DINNER TIME
From food safaris in faux jungles through to Brazilian fine dining, there’s something for everyone in Dubai – here’s Friday’s top six restaurants
Monkeys chatter, a lion roars while an elephant trumpets, making my little girl jump. As her eyes grow wider, lightning thunders through the rainforest causing fiveyear-old Anais to cling to her 11-yearold brother before collapsing into a fit of giggles. “Are they real wild animals?” she asks.
It’s hard to break the news that no, we’re not in the Amazonian jungle but rather in the Rainforest Café, deep in the heart of The Dubai Mall. We’re surrounded by walls of lush green vegetation and tropical flora and fauna, ceilings made of winding creepers, and a cacophony of forest sounds. It’s the tables and chairs that remind us we’re in a restaurant.
For the uninitiated, the Rainforest Café is as family friendly as it gets with apes, snakes, and myriad jungle dwellers appearing every time there’s a rain storm in the forest, which is every 15 minutes or so.
Although it’s the ambience that makes up much of the great experience, it in no way overshadows the vast menu that offers an array of frivolously named dishes like the Jurassic chicken titbits, and Python pasta. Following the custom of most American and Tex-Mex cuisine casual dining outlets of its ilk, the Rainforest Café’s portion sizes are enormous, but they don’t skimp on the quality.
There’s a wide choice of salad, soups and appetizers, sandwiches and burgers to pick from but my kids especially loved the Raging Thunder Buffalo Wings with homemade blue cheese dressing (it counters the heat of the spices) from the entrées. The Texas Style T-Bone served with sides of grilled veggies, safari fries and barbecue sauce is an entire course in itself!
Since sharing is caring, we ended our meal on a sweet note by sharing the café’s legendary Sparkling Volcano desert among the family. It was a massive mouth-watering explosion of chocolate brownies loaded with ice cream and a sparkler on top, which the children dived into.
The Rainforest Café’s accessible location – nestled right next to the aquarium – and perfect mélange of entertainment and good food makes it the ideal place to end a family outing to the mall.
It’s a little pricey, but we decided that it’s as good as its Downtown Disney counterpart.