Sea Fu — Restaurant in Dubai

I rarely rate any restaurants less than 3 stars as evident in my previous posts on Reviews.

Booking is highly recommended for this Michelin guide-mentioned restaurant.

Arrival: Greeted by a very courteous hostess. Provided us with seating options which was greatly appreciated. It was slightly on the chilly side but heaters are provided near the tables so it was pleasant. We did ask for a blanket, which one waitress said there are pashminas and that she would bring to us but it never came until the end of our dining.

Dinner: We opted for the tasting menus - Sea Fu and Royal. Our waiter was Fatai and he was great. Recommended dishes and drinks and was pleasant all around. The dishes was served at the expected speed and started off good. His explanation of each dish was easily understood. Overall, the menu was not a Michelin-mention-worthy. Almost all of the starter and main dishes (except the sushi) have a tinge of sweetness to them. Fatai told us that most of the food are marinated in advanced, probably with some soy sauce, honey etc. So if you are not a fan of sugar or anything sweet for your starters and mains, the tasting menus are not for you. Also, yuzu seems to be the main ingredient in all of the items. The octopus and wagyu tenderloin (ordered medium) were slightly over cooked.

The pre-dessert sorbet was simple (see photo). Then the desserts came. Mine was the mille-feuille (see photo). As far I was concerned, it’s not a Mille-feuille as it’s supposed to have layers but I understand the need to be different and creative….but it tasted wonderful…until I found a strand of hair in the sauce. Informed the waiter and was promised a replacement. I guess a manager or supervisor came and apologised and offered me another sorbet (bigger portion this time - see photo) while I wait for the replacement dessert. At least that’s how we understood the conversation. No replacement dessert came but we did get some kind of chocolate praline and small piece of custard on a biscuit.

Bill: Checked the bill to find that we were charged the scoop of sorbet that the manager “offered” me. Informed the waiter that I didn’t get the replacement dessert. He apologised and explained that the “extra” sorbet was the replacement dessert. We paid after the extra charge was taken out of the bill.

Will we...

Sea Fu was a good choice for an intimate birthday celebration with the family (all adults). It is a small venue if we only consider indoors, with slightly outdated decor that gives you the feeling of this restaurant being a 20 year old venue. I must say, outdoors looked lovely, I would recommend to visit this venue when it is more convenient with the heat outside, towards January. The music was an old Gotan Project mixtape; outdated restaurant background music, can be updated. The cocktail menu was creative even though the 'all aorund the world' concept is a bit outdated again, they tasted amazing. The wine menu is considerably good as well and go well with the main course options. Main course portions are small, with the 'less is more' concept, and beautifully presented. The raw bar options are little procey given the venue, yet again presented well and tasted fresh and served at correct temperature. Birthday surprise was sweet with dry ice, sparkles, good effort and attentiveness to celebrate with tourists, families, older couples. One beuatifull detail was that the chocolate dome int he dessert platter was inspried by the fountain right outside of the menu. I though that was pretty. I must though add, staff was a bit hesitant and impatient with the guests for instance: towels were only delivered to 2 of us out of 4, because the other couple arrived later; menus were not given to all 4 of us timely, yet the waiter asked us to order too quick; the cocktails were not cleared/finished before the service of wine. I think this is a good example of standard staff efficiency issue we tend to come across in every other venue in Dubai, and...

I honestly did not want to post a review but I have to, in order to save someone else from a bad experience. The food and service both are low quality. We have had sushi from many places but this restaurant sushi is definitely poor tasting and poor quality. If you never had sushi in life and you don't know what good sushi is, then you may like the " sushi" here! But they do not know how to make sushi

Last time I was here, I had ordered wagyu steak and it was a bad choice since they do not know how to make steak. It was so hard and done so poorly that my jaw almost hurt after eating it. But I thought may be they are sea food place and I should have ordered Sushi instead of steak. I just ignored it.

This time we ordered Sushi and guess what, it was terribly made like last time.

Do they even know how to cook? So many employees wandering around and not even giving service. They were all disappeared and we had to ask them for cleaning the table and getting us plates and chopsticks. Really bad experience. We should have gone...