F&B in focus
Six restaurants and lounges are on offer, with the culinary team led by Four Seasons veteran executive chef Giancarlo di Francesco, who was previously at the Four Seasons Hotel Doha.
• Butcher & Still — a modern interpretation of a 1940s Chicago steakhouse with interiors by AvroKO, offering prime cuts flown in from specially selected farms in the United States. This will open in September 2016.
• Café Milano — The first international outpost of the famed Washington, DC restaurant, featuring coastal Southern Italian cuisine, with the interiors by Tihany Design.
• Zsa Zsa — a modern cocktail bar named after Zsa Zsa Gabor, overlooking the waterfront and Abu Dhabi skyline that includes outdoor seating plus a glassed-in VIP room.
• Al Meylas — a bright, lively lobby lounge which the hoteliers term “Abu Dhabi’s living room”. Daily afternoon tea, modern Arabic selections including an array of flavoured honeys, and ice cream with local flavours can be found here.
• Crust — a market-inspired restaurant with an emphasis on healthy global cuisine that will also be the setting for a Friday brunch in the capital.
• Eclipse Terrace Lounge — a casual poolside grill with shaded bar area and lounge seating that will become, through lighting and music, a lounge in the evening.
Speaking to Hotelier, the hotel’s director of food & beverage, Sandeep Kumar, says the key to creating these concepts was to “have a distinct personality which guests can relate to and identify themselves with”.
He adds: “Authenticity in food is important to us; it will continue throughout everything we do. Our chef is very committed to finding products from different parts of the world which are unique. Even for the preserve that goes up with breakfast with in-room dining, we tried 17 different companies from different parts of the world and picked the right one.”
On the beverage front, some of the wines have been custom-blended for the hotel, and some of the spirits in Butcher & Still will be from distilleries that don’t exist anymore, so some of those last remaining bottles are being used in Abu Dhabi.
On a socially responsible note, the hotel is filtering and bottling its own water for all guest rooms. “This will save over two million plastic bottles a year from our hotel alone,” reveals general manager Sam Ioannidis.
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