Why I struggle with tasting menus. And a restaurant review of Manao.

I struggle with many tasting menus, especially in Dubai. Why?

Sky-high price points. For one imported concept here, the exact same menu is AED400 more expensive than its home country.

Three to four hours (and sometimes more) of my life that I will never get back, thanks to snail-pace dining.

Long-winded storytelling for every single, bloody dish. I really don’t care if the chef’s grandma, or a jaunt to an obscure corner of the world have inspired the cooking. I can read about all that, and more, on the website. I just want to eat my food. In peace. And preferably warm. Unless we’re feasting on sushi and sashimi. But even then, the tale must be kept to a minimum. There’s only so much inane chatter I can stomach.

Good food should speak for itself.

And then along comes Manao. An affordable, by Dubai standards, of AED450 for an 11-course tasting menu. Served in one and a half hours. A printed menu on the table, from arrival. Something several of these concepts don’t give you until, dare I say, the bitter end. A succession of different staff members explained the dishes, succinctly in seconds. The chef only popped out once to briefly present a dish, swiftly scuttering back to the open-plan kitchen. You wouldn’t even know he was the chef, unless you had stalked his good looks on Instagram.

Chef Abhiraj Khatwani is the [handsome] Indian chef whose cooking expertise was honed in north-east Thailand before opening The Yellow Monkey, a casual Thai gem at JBR that I used to frequent years ago until Covid shut its doors. Mohamad Orfali of Orfali Bros Bistro fame, the Midas touch chef has backed him to open a 34-seat restaurant in Wasl Vita, solely dedicated to a Thai-inspired tasting menu.

I first tried to book Manao at the end of January via the website’s reservations link, but the earliest availability for a table of two was a month away. I really did not want to wait that long, so a few days later, on the 3rd February, I checked again, and found a slot for Saturday 15th February at 8pm. Manao must have had a cancellation. Hurrah. Booked! Under a pseudonym, as always.

So how does our dining experience fare – the food, service, interior and atmosphere, amongst other parameters?

CLICK HERE FOR MORE.

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