Happy New Year - Set meals at Reem Island Cafe

Hans Restaurant -

Add: Ground floor, Tamouh Project office, Block B - Al Reem Island

Tel: +971 2 650 1996

Tel: +971 56 698 5498

We had our New Year's eve dinner at Reem Island tonight - And it was good, both in taste, as well as the portion-sizes and the price :-) We paid 108 AED for our meal of 5 dishes and 12 AED for the largest pot of Pui-Er tea ... A perfect end to 2012.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Special offer - This menu is available until the end of January 2013 ...

Choose from a set meal for 3 persons, at 68 AED (3 dishes), or

5 person set meal of 5 dishes (See below) at 108 AED (RM$ 90 - Cheap cheap!).

Fish item - We had the Fish fillet with Ginger and onion, or you can have 4 other items from the menu.

Poultry item - We had the delicious and juicy Belacan chicken, and there are 4 other choices to choose from as well.

Vegetable - We had Hans' famous Kangkung Belacan, or you could have bean sprouts / cauliflower / lettuce / pak choy as well (In each of the 5 groups, you can select from 5 items on the menu).

Bean curd and Egg - We really enjoyed the bean curd with seafood and meat, but you could also have other bean curd dishes or omelettes too!

Finally ... Prawn - We had the sauteed shrimps with cashew nuts, but there are 4 other choices as well ;-)

Merry Christmas from Dubai!

Mum and dad were visiting us from Malaysia ... so we took them to Dubai for the weekend :-)

We had a nice brunch at Dubai Mall's Social House - It was decorated very nicely in a yuletide fashion, and there was even a christmas menu :-)

We then took some free snappies outside Dubai Aquarium which is the flagship of Dubai Mall :-) Wonder if the Eagle Ray (Or mini Manta?) and sharks knew it was Christmas week!

We then went to Mall of Emirates - An interesting chair exhibition, contributed by local artists :-)

Tiffany and Co occupied the centre atrium with what I thought was a bit un-Tiffany like, with a "stall" ... Heh heh! Anyway, the tree was pretty and best of all was the Tiffany wreath!

 Tiffany blue :-)

 

More christmas festivities at MOE - Mall of Emirates ;-) Not the Ministry of Education!

Ski Dubai ... where it snows all year round :-)

Anyway .... Merry Christmas and lots of love and blessings from Abu Dhabi to those near and far. See you all in 2013!

La Beaujolais - Mercure Hotel, Abu Dhabi

We found a gem of an eatery in Abu Dhabi - Here is a quick review of our visit to Le Beaujolais, which has quickly become one of our FAVOURITE places to eat in the UAE!

 

Located: City Centre Hotel Mercure - Al Markaziyah, Hamdan Street

Opening hours: 12:00pm - 12:00am

Tel: +971 2 6333 555

 

 

 

 

Some of our starters, all of which were delightfully french and yummy ...

Escargots à la bourguignon (or snails in garlic and herb sauce) was served steaming hot and bursting in flavour, I wanted to lick the sauce off the cute serving dish! It was served with a hot, crusty baguette which we asked for re-fills ;-)

Baked Onion soup, 28 AED - Pretty good too!

 

One of the signature dishes ... Coq Au Vin, I loved it! At 78 AED, and this being a French brassierie, it really was a steal :-) The duck leg, at 95 AED, was really good too. I didn't try TS's 350g rib-eye steak (102 AED), but he seemed to enjoy it!

 

 

And to end off, another great value dish - Tiramisu, 28 AED. A large portion, and full of flavour, we loved it!

Overall - Delicious food, unpretentious and attentive service, a homely environment, and need I say it again - Great value :-) A wonderful restaurant that deserves to be visited again and again!

Nespresso limited edition - Crealto

We like our Nespresso Latissima machine, and always get excited when Nestle decides to launch a new "blend" ... Here's our experience with Crealto.

 

Purchased from: Abu Dhabi Mall

Located: Level 1 - Near the escalator.

 

Our verdict .. We like it! Strong, with an intensity of 8 (of 10), with a distinct long-lasting cocoa-afternot. It is recommended to work better as an expresso - We take it as a Cappucino, and its just as good :-)

 

Nespresso describes the creation of this limited (Autumn 2012) blend ...

MAURO COLAGRECO - Michelin‐starred Chef
“My encounter with Nespresso allowed me to experience the various parallels between the world of gastronomy and coffee, such as the importance of the quality of ingredients, the techniques, the passion and precision you apply and the creative routes you explore in the search of new tasting experiences. It was fascinating to discover how the long and slow roasting technique that I use in my cooking could be applied to the creation of Crealto”.

 

UAE Day 2012 - Plane acrobatics over the Corniche

Happy 41st UAE Day ... Photos shot from across the Corniche, here in Abu Dhabi on 2nd December 2012.

IKEA - Yas Island, F1 weekend 2012

There have been so many visitors this past week in Abu Dhabi - Nice to see all the Formula 1 afficionados here in the desert, to catch the big race at the Yas Marina Circuit on Yas Island. We braved the traffic (It wasn't bad at all) to head to Yas over the weekend - Here's our Friday lunch, in IKEA - located adjacent to Ferrari World (Home of the world's fastest roller coaster - You can see the track in the photo!).

Our IKEA breakfast, funny how it used to (A year and a half ago) only cost 4 AED or RM$3 ... Its now 7 AED, still good value!

bbG chose the Thyme and Mushroom omellete, part of the organic offering from IKEA, which cost about 10 AED but came with an unlimited/refillable cup of coffee :-)

 

As IKEA is quite a long drive from where we live, nearly 40 minutes drive in fact, we often have breakfast there and shop ... and stay till lunch time! Here's my Chicken and Chips ... alas, on this occassion, the roast chicken was quite dry. When IKEA serves their Arabic-style chicken, such as Mandi, it is often much better - Moist and tasty!

bbG always chooses IKEA's baked fish, which comes with an unlimited-refill soft drink, less then RM$20 for the meal :-)

We got V and J the vegetarian fried rice, I think this was about 11 AED or RM$8, which was decent too!

Paris icons - Arc de Triomphe

The Arc de Triomphe or Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, is one of the most famous monuments in Paris. It stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle (originally named Place de l'Étoile), at the western end of the Champs-Élysées. The monument was designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806, and its iconographic program pitted heroically nude French youths against bearded Germanic warriors in chain mail.

The Arc de Triomphe (which in English translates to the "Triumphal Arch") honours those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars, with the names of all French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.

Paris icons - Pyramide du Louvre

The Louvre Pyramid or Pyramide du Louvre is a large glass and metal pyramid, surrounded by three smaller pyramids, in the main courtyard (Cour Napoléon) of the Louvre Palace (Palais du Louvre) in Paris. The large pyramid serves as the main entrance to the Louvre Museum.   It was completed in 1989, and has become a landmark of the city of Paris. It was commissioned by the President of France François Mitterrand in 1984, and was designed by the architect I. M. Pei.  

For design historian Mark Pimlott, "I.M. Pei’s plan distributes people effectively from the central concourse to myriad destinations within its vast subterranean network... the architectonic framework evokes, at gigantic scale, an ancient atrium of a Pompeiian villa; the treatment of the opening above, with its tracery of engineered castings and cables, evokes the atria of corporate office buildings; the busy movement of people from all directions suggests the concourses of rail termini or international airports."

Paris icons - Eiffel Tower

I was in France recently for a seminar, and had a short 3 hour tour of rainy Paris ... We stopped at a few Parisian icons, including the Eiffel Tower of course. I only just found out that more then 200 million people have visited the tower since its construction in 1889 and that it was the most-visited paid monument in the world! Here are a few shots captured with my Nikon D7000 and Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 lens.

The Eiffel Tower (French: La Tour Eiffel, nickname La dame de fer or 'the iron lady') is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris, named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair, it has become both a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world.

View from the Trocadéro, which is an area of Paris in the 16th arrondissement, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.

Raclette dinner and Comté - Chateauform De-Mareil-Le-Guyon, near Paris

Add: Chateauform De-Mareil-Le-Guyon - 78490 MAREIL-LE-GUYON, France
Tel: +33 1 34 57 08 40
Web: http://www.chateauform.com
GPS:
N 48° 47' 23"
E 1° 51' 5"

We indulged in wonderful french cheese all week - Both at lunch as well as dinner time! I slowly learned over the week that my favourite was Gruyère de Comté :-)

Some facts from Wikipedia ... Comté is a French cheese made from unpasteurized cow's milk in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France. Comté has the highest production of all French AOC cheeses, around 40,000 tonnes annually.

 

A raclette is both a type of cheese and a Swiss dish based on heating the cheese and scraping off (racler) the melted part.
This was our wonderful dinner on the penultimate night of our seminar :-) A wonderful communal-eating experience!

 

 

A modern way of serving raclette involves an electric table-top grill with small pans, known as coupelles, to heat slices of raclette cheese in. Generally the grill is surmounted by a hot plate or griddle. The cheese is brought to the table sliced, accompanied by platters of boiled or steamed potatoes, other vegetables and charcuterie. These are then mixed with potatoes and topped with cheese in the small, wedge-shaped coupelles that are placed under the grill to melt and brown the cheese...

 

Kronenbourg 1664, good ol' french beer!

 

If you are lucky enough to enjoy the hospitality of a Chateauform, you will have the privilege of having an open-bar, free-flow of wines, spirits and all other wonderful beverages!