Food and Beverage
Renaissance has a mix of both celebrity-focused and home-grown F&B outlets. Celebrity chef Masaharu Morimoto will open Morimoto Dubai, featuring a menu of contemporary Japanese cuisine that infuses traditional dishes with western ingredients and preparation techniques across three private dining rooms and terraces with views of the Burj Khalifa. Southern French farmhouse-inspired restaurant Bleu Blanc and urban Italian themed Basta! — both concepts by chef David Myers — are also set to become culinary highlights. The hotel will also introduce Bhar, from the Arabic word for spice, designed to offer Middle Eastern cuisine.
According to Gilles Perrin, the hotel’s director of culinary, the team didn’t just want another celebrity chef working out of his/her London head office. He believes Renaissance Downtown Dubai’s F&B offerings will fill in the gaps when it comes to the emirate's food and beverage scene.
In a recent interview with sister title Caterer Middle East, the “Gypsy Chef” David Myers shed some light on his decision to open three distinct concepts in one hotel. “Dubai is such a hub. It’s a melting pot of cultures and it’s such a cosmopolitan city. It’s been developing year on year in such a fast, trend-setting fashion,” he said at the time, and added: “If you’re going to be considered a global restaurateur and you’re not in Dubai, then you’re not a global restaurateur.” Myers places great importance on being part of Dubai’s maturing culinary scene and sees great potential in his partnership with the property that houses his venues: “You’ve got to be here. You’ve got to be on the map, so when this opportunity came up for this particular project, it just fit. It’s a boutique hotel, 300 rooms; all the other hotels are really large with large restaurants, but to be able to bring three really cool, unique, authentic concepts to this hotel and to this location is exactly what we do.”
And director of culinary Perrin agrees. “It’s not the case that something is missing in Dubai’s culinary but that we are bringing something new and interesting in terms of what we are trying. We bring to Dubai a restaurateur or a chef, but not your typical restaurant chef blandly cooking a recipe from the other side of the world,” Perrin adds. According to Perrin, it’s more a case of only the best surviving.
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