Tucked away in a little enclave of Dubai sits Grand Plaza Mövenpick Media City, a destination hotel with triumvirate offerings for its guests, across business, leisure and pleasure. Here to experience one of the hotel’s five restaurants, Twenty Three sits proud on the rooftop of the 23rd floor, where views sweep across the meandering roads of Media City, out to Palm Jumeirah and the Arabian Gulf beyond.
Two terraces flank the lounge bar – named Sunset and Sunrise – while the bar itself is dark, romantic and mysterious, oozing exclusivity but not in a grandiose way. The layout is open-plan, mixing long banquet seats, red velvet chairs, high-low bar tables and a 12-person private dining area with long marble table. Three sunset-orange onyx bars light up the whole space, with the lounge’s bar running the entire width of the room and flanked by grand marble walls and vast floor-to-ceiling windows that let the outside flood in. Low coffee tables, deep armchairs and woven pouffes dress both terraces, creating a laid-back lounge feel. Uplit olive trees and flame heaters complete the ambience, that feels cool and casual - very Manhattan, but without the pretentious crowd. There’s low-level Café del Mar music that is pitched just right to not be intrusive.
With light emphasis on the theme of ‘twenty three’, the menu features 23 cocktails, 23 types of wine, 23 bar snacks, and so on. It’s subtle, rather than gimmicky. Food-wise, Twenty Three’s vision puts a more contemporary twist on the bar snack concept – modern and unexpected. For example, there are olives, but these are marinated in-house with garlic, oil and bay leaves with crispy orange zest on top.
Executive Chef, Alfred Zuberbuehler and his Executive Sous Chef, Baljit Kumar, have really tried to create something different. Served on platters and laid-out in bite-size portions, the food is light not overwhelming, where the presentation is worth admiring in itself. There are two menus: one meat and seafood, the other vegetarian. Highlights from the former include smoked bresaola pinchos with black olive tapenade, smoked beef bacon dusted fries with blue cheese dip, black Angus beef sliders topped with melted camembert cheese, and miso and ginger fried chicken with miso mayonnaise. I have it on good authority that the crab two ways – crispy crab cake and crab tartare – pip the other dishes to the post.
On the vegetarian side, far from feeling like a meat menu’s unconsidered sister, the snacks are carefully curated. The crispy goat cheese truffles with bell pepper and thyme dip are light and divine, while the Moroccan-spiced roasted carrot hummus with zaatar lavash requires a second order of bread for dipping. Mini Punjabi potato and green pea samosas are seasoned perfectly, but the standout is the charred eggplant with thyme, Greek yoghurt, tahini and pomegranate – a Middle Eastern-meets-Greek dish that is creamy, tangy and moreish.
As the night rolls around, we eat, sip, lie back and drink in the stars... Totally immersed in the vibe that Twenty Three is pedaling. By day, it makes for a great roof-with-a-view lounge space, but it really comes into its own for an after-dark rendezvous, where its air of mystery feels expectant and exciting. My advice is to go hungry, go thirsty, and go when time is not of the essence, because here, you’ll happily lose a few hours, as a good lounge bar will have you do.
Important bit:
What: Twenty Three
Where: Grand Plaza Mövenpick Media City, Dubai
Tel: +971 4 525 7777