While many restaurants are sticking to a three-course set menu for Dubai Restaurant Week, Okku at The H Hotel is dishing up a bit more. The chic Asian restaurant, complete with a glowing wall of live jellyfish, is offering a starter of edamame, a duck salad, baked aubergine, spicy tuna on crispy rice, chilli miso chicken, a side of rice and two desserts. You won’t walk away hungry.
While the menu is meant for two people to share, it’s still more than enough. The flavourful hushihu salad is a tasty pile of sweet, tender, shredded duck set atop a bed of red and white strips of cabbage, green leaves, thinly sliced radishes, daikon and pomegranate seeds. The roasted, charred aubergine is not as exciting, but if you like your veggies sweet, you’ll like this — it’s coated with a sesame seed miso glaze, which is far too sweet for me. The spicy tuna on crispy rice is delicious. You’ll get four rectangles of fried, firm sushi rice topped with tuna tartare, made spicy with Sriracha sauce, which adds just the right amount of heat. The chilli-miso chicken yakiniku is my favourite dish of the night. Served with a bowl of sticky rice, this slightly charred, skin-on chicken (cooked on a robata grill) is served as bite-sized pieces of sweet, sticky chicken. Leave the skin on for maximum flavour. The classic fondant, served with vanilla ice cream, is rich, sweet and oozes liquid chocolate. You’ll also get a scoop of wasabi ice cream. I suspect some diners will love this, but I did not. The wasabi flavour, while not hot or spicy, is just simply too intense.
Okku is one of 15 restaurants serving special menus for just Dh199 per person during Dubai Restaurant Week. There are two seatings nightly — 7.30pm and 9.30pm — through March 4. To book, visit www.roundmenu.com/dubai/restaurant-week
sjohnson@thenational.ae
