British fare in Dubai

April 2010

Arrive early and hungry at Rhodes Mezzanine, Dubai, and you’ll have a night to remember

Gary Rhodes: chef, restaurateur, celebrity and author. These are the accolades buzzing around in our head as we walk into Rhodes Mezzanine in the Grosvenor House, Dubai.

And, like the chicken and egg, we couldn’t help but ponder which came first. For us, it was the celebrity as Rhodes was one of the first ‘TV chefs’ beamed straight into our living rooms in the 1990s.

However, British-born Rhodes was in the cooking game long before his on-screen debut, and actually opened his first restaurant 10 years before Rhodes Mezzanine appeared in Dubai.

He was the flavour of the 1990s, cooking up traditional British favourites, with a modern twist (to match his rather groundbreaking hairdo).

By the early noughties, Gary Rhodes the award-winning chef and owner of numerous Michelin-starred restaurants, soon overlapped Gary Rhodes, the celebrity.

Friends had advised us to arrive early at Rhodes Mezzanine as dining can be a lengthy experience (due to the amount of food rather than the waiting time), but in our haste, we found ourselves at the doors before the restaurant even opened. The staff were obviously used to this and guided us to a lounge area where we found we weren’t the only over-eager diners.

Ten minutes later, glass of champagne in hand, we were shown to our table. The décor is sparse and white, but instead of giving us a chill, the atmosphere was distinctly relaxed – helped by the friendly and welcoming waiters who were on hand throughout the night, despite every table being taken .

Along with his surname, Gary has lent executive chef Paul Lupton from his Michelin-starred London eatery, Rhodes 24. But, more importantly, Lupton has exported some of Rhodes’s finest creations.