CAFÉ SUSHI REVIEW

Japanese food now available at the Fairmont

There’s been a few changes at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr of late. Its award-winning café The Chocolate Gallery has been moved to the lobby and been replaced with Japanese restaurant Café Sushi. If you’ve ever stayed at the Fairmont Dubai, then you may well be familiar with the dishes on offer here – our neighbouring emirate also has a branch that opened in 2002.

It’s certainly a sleek venue, with simple wooden walls and floors, and a conveyer belt with plates of sushi and sashimi trundling past diners siting on counter-height chairs and tables. There’s room for around 50 foodies inside and another 40 can sit alfresco, but the real highlight indoors are four Shabu Shabu tables – these come with built in hot plates in the middle, so guests can have hot pot dishes, where meats and tofu are boiled in pots of soup while diners eat.

The menu, naturally, is predominantly sushi, sashimi and maki rolls but does feature a starters section (think grilled sea bass and scallop with foie gras) plus a more pricey mains section featuring miso hoba black cod and roasted Maine lobster.

You can pay Dhs125 to get unlimited sushi and sashimi from the conveyer belt during lunch and dinner, along with edamame and miso soup, and it’s a deal certainly worth exploring – most of the belt dishes What’s On tried were of a high quality. The tuna belly and yellow tail sashimi was fresh and juicy, the salmon nigiri was a cut above most in the city, while the dynamite sushi (fried crispy salmon and avocado) were only let down by an overly tart blob of mayonnaise. But make sure you try the crispy avocado with seaweed and crab deep fried in teriyaki sauce (satisfyingly crunchy and the sauce really enhanced the crab), and the spicy tuna (made with lime leaf, chilli sauce and yuzu (citrus flakes). The sauce packed a real punch. Miso black cod has become something of a signature dish in the UAE and Café Sushi’s was surprisingly good, perhaps not that far away in terms of quality from the ones you’d try in top restaurants like Zuma. The sauce was just the right side of sweet and sticky, and you only had to bat an eyelid at the fish for it to fall apart. Our only complaint? It was a little oily.

Desserts were also a roaring success – the tropical chawanmushi (steamed coconut custard with mango and passion fruit foam) was zesty and a great palate cleansers, while the glutinous rice cakes (often known as mochi), called daifuku, stuffed with cocoa, custard and strawberry, are unique and an acquired taste, but worth trying.

Pretty much every plate was clear of food at the end of our visit – a good sign, for sure.

Fairmont Bab Al Bahr, Bain Al Jessrain, Abu Dhabi, daily noon to 11pm. Tel: (02) 6543238. Taxi: Fairmont. fairmont.com

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