The Wine Spy assesses the grape and the good. The Wine Spy assesses the grape and the good.

In danger of becoming both biased and ensconced inside the walls of The Madinat during the summer season, I have managed to get a little further afield, to check out what is arguably the real competition for The Madinat: Souk Al Bahar.

It still seems a long way wherever you live, to get to the Souk Al Bahar (unless you bought in Downtown of course) and hopefully The Metro may help here.

But arriving in a taxi, it seems to take ages to actually get to the Souk once you have come off Sheikh Zayed Road.

I am sure it will be great when all finished, so please Emaar, hurry up and get rid of the endless red and white traffic cones which seem to be multiplying everywhere.

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Once in the Souk, it seems daft not to try out at least more than one location.

We headed first to Cru, a new wine-bar on the ground floor.

It was around 8pm on a Tuesday night and worryingly there were only two other people in the bar.

This didn’t help liven the atmosphere — and nor did the selection of songs blasting out from the system; Queen mostly, if I recall correctly! (I personally like Queen and thought Freddie was excellent, but I’m not sure it wsets the right tone in a wine bar!)

The bar itself seemed OK, but the quality of the back bar is lacking — it looks like it was put together in a hurry.