There are a lot of issues that characterise Dubai. Certainly one of them is an obsession with measurement. Practically every part is huge, greater or greatest. As an illustration, every time I’m going to the large Dubai Mall, I’m terrified that I would by no means discover my means out once more as a result of I all the time get misplaced in its limitless corridors.
It’s the similar with resorts. After I went to Dubai for the opening of Atlantis the Palm in 2008, I used to be startled by how huge it was with practically 1,600 rooms, all run to luxurious requirements. It stunned me additionally that the resort had so many eating places, lots of them very massive and run by the highest cooks of that period (Santi Santamaria, Nobu Matsuhisa, Giorgio Locatelli, Michel Rostang and lots of others). A few of these cooks had been on the absolute peak of their career. (Santi had three stars for his flagship restaurant; Rostang had two) and I discovered it laborious to imagine that vacationers (not to mention locals) would pay the excessive costs required to eat this superb meals.
I used to be improper, after all. Although Atlantis retains shuffling the cooks round (at present, the eating places are run by Gordon Ramsay, the Hakkasan group and others), it has all the time been massively profitable and it launched Dubai‘s growth in Michelin star eating. Each restaurant wherever on the planet with a Michelin star now desires to open a department in Dubai.
In the present day Dubai isn’t the worldwide restaurant capital, however it’s definitely the capital of the restaurant department. Practically each prime place in Dubai is a department of a restaurant someplace else on the planet however it’s often a department run by inferior cooks despatched by the mom restaurant to show a fast buck. That was hardly the intention behind Atlantis’s unique connoisseur foray however that’s how others have taken it ahead.
I stayed this time on the new, much more upscale, Atlantis the Royal, the smarter youthful brother of the outdated Atlantis. The Royal is smaller and has (solely!) 800 or so rooms. It made it to the highest 10 of the World’s 50 Finest Lodges checklist and has develop into a world vacation spot of its personal. Atlantis the Royal has its personal set of eating places run to excessive requirements by movie star cooks: Jose Andres, Gaston Acurio, Heston Blumenthal and extra.
And the cult of Nobu prospers at each resorts. The unique Nobu, the place I first dined on the outdated Atlantis, has moved to a brand new house excessive within the constructing, (it was the Bridge suite) and is now the biggest Nobu on the planet. (That is Dubai, capital of bigness, in any case.) I truly want the smaller Nobu on the Royal Atlantis, which is extra informal and is situated on the seaside.
Two years in the past, once I went to eat at Ossiano, the outdated Santi Santamaria restaurant which gained a star within the post-Santi period, I met Bjorn Frantzen, one of many worlds most profitable cooks. He got here off as a cross between James Bond (good wanting, sharp and sometimes on the very best dressed checklist in his native Sweden) and Alain Ducasse. Like Ducasse and Thomas Keller, Frantzen is without doubt one of the few cooks on the planet with two eating places which have earned three stars (in Stockholm and Singapore) and has additionally efficiently run bigger eating places on the one star stage.
Frantzen was collaborating with Gregoire Berger, then the chef at Ossiano, for a pop up, however I used to be fairly positive that he was additionally there to debate opening his personal restaurant in Atlantis. I used to be proper. Shortly after I left Dubai, Atlantis introduced that Frantzen would open two eating places within the older Atlantis. They might take over the Nobu house. One can be a big informal restaurant and the opposite can be a gastronomic restaurant like his celebrated locations in Singapore and Stockholm.
Final week, shortly after the 2 eating places had opened, I went again to eat at each of them. I ate first at Studio Frantzen, the informal restaurant which is a enjoyable house with a bar part and a sensible eating room which mixes it up: some tables have desk cloths, others are naked. Whereas the service at Studio will take a while to cool down, the meals is already superb.
I used to be stunned by the numerous oriental influences on the menu. A veal minute steak was flavoured with Sichuan pepper, the roast rooster had chilli and miso, and the lamb rack got here with a wasabi and mint raita. There was additionally Frantzen’s distinctive tackle nigiri sushi. And the oysters got here with such flavours as seaweed and wasabi.
All the meals was superb, however I puzzled if the oriental dishes had been impressed by Dubai’s fascination with trendy Japanese delicacies. (If the town’s eating scene has an absent father determine, then it’s Rainer Becker whose Zuma has influenced practically each costly restaurant in Dubai.) I used to be assured by Lucas Jaktlund, who used to run Frantzen’s three star restaurant in Stockholm and has now moved to Dubai, that the Chef has all the time been fascinated by Japanese and different oriental flavours. So it had nothing to do with Dubai’s preferences.
The primary Frantzen restaurant (known as FZN) is much less formal than the three star Zen in Singapore which I’ve been to. (By some coincidence, Tristin Farmer who was the chef at Zen when it gained its three stars has additionally moved to Dubai and can open Maison Dali there subsequent month.) It has the acquainted Frantzen touches. You ring a doorbell to be allowed in. You first sit in a front room sort house the place they serve you champagne after which go as much as the eating room. Earlier than you enter the eating space, they present you the elements you’ll eat, together with truffles, caviar, and so on but in addition dwell langoustines which were freshly flown in. Service is uniformly heat and pleasant and seeks to place friends comfortable.
The eating room is a revelation. There are some tables however most friends sit at a counter round an open kitchen, making it clear that this can be a critical eating expertise. The cooks come from all around the world however the understated star of the kitchen is the pinnacle Chef Torsten Vildgaard who’s Scandinavian cooking royalty, having served as René Redzepi’s proper hand man at Noma for years and having gained a Michelin star for his personal restaurant in Copenhagen in 2014. (His brother is the chef on the three Michelin star Jordnaer in Copenhagen.)
The meals is, as you’ll count on, fabulous. The langoustines flip up, remodeled and rapidly deep fried, served with Japanese rice. A Chawanmushi is surrounded by a moat of beef broth and topped with caviar. Uncooked Toro tuna is formed right into a flower and served with fermented strawberry.
The meals is so excellent that everybody in Dubai expects FZN to get three stars. My guess is that it’s going to enter the checklist with two stars subsequent 12 months however inside a number of months or so, will probably be a critical contender to be the primary Michelin three star restaurant in Dubai.It will likely be ironic, that in a metropolis that’s so fixated on bigness, a small 26 cowl restaurant will lead the remaining.
