FOOD & BEVERAGE
The Sawa dining room – the hotel’s ‘all-day dining’ facility, though the team is keen to avoid that term – has an open kitchen with live cooking stations to demonstrate the theatre of its Asian, Indian and Arabic food preparation, as well as regular live entertainment. Breakfast buffets and Friday brunches are characteristically busy, and Pieters reveals that 60% of Sawa’s diners are regulars with their own ‘debenture’ tables.
Al Sufra is the “talk of the town”, Pieters claims. “You don’t just go to dinner at Sufra, you go for dinner with head chef Julien [Al-Khal] and his team, and you challenge them.”
As we tuck in to what was promised to be a light lunch, Al-Khal personally delivers numerous Levant-inspired dishes to our table with a flourish, explaining their provenance, answering questions and proudly serving generously heavy portions. Some of his regulars request – and receive – home deliveries.
| Advertisement |
While the home-grown Al Sufra, and high-profile franchises Toro Toro, Antica Pesa and soon-to-open Nozomi, might have been expected to steal the F&B limelight at MMK, it is in fact the aforementioned Café Murano that seems to have caught the most attention.
The coffee shop, serving colourful, made-in-house pastries, chocolates and Arabic sweets, has ‘gone viral’ among the local, selfie-obsessed Twitterati. “Qatar has one of the highest social media usage rates in the whole world. Everything is captured and shared,” says Pieters.
In less than a year, the hotel has already attracted 65,000 fans on Facebook – more than most other Kempinski properties worldwide – and the Twitter handle @MarsaMalaz has gathered 12,500 followers.
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
