Viability director Guy Wilkinson explains why Block 338, or ‘Restaurant Road’, in Manama is a one-off dining destination in the GCC that would turn Dubai’s restaurateurs green with envy

Block 338 in Adliya, Manama, also known as ‘Restaurant Road’, is the only place in the Gulf where a ‘destination’ for high quality licensed restaurants has grown up naturally, independently from any luxury hotels.

Now the district is the subject of an urban regeneration project by the Urban Affairs department of the Bahrain Ministry of Municipalities and Agriculture. Work on ‘The 338’, as it has been dubbed, started last year and will see more parking spaces, better traffic circulation and a new pedestrian road and square akin to Bahrain’s own ‘Covent Garden.’ Phase one is complete and phase two is planned to be ready for the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix.

Even now, Block 338’s restaurants, cafés and bars are considered the apex of Manama’s F&B sector. Mezzaluna, for example, is located in a traditional Bahraini courtyard house, and features cosy but contemporary interiors and a continental menu from a French chef. The ultra-trendy outlet is one of four from Bahrain’s Alghalia WLL, also including Zoe, a hip lounge bar with a DJ and a bistro menu, and Café Lilou, which has branches in both Adliya and Al Aali Mall, boasting interiors reminiscent of a turn of the century Parisian brasserie.

The cool, minimalist Oliveto is one of numerous trendy Italian and Mediterranean restaurants in the district, also including Cico’s, Mino’s and La Pergola at the multi-outlet Gulf Hotel. Camelot is a castle-themed French restaurant with a modern interior, created by club owner Karim Miknas. Another French option is the Jolie Maison Brasserie de Luxe, which serves classic Gallic fare in sequinned interiors.

The elegant Ken Lo’s Memories of China is a ‘westernised Chinese’ restaurant franchise from London.

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A close competitor is the equally renowned BamBu (Chinese and Thai), while Mirai is a ‘new wave’ Japanese restaurant with a bar and a costly menu by Australian chef Dave Allen. The Brazil Rodizio is one of several Brazilian eateries in Bahrain to offer meat on skewers. Adliya’s other famous steakhouse is The Meat Company, which also has a rooftop bar. Indeed, many of the restaurants in Adliya have adjunct bars, lounges or terraces, a situation that would have many of the outlet owners in Dubai’s equivalent Jumeirah district in agonies of envy.

Although there are of course western F&B brands in Adliya, the prominent outlets in and around ‘Restaurant Road’ are for the most part either proudly Bahraini, or contributions by westerners wanting to creating a truly sophisticated district in their adopted country of Bahrain.

Sheikh Hamad Mohamed Al Khalifa, director general of Urban Planning Affairs at the Ministry of Municipalities and Agriculture, said of The 338: “I think the thing that makes this project, and the area itself, special, is that it has not been built with the Disneyland approach where you build something from scratch with everything new.”

In what is surely a gentle dig at Dubai, Sheikh Hamad is stressing that in order to reflect the true Bahraini identity, there is no need to build fake wind towers to offset the dominance of international brands like Planet Hollywood. Just take a nice old neighbourhood and enhance it with the islanders’ creativity and a bit of help from the government.

The latter comes not only in the form of urban landscaping, but also in the liberal licensing laws that have allowed Adliya’s quiet residential streets to be filled with ‘resto-bars.’ It is quite literally the only place in the Gulf where there is such a permissive ambience.

The 338 is in some sense the government’s model neighbourhood as regards how the question of alcohol should be dealt with. The implication is that it is safe, urbane and civilised, much like the country itself, and that drinking is not an issue. This stands in stark contrast to the reality experienced in other parts of Manama, most notoriously, Exhibition Avenue, where drinking and prostitution are synonymous with the worst kind of intra-regional tourism, which many Bahrainis abhor. It is for this reason that the alcohol licenses of the one- and two-star hotels were recently revoked and why there are some elements of the parliament lobbying for much more far-reaching restrictions on alcohol in the country. As so often in its history, Bahrain stands at a cross-roads, but the country can be relied on to make a civilised compromise.

Guy Wilkinson is a director of Viability, a hospitality and property consulting firm in Dubai. For more information, e-mail: guy@viability.ae