CULINARA Social Dining — Restaurant in Dubai

Last Monday I met up with 9 friends at Culinara, located inside The Link at One Za’abeel (the world’s longest occupied skybridge, suspended 100 meters above the ground right in the heart of Duba). The place has amazing views and a great vibe. Culinara itself is a very unique concept. It features around 10 different dining experiences curated by award-winning chefs, all under one roof. You sit wherever you like (we picked a table with a great view), scan a QR code from a little cube on the table, and then the app opens and lets you order anything you want from any of the restaurants. You pay through the app, and a few minutes later, food just starts arriving at your table, even if it’s from different places. It’s like a food court but way more upscale. WARNING: 2 friends didn’t have credit cards and tried paying cash, but it is NOT possible.

I ordered 2 dishes from Joumana’s Table, the Lebanese restaurant. The first was the Tabbouleh (45 AED), which I’d rate an 8/10. The parsley was incredibly fresh, the flavor was great, but the portion size was tiny, especially for the price. If the serving had been bigger, it would’ve been a 10. The second dish I ordered was the Eggplant Mousakaa (55 AED), mainly because I’m avoiding carbs and sugar lately and eggplant is one of my favorite vegetables. The name and description on the menu sold me instantly: “Baked layers of eggplant, chickpeas, green capsicum, tomato sauce, fried onion.” Sounds amazing, right? But what arrived looked nothing like that description. It wasn’t baked. There were no visible layers. It was more like a gazpacho-style dish where everything is floating in a cold tomato-based sauce, with a few chunks of eggplant and chickpeas swimming in it. The fried onions on top were actually very crispy and nice, but overall, it was not what I expected at all. The ratio of sauce to solid ingredients was way off, it felt more like a bowl of cold soup than a Mousakaa. If they had just named it something like “Mousakaa inspired cold eggplant salad” or even “summer style eggplant gazpacho,” I would’ve accepted it for what it was. But calling this a Mousakaa is totally misleading. As a Mousakaa, I’d rate it 0/10. As a refreshing eggplant dish with a different name, maybe 6 or 7/10. They definitely need to change the menu description to avoid this kind of disappointment. I’ve attached a picture of the dish so you can see what I mean. In my opinion, both dishes from Joumana’s Table were overpriced and didn’t offer value for what I paid. I wouldn’t order from there again unless I’m on a strict diet and have no other options, most of the other restaurants at Culinara don’t have good diet-friendly choices either. That said, one of my friends ordered the Chicken Okonomi pizza from Kona Pizza House. I don’t usually like chicken on pizza, so I didn’t expect much, but I tasted a a very small bite, WOW! It was unbelievably good, I give it a 10/10 without hesitation. The size is small and the price is steep (66 AED), but the flavor really makes up for it. I would absolutely go back just for that pizza. We had more dishes from the other restaurants too, but I didn’t get to try them so I can’t comment. I’ll just post a few photos for reference. The space itself is really nice. It’s furnished in a stylish way, and the chair I was sitting on was super comfortable, I actually made a mental note of how well-designed it was. So overall, the experience was enjoyable. It’s basically a very fancy version of a food court, and definitely one of the most expensive food courts you’ll ever visit. But if you’re with a bunch of friends who can’t agree on what to eat or want to try a variety of cuisines at once, Culinara solves that problem really well. Would I go again? Maybe, but not for the value, it would be more about the company...

I was twice at Arrazuna with two different groups of people. First time midweek and the second time Friday evening. The staff is great, very positive and friendly. The food we liked as well. However, unfortunately there is no vibe at that place at all. Both times it was pretty much empty. To our surprise even on a Friday evening. In my personal opinion the place is too bright. You barely can enjoy the view because the lights indoors are too bright. In the next door bar Sphere on the other hand the lights are dimmed and you get to enjoy the beautiful views. At points the lights indoors got really bright, like they were testing firefighting systems or emergency lights. It would be nice if they played some background music, especially if the place is pretty empty. Would help to distract from that fact. The concept in general is: you have to download an app, then you order through the app. I personally liked it, where others in the group didn't appreciate it much, having to download an app, putting in some personal data, and found it disruptive to be charged every single time they order something, but would have preferred to have one bill at the end. The fact that you cannot book a table is somewhat annoying considering it's a destination venue, where you cannot just walk to some other place in case the venue is full. This made us book backup tables in the other restaurants at the One&Only for the case the venue was full. Since both times Arrazuna was pretty empty, we made last-minute cancellations at our back-up venues... I'm not sure if others do that as well or if it was just our strategy. In any case, I feel not allowing table bookings is a mistake as it might prevent people going there in the first place if they face the risk of not getting a table because the venue is full. The idea of having a modern digital high quality food hall concept is great, but for that I would hope that there's different cuisines to choose from. Prices: cocktails are around 85 AED, wine bottles start from 210 AED per bottle. Mezze around 60 AED, Mains around 140 AED. Fairly priced, especially compared to the other restaurants at the link, but if there's no vibe you might as well order take away to the comfort of your home. The venue itself is architecturally stunning, but the current concept does not grab me. Not sure if...

The dinner was a disaster. One of the worst dinner experienced by me in 4 years living in Dubai. We arrived at 10 PM and noticed that the menu was less than half of what it was the last time we came. There was only one main course, which was the Tenderloin. We ordered four of them (price 490 each) , only to find out that after about ten minutes, the waiter came back telling us that the Beef Tenderloin was not available, so we could only choose between the Chicken Skewers or the Lamb, which weren’t main courses anyway. After saying we would only order starters and then leave, a few minutes later the waiter came back telling us that the Tenderloin was actually available, but we would have to wait between 30 and 40 minutes. We agreed, waited a long time for this meat, ordered it three rare and one medium rare, and they brought them all medium+ and well done. We had all the meat canceled and left without practically eating anything, just a few starters.. the atmosphere was nice but veeery cold, the air conditioning was too low, everyone was freezing. the service was not at all attentive, with ALL the waiters completely unmotivated and left to their own, no managers around.. only one guy in white shirt, completely useless, which never approached our table, I think he was supposed to be the manager in charge of the restaurant, instead to come and absorb the complaints, he was just sending waiters to deal with us. We called the chef to ask him is thought about the meat, and he was saying that a completely brown cooked meat was rare for him and was up to standard. We were 8 people there to celebrate, and all the dinner was completely ruined, we left around 11.30pm with empty stomach.. insane. We left the restaurant, going to take the elevator, no people around out of the restaurant, no hostess/security/waiters/signals etc, nobody able to inform us that alle 3 elevators, out of the restaurant, if you take any of them, you will arrive in the middle of worksite (see the photo) so we had to find by ourself another way to go out, passing from Sphere bar, then taking another elevator to go up and finally take another elevator to go down. Such a waste of time. We all were fuming.

One and only...