Dubai: The Rib Room and The Restaurant Week

This week, it’s Jumeirah Restaurant Week and Dubai is teeming with excellent and inexpensive dining opportunities at all the Jumeriah Group restaurants. This is one of the foodie highlights of the year, but it wasn’t until yesterday that we finally had the time to join. We went for The Rib Room, which is a steak restaurant in Emirates Towers. I’ve wanted to dine there for a long time, so when I saw their Restaurant Week menu, which included beef tenderloin and crème brulée, it was an obvious choice.

I often find certain steak restaurants a bit too family-oriented with balloons all over the place and crayons and soft ice for the kids. Good steaks are expensive, and I prefer being able to enjoy the taste fully without feeling that I’m in the middle of a kindergarten birthday party, so I usually avoid such places.

Other restaurants fall into the other extreme and ooze so much testosterone that you almost grow a beard during your meal, and the atmosphere is so macho that you can’t help wondering whether you’ll be asked to go out and kill that Aberdeen Angus with your bare hands.

The Rib Room also has a rather masculine appearance, which is a natural consequence, when you choose to decorate with cow skin and dark leather. However, the restaurant is also really elegant and airy and the acoustics were such that it was possible to have a conversation without shouting each other’s ears off.

I first had a delicious smoked duck terrine followed by a New Zealand beef tenderloin, and for dessert, I had crème brûlée. The food was amazing and the portion sizes were just right, so after the last spoonful, I was perfectly satisfied. Before leaving we received two small packages, which each contained a vanilla muffin. A nice little detail, which we are looking forward to enjoy along with our afternoon tea today.

Two other restaurants I’ve tried during Restaurant Week in Dubai are Pai Thai and Al Hambra in Madinat Jumeirah and they were both really nice.

The Rib Room, Ground floor, Jumeirah Emirates Towers, Sheikh Zayed Road, DIFC – Dubai