The Atlantic is a cold ocean, and it was a cold Friday in Dubai, the day I visited The Atlantic Dubai for brunch.
So cold and windy that the wicker lampshades hung horizontally, making it impossible to set a table for service outside.
Inside, it’s a cool white and green room with distressed (half painted) walls and absolutely no decoration. Nothing to tell the story which is painted on the sides of the elevators in Souk Al Bahar, of fishermen and the sea.
The blurb on the Entertainer app describes The Atlantic Dubai as
Set to propel the iconic Melbourne resturant into international waters. With the culinary direction of Donovan Cooke from Masterchef Australia, guests can expect a menu that showcases the finest and freshest produce…
As a Melbourne boy and staunch promoter of Australian exports, I was eager to sample some great dishes under the shadow of the Burj Khalifa with a view of the new Dubai opera house, however…
The ‘Ocean to Plate’ Brunch is a set 3-course menu that is a paired down offer in order to meet commercial needs rather than showcase the concept.
The pre-starter is a platter of oysters, large prawns and sea-snails – the latter an instagram-able addition and something I’ve never eaten before. With 2 pieces of each shellfish per person, it’s a generous start to the meal, and the simplicity of the produce served on ice echoed the billing as a place where the ingredients do the talking.
The starter was a choice of Salmon, prawns (again), oysters (again) or a vegetarian option of beets.
I chose the garlic prawns. It’s a fairly common tapas dish in other restaurants that do brunch in Dubai (like El Sur). The one I had was nothing special, no wow factor.
The choice for main course was Cod, Steak or Morton Bay Bug spaghettini.
I get that some people who go to a restaurant that specialises in seafood might want to order steak, but it limits the choices for those who are there for the ‘Ocean to Plate’ concept. Unless I’m going to Pellegrini’s (a truly iconic Melbourne eatery), I would never order spaghetti in a restaurant…
So I chose the cod.
I can almost hear Greg Wallace in the MasterChef kitchen saying “it’s a well-cooked piece of fish”, but that’s it. They are pushing them out for brunch, but it’s not a buffet – and you can’t reorder a dish you like as with some other brunches in Dubai – so a bit more… something… Would be good.
The fish was accompanied by fantastic chips, probably the best dish of the day – spiced with pimento and perfectly crispy and fluffy. The zucchini and goats cheese was also a tasty side dish.
Looking over at the Morton Bay Bug spaghettini, it lacked the drama of the bug itself. A bug is a crazy looking thing and many people would never have seen one. Admittedly it must be expensive to bring into the UAE, but as a signature dish, it didn’t look the part.
A good tart for dessert, though Earl Grey Tea is an acquired taste, you either love it or you hate it, so a bold choice for an ice cream flavour.
I chose the House Beverages package. The grape choices are good, but chosen to be cheap to meet the brunch price point rather than give a taste of the more Australian Al la carte list. The house beverage package does not include bubbles.
The ‘Ocean to Plate’ concept doesn’t quite work in Dubai. While there is a fishing fleet, international diners here are used to their food coming with significant food miles associated with it.
For an ‘Ocean to Plate’ Brunch, one big thing was missing from the menu – provenance.
The sea snails were from Korea, but I had to ask to find out. None of the other menu items, apart from the Scottish salmon and the bugs mentioned where it was from. The steak option was Australian but listed as Black Angus.
While I can understand that The Atlantic Dubai doesn’t want to be an Australian theme restaurant, it seems a bit confused. The music, played loud enough to be noticeable and remarkable, was Motown – nothing wrong with that, except a lack of any relevance to the customer experience. Perhaps the cult of Masterchef is enough to carry the concept, but I haven’t seen the Australian version of the show, so it doesn’t add anything for me.
New restaurants in Dubai have some tough decisions to make. To offer brunch or not, to promote in the Entertainer or not and whether to make brunch a loss leading, marketing investment or just to get people at tables on Friday.
While on the Entertainer, The Atlantic Dubai is a good value brunch, but it seems this seafood restaurant is yet to find its feet.
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