mains from AED 185, sides from AED 50 and desserts from AED 75.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai raises the bar for Dubai’s modern British dining, but can it justify earning a star already?
Written by Liam Collens // Find other reviews here. Liam was invited to Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai.
The Highs
The Lows
The Highs
The Lows
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai: A Reason to Eat at Atlantis the Royal
Before you ask, I never visited London’s Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. I never visited the Fat Duck in Bray. My London years were a time of high aspirations and low bank balances. Today’s joyful gastronomic fraternizing was (mostly) inaccessible.
You could find me in the Hinds Head, Heston’s Bray-based “pub”, munching his glassy, triple-cooked chips while staring out a window, leering jealously into the Fat Duck across the road, while semi-listening to a work colleague. Listening just enough to know when to nod and then expense the chips.
Heston Blumenthal is one of the most fascinating chefs of the past 30 years. So the news of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal coming to Dubai intrigued me. We would need to wait many years.
So many questions. Will the restaurant’s walls be made of liquorice? Are the chairs our dessert after all? Will the bill make an entire housing allowance disappear? Seriously, there are really two questions to be asked (but the detail-oriented among you will spot more).
Firstly, does Heston deign to visit Dubai? Have a poke around in the kitchen during the lunch service. Maybe just turn up twice a year to take photos, thank people oh so very much for coming, flashing a media-trained smile, and then beam up back to Bray to keep his Fat Duck pudgy.
There’s no sign of Heston, and frankly, I am not expecting him. Ever. Heston or not, Chef de Cuisine, Tom Allen, runs the show at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai. Affable, funny and gentlemanly, Tom invested years working with Heston both as a sous and development chef between Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in London and the Fat Duck in Bray.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai’s main dining room is a vast space facing into a quiet, open plan kitchen.
You could find me in the Hinds Head, Heston’s Bray-based “pub”, munching his glassy, triple-cooked chips while staring out a window, leering jealously into the Fat Duck across the road, while semi-listening to a work colleague. Listening just enough to know when to nod and then expense the chips.
Heston Blumenthal is one of the most fascinating chefs of the past 30 years. So the news of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal coming to Dubai intrigued me. We would need to wait many years.
So many questions. Will the restaurant’s walls be made of liquorice? Are the chairs our dessert after all? Will the bill make an entire housing allowance disappear? Seriously, there are really two questions to be asked (but the detail-oriented among you will spot more).
Firstly, does Heston deign to visit Dubai? Have a poke around in the kitchen during the lunch service. Maybe just turn up twice a year to take photos, thank people oh so very much for coming, flashing a media-trained smile, and then beam up back to Bray to keep his Fat Duck pudgy.
There’s no sign of Heston, and frankly, I am not expecting him. Ever. Heston or not, Chef de Cuisine, Tom Allen, runs the show at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai. Affable, funny and gentlemanly, Tom invested years working with Heston both as a sous and development chef between Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in London and the Fat Duck in Bray.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai’s main dining room is a vast space facing into a quiet, open plan kitchen.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai, Does It Deserve a Michelin Star Already?
This is what you want to know (and whether it’s worth it). Our six-course dinner starts and finishes years after Atlantis the Royal announced Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai among its dining arsenal. We dine here mere months after it opened and – most importantly – just a week before the restaurant collects its first Michelin star.
So, how can a restaurant – so new – earn a Michelin star? It’s a fair question, especially when consistency is part of Michelin’s star-gazing criteria.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai, in my opinion, firmly earns its Michelin Star. There’s solid cooking here. Skilled chefs, lovely wine pairings and a clear start-to-finish vision for each dish, all wrapped in storytelling. Tom’s thousands of hours honed back in Britain unfold before you. Dinner by Heston is no startup. The Dubai outfit may be in its infancy, but it comes with a direct London lineage that stretches back to 2011. That’s one year after the Burj Khalifa opened. Dinner by Heston Dubai is the culmination of 12 years of tried and tested work in London by the team who did that work. They held 2 Michelin stars for nearly 10 years. They continue that journey in Dubai. This pedigree explains why it has one star.
People should be asking: why doesn’t Dinner by Heston Dubai have two? What’s so special about London? What are we missing in Dubai?
So, how can a restaurant – so new – earn a Michelin star? It’s a fair question, especially when consistency is part of Michelin’s star-gazing criteria.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai, in my opinion, firmly earns its Michelin Star. There’s solid cooking here. Skilled chefs, lovely wine pairings and a clear start-to-finish vision for each dish, all wrapped in storytelling. Tom’s thousands of hours honed back in Britain unfold before you. Dinner by Heston is no startup. The Dubai outfit may be in its infancy, but it comes with a direct London lineage that stretches back to 2011. That’s one year after the Burj Khalifa opened. Dinner by Heston Dubai is the culmination of 12 years of tried and tested work in London by the team who did that work. They held 2 Michelin stars for nearly 10 years. They continue that journey in Dubai. This pedigree explains why it has one star.
People should be asking: why doesn’t Dinner by Heston Dubai have two? What’s so special about London? What are we missing in Dubai?
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai is solid. It effectively swerves the growing skepticism about some of Dubai’s one star restaurants.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai’s food and menu
Of our six dishes, four stand out positively. The plump, seared scallops, coupled with sweet cauliflower puree and a brisk scallop tartare, come together with a lick of sticky sherry sauce and toothsome samphire (AED 220). A plate of West Witterings in Palm Jumeirah.
My meat fruit is smaller than expected. (Yes, let’s all have a good laugh together at that sentence, AED 140). Still, the rich, suave chicken liver parfait is finely balanced, stopping short of being oppressively high. The mandarin is a bright citric lozenge cutting through it all. Mrs EatGoSee eats the Truffle instead. A Dubai vegan, alcohol-free alternative that pulls no punches.
Both desserts challenge our belt buckles. The goat’s milk sambocade is transcendent, serving a British country summer on a spoon: sour, smooth goat’s milk cheesecake pops with tart cooked apple, pickled blackberries and fragrant elderflower (AED 80). A disaster dish in less capable hands. The famous pillowy Tipsy Cake rich with spit-roasted pineapple is a final complement of comfort food washed down with Château d’Armajan des Ormes Sauternes (AED 105).
Not everything comes together, but reasonable people will disagree. The braised chicory’s lingering sweetness distracts from the roasted halibut and parsley green sauce, which is a shame at AED 285 (although the fish is delicious). The powdered duck breast wants a crispy roasted skin. The sauce struck me as overly reduced. Again, a shame at AED375. A white chocolate and caviar amuse bouche is conceptually more interesting than it is impactful. The plating noticeably becomes predictable after a while. There are times with long stretches between courses. These quibbles are, at best, wrinkles between one and two stars, not insurmountable hurdles to one star.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai dishes: sherried scallops, liver parfait meat fruit, the truffle, goat’s cheese sambocade, pineapple tipsy cake, powdered duck.
Officially, service does not factor into Michelin’s star criteria. I have my doubts. I don’t know any Michelin-starred restaurants with savage service anywhere in the world. The service at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai was largely flawless. The culmination of months of Kill Bill-level training drills. I joke, but the world-class service team explained that they spent an inordinate amount of time (my words Tom, not theirs) serving laminated HD photos of meat fruit to each other. Those were hours well spent. If Dinner by Heston keeps this up, the service will sit comfortably alongside Tresind Studio and Ossiano as – in my view – Dubai’s top three service restaurants.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai dishes: roasted halibut with parsley sauce and braised chicory, artichoke tart, the famous triple cooked chips.
Atlantis the Royal – and its occupants – are so new, you can almost smell opening night’s firework display. I remain very skeptical that Michelin inspectors spent any real time validating the consistency criteria allegedly required for many of Dubai’s one Michelin-starred restaurants. I’ll stop pussyfooting. There are some Dubai restaurants – so consistently inconsistent – they should have lost their star by now.
This bewildering situation causes diners like me to doubt the Guide’s credibility in Dubai. I am not the only one. This doubt casts a shadow, like collateral damage, on Dubai restaurants with Michelin stars as, arguably, the star is not a reliable barometer.
But not here. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai is solid. It effectively swerves the growing skepticism about some of Dubai’s one star restaurants. Still, Dinner will not come cheap. Bring your credit card or, better yet, someone else with one.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai features a large mechanical pineapple that opens and closes over dinner service; the restaurant features a private dining room that looks into the kitchen; Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai features a very large and varied wine selection where it’s sommelier won Sommelier of the Year at the 2023 Michelin Guide; the restaurant features these decorative wooden panels.
Fans of modern British dining. People who want to see what all the fuss is about. Wine pairing lovers. Expense account holders. Special occasional seekers. Someone who wants to ogle at the opening mechanical pineapple.
My meat fruit is smaller than expected. (Yes, let’s all have a good laugh together at that sentence, AED 140). Still, the rich, suave chicken liver parfait is finely balanced, stopping short of being oppressively high. The mandarin is a bright citric lozenge cutting through it all. Mrs EatGoSee eats the Truffle instead. A Dubai vegan, alcohol-free alternative that pulls no punches.
Both desserts challenge our belt buckles. The goat’s milk sambocade is transcendent, serving a British country summer on a spoon: sour, smooth goat’s milk cheesecake pops with tart cooked apple, pickled blackberries and fragrant elderflower (AED 80). A disaster dish in less capable hands. The famous pillowy Tipsy Cake rich with spit-roasted pineapple is a final complement of comfort food washed down with Château d’Armajan des Ormes Sauternes (AED 105).
Not everything comes together, but reasonable people will disagree. The braised chicory’s lingering sweetness distracts from the roasted halibut and parsley green sauce, which is a shame at AED 285 (although the fish is delicious). The powdered duck breast wants a crispy roasted skin. The sauce struck me as overly reduced. Again, a shame at AED375. A white chocolate and caviar amuse bouche is conceptually more interesting than it is impactful. The plating noticeably becomes predictable after a while. There are times with long stretches between courses. These quibbles are, at best, wrinkles between one and two stars, not insurmountable hurdles to one star.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai dishes: sherried scallops, liver parfait meat fruit, the truffle, goat’s cheese sambocade, pineapple tipsy cake, powdered duck.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai, some of Dubai’s best restaurant service
Officially, service does not factor into Michelin’s star criteria. I have my doubts. I don’t know any Michelin-starred restaurants with savage service anywhere in the world. The service at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai was largely flawless. The culmination of months of Kill Bill-level training drills. I joke, but the world-class service team explained that they spent an inordinate amount of time (my words Tom, not theirs) serving laminated HD photos of meat fruit to each other. Those were hours well spent. If Dinner by Heston keeps this up, the service will sit comfortably alongside Tresind Studio and Ossiano as – in my view – Dubai’s top three service restaurants.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai dishes: roasted halibut with parsley sauce and braised chicory, artichoke tart, the famous triple cooked chips.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Should You Go?
Atlantis the Royal – and its occupants – are so new, you can almost smell opening night’s firework display. I remain very skeptical that Michelin inspectors spent any real time validating the consistency criteria allegedly required for many of Dubai’s one Michelin-starred restaurants. I’ll stop pussyfooting. There are some Dubai restaurants – so consistently inconsistent – they should have lost their star by now.
This bewildering situation causes diners like me to doubt the Guide’s credibility in Dubai. I am not the only one. This doubt casts a shadow, like collateral damage, on Dubai restaurants with Michelin stars as, arguably, the star is not a reliable barometer.
But not here. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai is solid. It effectively swerves the growing skepticism about some of Dubai’s one star restaurants. Still, Dinner will not come cheap. Bring your credit card or, better yet, someone else with one.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai features a large mechanical pineapple that opens and closes over dinner service; the restaurant features a private dining room that looks into the kitchen; Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai features a very large and varied wine selection where it’s sommelier won Sommelier of the Year at the 2023 Michelin Guide; the restaurant features these decorative wooden panels.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai, Who Should Go?
Fans of modern British dining. People who want to see what all the fuss is about. Wine pairing lovers. Expense account holders. Special occasional seekers. Someone who wants to ogle at the opening mechanical pineapple.
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