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Why we are still away from a good culinary experience

WHAT all eateries in Dubai have in common these days are falling standards, whether it is the food or the service. I have heard it more than once from people, mostly expatriates of various nationalities, who insist that food in Dubai is not like food back home. At first I thought this is a common symptom of homesickness, but there seems to be more to it than that.

The first to catch any food critic’s eye is service. Waiters in Dubai either have very poor eyesight or simply ignore the frantic, persistent waves of customers. And yet they seem to always catch you at the worst possible moment to ask: "How is your food, sir". The likely explanation for such behaviour is that waiters are poorly motivated, i.e. poorly paid.

When a new restaurant opens up the food is usually top notch, but apparently such high standards are difficult or too expensive to maintain over time and soon quality of food begins to dip. Even presentation suffers. Examples abound: orange pits in fresh juice, salads missing dressing or other vital ingredients, steaks asked for ‘well-done’ arrive with a pink centre. It is these little things that have the biggest impact on customers, or at least they should.

Maybe it’s the customers’ fault, maybe we don’t raise a big enough stink, we don’t complain enough, we don’t criticise enough, after all who has the time! With today’s frantic pace of life, we would be lucky to have enough time to catch a quick bite to eat, thus the emphasis is on "the faster the better".

In response, restaurants tend to dish out substandard stuff smothered in "comfort food", because they know people have little time to focus on taste and flavour. What most people look for is to feed the old furnace. Cheese is often the comfort food of choice — it melts, it enriches, it is so comforting and filling! No wonder in most Dubai eateries everything is drowned in cheese.

Restaurants that list ingredients of food items in the menu often fail to mention that a dish contains cheese. And yet cheese is a major source of dietary cholesterol and a contributing factor to bulging waistlines.

The lack of creativity in food preparation is also glaring, apart from ethnic and traditional fair, menus at different restaurants often resemble each other, giving people little variety to choose from. While five star restaurants, often attached to hotels, tend to maintain reasonable standards at a price, there is still great room for improvement. As for the more affordable places, a menu is often etched in stone.

Recently, I had an unpleasant experience when I ordered a salad at a restaurant in a five star hotel. It was tasteless. No salt or herbs of any kind, the tomatoes were poor quality and tasted awful, the chicken was tough and had a strange taste to it, and even the pasta in the salad was slightly crunchy. In disgust I returned the salad and asked for the bill. The waiter made sure to point out that they had not charged me for the salad!

But with a largely benign Press and an absence of genuine food critics in the UAE, there is little hope that people will have a fair and objective source for unbiased culinary information on where to eat and where not to eat any time soon. There could be a gem of a restaurant lurking somewhere in the dark recesses of some back street, a "mom and pop" operation that serves up excellent food, but no one gets to hear of it because their advertising budget is too small.

Food takes art and heart. It’s not a cold mechanical production line. Feeding people is among the most intimate of professions around and like all other art forms you can always tell when the person preparing the food is not putting his/her heart and soul into the job. Tastes and smells can be very powerful. They can bring memories of happier days rushing back reminding us of home cooking or a loved one.

While bland and tasteless can be quick and convenient, it makes for a poor culinary experience. In a country that prides itself on having top-notch tourist attractions and on attracting the cream of international tourists, the culinary arts still have a long way to go in meeting ever-higher expectations.

Hani M Bathish is a KT staff reporter