Dinner with a show comes in many forms in the food-forward city that is Dubai. From musicals and fairy tales to cabaret acts and aerial artists, several restaurants offer meals that are liberally garnished with entertainment.
Of these, immersive dining is rapidly coming into its own. Storytelling aside, this experience often relies on sensory stimulation and the use of virtual reality and artificial intelligence to transport diners into other, imagination-loaded worlds.
I have, however, often wondered about the holding power of such restaurants, both in terms of keeping a viewer’s attention for the duration of the meal as well as the returning customer rate for the same act.
Yet a visit to Krasota – which was fully sold out on a Monday evening – proves there is a real appetite for immersive meals.
Located in the Address Downtown Hotel, Krasota is helmed by Moscow’s White Rabbit group. The meal and show come courtesy of the award-winning team of chef Vladimir Mukhin and art director Anton Nenashev.
Following from a selection of appetisers in the waiting lounge, we step into the 20-seater “gastro theatre” – deliberately designed as a circular room so the projected images do not cut off at the corners as in a standard rectangular room. Here exotic food meets fantastical technology at Dh1,500 a pop.
The show
Krasota currently has two shows on offer, Imaginary Art and Imaginary Future, with the former playing out on the evening my dining partner and I are able to visit.
I was expecting to see clever twists on mainstream works by da Vinci and Van Gogh, maybe Munch. However, the restaurant delves fully into its roots, and offers projections of paintings, sculptures, patterns and motifs by Soviet artists including Alexander Deyneka, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Mikhail Vrubel, Ivan Aivazovsky and others.
As such, my companion and I found ourselves in unchartered artistic waters – which worked a charm for me, but not so much for her. While I was fascinated to discover new names and enjoyed the creative ways in which their works were presented, my friend wished she had more of a familiar grasp on what we were viewing and the associations we were expected to make between painting and plate.
Our individual experiences and the discussion (fine, debate) that ensued after was rather like art itself, which can be subjective and even divisive.
The production involved bringing to life three or four different creations by the same artist via moving projections and a jaunty soundtrack. So Deyneka’s painting Future Pilots was reinterpreted with paper planes whizzing around the circular screen that doubles as a canvas, as Kylie Minogue’s Confide in Me played.
Vrubel, a 19th-century painter and sculptor, was the creator of the palette knife, the brush strokes of which made his work resembles crystals. Accordingly, the production team created projections of shimmering, interactive crystals on the tablecloth and the crabmeat dish served alongside was contained in a cube of ice.
The team have literally personified the paintings in a way that's not tokenistic or cheesy, but rather sets the mood and offers an insight into the artist's mind and the style of art he worked with.
“The concept is based on the principles of synesthesia, when a signal from one sensory organ is linked to a signal from another, like tasting a colour or seeing a sound,” explains Nenashev, adding: “We have integrated four components into the framework of Krasota – aesthetic, educational, entertainment and escapist.”
The fifth component – the meal – was a revelation in its own right, too.
The food
My favourite dish of the evening, ironically, was one of four appetisers served in the waiting lounge rather than the gastro-theatre. It’s a crunchy canape filled with cream cheese, green peas, a generous dollop of black caviar and edible flowers, all to be eaten in one bite to savour the myriad textures, and served in the Japanese ikebana style of flower arrangement.
Ikebana, or “making flowers come alive”, is meant to convey an emotion to an observer (in this case, a diner) just as a work of art might. As such, this dish perfectly encapsulates Krasota’s penchant to merge artistic and culinary metaphors.
Chef Mukhin is liberal in the homages he pays to other cultures and cuisines, most of which are inspired by the repertoire of the eight artists the show is centred on. For instance, Soviet mystical painter Nicholas Roerich’s stint in India and Nepal results in an artichoke curry with coconut rice (served to the hypnotic soundtrack Jai Radha Madhav by Deva Premal).
Elsewhere, Marc Chagall (the one artist I actually knew, thanks to Notting Hill) prompted the chef to serve a divine baked potato stuffed with sea urchin, black caviar and desert truffle, given Chagall’s connection to Belarus, a country famed for producing potatoes.
An ode to the Middle East comes by way of an appetiser and the dessert platter. The first is dates bread made with Khalas dates, served with Moroccan lumi and plated on the branch of a tree that only grows in the desert.
Following from a yuzu cheesecake, a second dessert platter or “sweet compliment” from the chef called Five Senses, was served atop a wooden box lit from within to show scenes of Arabia, from Aladdin and Agraba to camels and flying carpets.
While a couple of the main dishes were a bit too sweet for my taste – the addition of red currants in a rhubarb milk-infused tuna, for instance, threw my taste buds for a toss – most were masterfully executed and duly devoured. Plus, at four appetisers, seven mains, a dessert plus myriad sweet bites, you won’t leave feeling hungry.
From the chef's mouth
Mukhin cites his favourite dish from the Imaginary Art menu as the black cod with plum and fig, served as a representation of Soviet marine painter Aizakovsky’s The Ninth Wave (1850).
“The artwork holds a special vivid meaning for me,” says the chef. “I had the chance last winter to sail in the middle of a storm in the Norwegian fjords. It was like being inside the painting. The sea storm was challenging but impressive. I pushed myself to meet the fierce sea with the rest of the crew. Many of the feelings and impressions I faced there are expressed in this dish.”
He explains further: “In the painting, the sun opens a path of light and hope in the darkest sea storm, and the promise of life is radiated on sun-ripened fruits. Here, I chose plum and fig as the colour range of their peels match the palette of the dark waters that Aizakovsky masterfully painted.
“To bring into motion the waves with all their beauty and strength, we cut thin slices of the plum with its peel curling up to represent the sea in movement, allowing overtures that reveal its peach-orange flesh infiltrating the light of the sun as the waves in the scene.
“The black cod represents the wreckage of a boat, with its layers falling off inside your mouth, while the texture of the crunchy fruit represents the crackling waves of the sea. A beautiful synaesthetic moment.”
Price point and show information
Krasota is open daily and offers one or two seatings, at 6pm and 9pm, depending on the day of the week. Meals are priced at Dh1,500 per person.
For reservations, contact 04 433 1258 or visit krasota.art.
This review was conducted at the invitation of the restaurant
