Restaurant reviews: Marina Social, Tom & Serg, Trèsind

Marina Social

Jason Atherton has worked alongside some of the all-time great chefs from Marco Pierre White and Ferran Adria to Gordon Ramsay and Pierre Koffmann. Atherton therefore has picked up a wealth of culinary tricks from the masters and thrown it into his The Social Company restaurant group that has outposts in London, Hong Kong, Shanghai and at Dubai’s waterside Marina venue.

At Marina Social, you can just say
to the waitstaff, “feed me,” and they’ll let the chef decide what should be part of the four, six or eight-course menu. You wouldn’t regret blindly trusting Atherton’s crew to get it right.

Of course, you could go a la carte at this licensed venue. The goat cheese churros make for a great starter with sweet and savoury elements including extravagant truffle honey for dunking. The Atlantic crab is another starter with the right amount of sour lemon gel and the dish is served chilled along with radish and tomatoes.

While you could do
a delicious ricotta, mozzarella and basil sourdough pizza for the middle course, you can also skip and go straight to the mains. The slow cooked chicken is mixed with the broth of chicken and mushrooms while the pine nut purée is a brilliant addition served alongside the glazed lamb rump.

Don’t
leave without asking for the condensed milk ice cream dessert – the well-informed and attentive waitstaff will diligently remind you of that should you forget.

Marina Social, InterContinental Dubai Marina, King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud Street, Dubai. 6pm-10.45pm on Sundays-Thursdays, 1pm-4pm and 7-11.45pm on Fridays, 1pm-10.45pm on Saturdays. Tel: (04) 4466 664

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Tom & Serg

The vibrant warehouse-style café with exposed pipework, deliberately messy paint jobs and scuffed flooring feels right at home in the industrial Al Qouz area. The restaurant is the brainchild of Sergio Lopez, the F&B operations director from Madrid and Tom Arnel, a chef from Melbourne.

Naturally, the first item you must try from the all-day breakfast menu is the excellent Australian Benedict in which the poached eggs are doused in gribiche hollandaise and topped with shredded wagyu beef. Need more meat? Turn to the Breaky Bao with succulent beef that leaves a happy mess on your fingers and plate in its wake.

The sourdough crumpets are another popular item on the menu with a beautifully plated preparation of salmon, sourdough bread, lettuce, and a Lebanese cucumber salsa that’s really the ace ingredient of
the dish. To end on a sugary note, try the salted caramel French toast, which has bits of rhubarb, black cherry and some sticky caramel.

If coffee is more your thing, they’ve elevated the experience with Colombian, Brazilian, Ugandan and Indonesian offerings served using different methods.

Tom & Serg, 15A Street, Al-Joud Center, Al Qouz, Near ACE Hardware, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai. 8am-3.45pm on Sundays-Thursdays and 8am-5.45pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

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Trèsind

Trèsind is pushing experimental
Indian cuisine to its limits with preparation more suited to a laboratory rather than a kitchen. Think liquid nitrogen, dry ice, infusions and suffusions all of which give you a genuine molecular gastronomy experience.

Among the options at the white tablecloth restaurant, which temporarily shuttered for a few months earlier this year to complete a brief refurbishment, is a tasting menu.

The starters include freeze-dried crispy okra, followed by garlic prawns sautéed at your table and served with rice vinegar mayo, chicken laid atop sliced pineapple, which is flamed at your table, and wagyu satay served with peanut sauce.

The mains include a spicy kadai lobster, which sees lobster pieces served within a giant lobster shell, another dish of fiery chicken gravy and a mutton gravy too that best resembles a rogan josh.

For desserts, wait for the delicious preparation of ghevar (a typical Rajasthani dessert) that is filled with condensed milk, raspberry sorbet and has a coil lid made from white chocolate.

The refurbishment work has resulted in the opening of Trèsind Studio – a private dining space closed off from the rest of the venue, which serves as an ideal spot to take all the board members out for a meal.

Trèsind, Nassima Royal Hotel, Sheikh Zayed Road, Trade Center Area, Dubai. 12pm- 3pm, 7pm-11.30pm. Tel: (04) 3080 440.