The brasserie restaurant is expected to be popular among the hotel guests. The brasserie restaurant is expected to be popular among the hotel guests.

“My wife is from Brazil so I have a deeper knowledge of what we wanted to do with this outlet,” says Fries.

According to Harley-Fleming there are five Brazilian restaurants in Dubai, including the soon-to-launch Fogo Vivo, but Fries says: “We have tried a lot of them over the last couple of months, and this will be the only one which is really authentic.”

“The meat comes from the south of Brazil. We’ll have a Brazilian chef de cuisine and a Brazilian restaurant manager,” he adds.

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Fries says there are some interesting new concepts for Dubai, including its all-day dining outlet ‘Le Rivage’, which he says has the feel of a French brasserie, and includes live cooking stations.

“In the lobby we have another interesting concept called Café Via. In every four-to-five star hotel you have the traditional lobby bar with the dates, and in most cases bad service, bad food — an outlet that is never properly utlilised.

“So we came up with a concept called Pizza Italiano, from Rome. It’s basically a very big pizza slice which you slice with scissors and it’s freshly baked in the oven to order and priced by weight,” explains Fries.

He is also hoping to boost revenue through the retail of other pastries, jams and cookies.

Then there’s The Deck, which Fries is quick to point out is not a pool bar: “There will be more upmarket plating, semi-fine dining and it’s a great place in the evening when the sun is going down and you can enjoy your beautiful Wagyu steak there with a glass of red wine.

“Then there’s The Whistler on the 25th floor – a stunning wine and cheese restaurant, with more than 200 types of wines and more than 50 kinds of cheese.”

In total there are eight food and beverage outlets including room service and banqueting. Staffing these, and the rest of the hotel, will be 440 team members.

“We sent our HR manager with resident manager Mark Voller on recruitment trips,” says Harley-Fleming.

Voller explains: “We went to Kenya, Burma, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Indonesia. It was exciting — we got a good mix of new associates.

“Sri Lanka was the most successful market and we recruited 40-50% of staff from within the UAE. So we’ve recruited about 80% of the workforce, and we’ve got in excess of 27 different nationalities,” adds Voller.

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