Slices serves soups, sandwiches and salads, all freshly prepared the day you order, using primarily organic ingredients. Fizzy drinks are eschewed in favour of healthy 100 per cent fruit juices, bags of mini rice cakes line the counter instead of crisps, customers are encouraged to recycle their rubbish in designated bins and any food that is leftover when the cafe closes at 6pm is donated to different community groups.
While not particularly large, Slices is full of light, with a clean, modern feel. Sandwiches are displayed in chiller cabinets at the back of the room, there's a drinks station, an open kitchen and a glass-fronted salad bar. Although it does a quick turnaround in takeaway, a few communal tables allow customers to eat their lunch in-house as well, which is exactly what my colleagues and I did when we visited the other day.
At the functional-looking salad counter, you're free to select from as many different options as will fit into a regular (Dh22) or large (Dh28) size tub. A traditional waldorf salad featured notably sweet, crisp slices of apple and plump sultanas, a mix of pomegranate, corn and sweet chilli tasted as good as it looked and the potatoes in the potato salad were lightly coated in herby mayonnaise, rather then drenched. We also liked the simplicity of the pesto pasta with basil and the crunchy coleslaw with its slight sesame kick.
However, as cute as the little cardboard boxes with their swingy metal handle are, they prove a bit impractical when it comes to eating, as the different salads are layered on top of each other and crammed in tightly. While this generosity is commendable, it does mean that everything tends to blend together, to produce a confusion of flavours and ingredients.
At the moment, the bread that the cafe is using is not doing it justice. The brown slices that sandwiched a mildly spiced, juicy coronation chicken filling had hardened a little in the chiller cabinet and looked and tasted like a mediocre, mass-produced supermarket loaf. Similarly, a brie and cranberry baguette featured creamy cheese and tart berries, but the bread was neither pleasingly soft and floury, nor crisp and chewy. Slices would do well to seek out an artisan bread company, to make its sandwiches stand out.
Piping hot broccoli soup (one of two soup specials of the day) was thick, soothing and nicely seasoned; note that it is worth paying the Dh2 extra that will see the portion size upgraded from regular to large.
Should your schedule dictate, you can be in and out of Slices in five minutes or less, with a sandwich or soup and a fruit drink in hand, safe in the knowledge that you're about to eat something wholesome, having spent around Dh30 to do so. By all accounts, that really is rather pleasing.
A lunch for two at Slices, Al Mamoura Building, Al Nahyan Camp (adjacent to Al Muroor road) costs approximately Dh70. For more information or to place an order for delivery, call 02 491 8599. Reviewed meals are paid for by The National and all reviews are conducted incognito. Twitter: @SlicesAE
