Burj Dubai - It's huge.
I’m not in the business of posting holiday snaps to my blog. Most of the time it’s meat and a few pictures of the people I eat it with. In this case though I’ll make an exception. Not only because I think the photo I took of the worlds tallest building is rather good, but because I think the Burj Dubai is a good metaphor for my meat experiences whist there – it being enormous and of unparalleled quality.
I was visiting Dubai for six days last week with Will. We had a very busy schedule and not a great deal of time to explore the city – but still we found the time to visit a few good eateries. The first day or two we ate at mostly American style burger bars and my confidence in finding a decent steak house was quickly diminishing.
Luckily for us though we had a heavy dose of local knowledge in the form of my long time buddy Matt Pickering, a lush and a believer. Following a few drinks at the famous expat beach bar Barasti, we headed to the Al Habtoor hotel in the marina area of Dubai. Here we dined at one of the greatest steak restaurants I have ever eaten in.
The (near) perfect sirloin
The Grand Grill has all the ingredients of a perfect steak restaurant. A huge variation of meat to pick and choose from, a great wine list and an owner that is both knowledgeable and passionate.
The menu was simple yet effective. Firstly you select the type of cut you want. I went for the New Yorker, which is a sirloin cut. Secondly you choose the quality and there are three different types to choose from – though in fairness it’s all grade-A stuff. The cheaper option is imported from South Africa. Next up is beef shipped all the way from the pampas of Argentina. And if you really want to splash out you can go for the Australian reared cattle. No need to say which I went for. Finally you choose how much you can handle. For the New Yorker the options are 100g, 300g & 500g. Not wanting to leave with an empty belly I opted for the half kilo, rare of course. The picture above does not really do it justice. Next time I’ll be sure to put something next to it for scale.
Naturally I polished off the whole thing without so much as breaking into even a moderate meat sweat. It tasted fantastic though my only gripe was that I think they could have done with leaving a little more of the fat on the cut. I find with grilled sirloin that it is always better to leave the fat on when on the flame as it gives the meat that extra flavour you don’t get with the other cuts. A minor problem in this case though as the quality of beef was superb.
We washed the poor animal down with a fine bottle of Penfolds Bin 407, a particularly nice Cabernet Sauvignon selected by our hosts.
After the meal we met the owner – a man truly after my own heart. He spoke to us for a good fifteen minutes about where the beef was sourced from, the process of ageing which takes place during shipping which includes opening the vacuum sealed packs of meat, draining them of blood then resealing them several times and of course his experiences of running the Grand Grill. The man – who’s name I sadly forget (that’ll be the vino) – capped off one of my all time favourite meat experiences.
If you are ever in the area then do not hesitate in getting your hind down to the Grand Grill. You will not regret it.
The latest import
Other than our trip to the Grand Grill we ate at one or two other places including a beachfront Sushi restaurant that would not let me in at first until I went to buy a pair of shoes (apparently sandals in the desert are not appropriate footwear) and a Lebanese restaurant in a shopping mall that looked over an 800 metre indoor ski slope complete with real snow. Nothing really worth writing about though.
There is one steak restaurant we did not make it to that inscribes the name of any man who can eat the ‘ultimate’ steak on a plaque on their wall. A good enough reason to go back soon.
Verdict: I was not expecting much in the way of great beef during my trip to Dubai. The fact that I visited one of the bet steak restaurants in the world can only give me good things to say about the place.
