DUO Gastrobar restaurant review
DUO Gastrobar is a smart casual restaurant cooking gusty dishes in the heart of Dubai Hills and, frankly, it should be a bigger deal.
So, on a Saturday night, Mrs EatGoSee and I find ourselves with enough energy and will to venture out—a date night! Who said romance is dead?
“Somewhere close”, she stipulates. “Fair”, replies my inner monologue. “Somewhere where we can sit and enjoy each other’s company.” Love, fourteen years on.
We decide on The Revelry, a newish Indian Tapas bar in Dubai Hills Business Park. It’s perfect. She loves small plates and tapas. I love, well, everything Chef Rahul Rana touches. He’s the head chef of the Michelin-starred Avatara next door and also oversees The Revelry. Before we know it, we are in a Hala taxi doing our level best to avoid the lakes of rainwater.
Discerning readers are furrowing their eyebrows and scrolling furiously to verify that this review should be about DUO Gastrobar. Is Liam’s memory in its twilight?
No, these relatively new parents forgot that Saturday nights are busy. Really busy. Busy even in Dubai Hills Business Park. Thrumming at 8:45 pm when two alert hostesses at The Revelry inform us that the Revelry is “absolutely packed”. Denied. There is no chance of getting a seat (although Mrs EatGoSee swears she spies two empty tables, and I gently suggest that some clever people probably have reservations, the thing that we didn’t have. The thing we will secure next time.)
“Reif Kushkyaki?” We love it, but we go so often. “Pitfire Pizza?” We went twice last week (once for the smashing collaboration with Miss Lilly’s). Walking on, we mull over MOLI by Shi, a pricey Chinese restaurant with diesel-strength cocktails and busty roasted ducks—the site of our last date night.
That is when I remember DUO Gastrobar. A relative newcomer to Dubai Hills with origins in St Petersburg, it cooks modern, familiar and uncomplicated European food. Dishes that feel hearty but refined where the menu’s only conceit is a tendresse for black truffle. Be warned. Importantly, it is licensed, has a good wine-by-the-glass menu, and has a delightful dining room that feels special enough for neighbourhood nights out.
DUO Gastrobar’s food, wine and menu
DUO is well-known to us. It is the spot of two lunches, so impressive that we went twice in the same week and then just a week later for breakfast.
We fawned over the menu during those lunches. Aghast at a chef cooking ingredient-forward dishes, the kind we ate in gastropubs around London’s suburbs, made from unsexy vegetables and meaty offcuts that demand imagination and time to coax their loveliness.
Behold a latticed mound of oxtail pie so beautifully pert you just want to fold up and crawl inside, never to be found. The pastry is crisp and buttery, like all good pastry should be. It is perfectly symmetrically cut, allowing a gravy-tinted flow of melted Taleggio cheese to pour out slowly like just rewards. Read that back as if whispered into your ears; it’s like sex for some.
Two sturdy, seared wedges of cabbage were lawned with a soft grating of black truffle, then laid on an umami-thump of Parmesan puree, nobly gentrifying this humble brassica. It was like eating cabbage for the first time. Parmesan reappeared for a tumble of raw and brilliantly yellow courgette ribbons. We drank chilled Riesling by the glass with still water and admired DUO Gastrobar’s decor—what my interior designer wife called Scandi-Art Deco.
We swore to come back again and again and again, but then the birth of our son, as marvellous and wonderful as he is, got in the way of our best-laid plans. So here we are: hungry to eat and make up for lost time.
Ever hopeful, we push open the door for a table on this busy Saturday night. Relieved, our hostess collects two menus and guides us towards DUO’s rammed dining room, and we nestle into a comfortable seat where I can stare lovingly at my wife, who looks especially radiant. (Yes, sometimes she reads these.)
I spy some menu changes. That’s good; it tells me Chef Dmity Blinov mixes things up, as good chefs should, and as good neighbourhood restaurants should.
The glamourous Mrs EatGoSee, in an exceptional display of dining decisiveness, orders three dishes and a rosy Paloma with enough tequila to make Mexico feel like a good idea this summer.
Here comes a bowl of broccoli pate that, like our cabbage friend, is made over to its best self. A verdant, suave mousse-like puree studded with toasted pine nuts sings of green goodness but feels soft and rich like butter. One plank of brioche, the colour of creamed corn, is not enough; what we get sadly tastes like it was superb when cut three hours ago. Shame.
A pair of Gougères are generously ladened in black truffle hums with nutty Gruyére chees. The yellowtail is–guess what–carpeted with grated black truffle and a whiff of horseradish (although you should go to Reif Kushiyaki for this kind of thing). You would be forgiven for believing we ordered the truffle-tasting menu, although I am sure the kitchen is thinking about it now.
Tables around us rise with chatter. A room of mostly thirty and forty-somethings. Other couples on dates share plates of blushing duck breast with green beans and summery platters of raw scallops with pomelo and rockmelon. Friends chatter over sherry-spiked negronis, veal liver and morsels of King Crab tangled in spaghetti with tomatoes.
My beef cheeks with suave mashed potato and chanterelles arrive chased down with a glass of Meerlust Cabernet Sauvignon. The meat is spoonable, lacquered in a sticky, glossy jus and, in the nicest possible way, the whole plate is so soft it renders teeth utterly redundant. It begs for a fresh crack of black pepper, but the tables do not offer seasoning. Our engaging, well-informed waiter would have brought some had I asked, but I finish the plate before I know it. Mrs EatGoSee re-orders the cabbage with Parmesan as if by protocol.
Sheer greed pushes me to order the panna cotta with prunes, dates and walnuts, which I enjoy, but not nearly as much as DUO’s audacious bowl of pungent, mouth-searing gorgonzola with passion fruit.
We pay up, thank everyone and retreat back home to a life of sleep deprivation, bottle sterilising and parenthood, but, for a few moments, we enjoyed what once was.
DUO Gastrobar, would I return?
Yes, ideally, at least once a month. Also, DUO Gastrobar should be in contention for the Michelin Guide Dubai, possibly a Bib.
DUO Gastrobar, who should go?
Dubai Hills residents, or frankly anyone living in the swathes of villas from Al Khail to the Mira villa communities. Those who are fans of modern casual dining and licensed restaurants. People looking for a smart casual evening with friends or on date nights.
DUO Gastrobar, how much was it?
Three starters, two mains, one side dish and one dessert plus a cocktail, two glasses of wine and a sherry for AED 789 incl taxes, excluding tips (see below).
DUO Gastrobar, Dubai Hills Business Park, Building 4, Ground Floor, Dubai. Check out DUO Gastrobar’s Website or call +971526866249.
Written by Liam Collens // Read more reviews here. Follow Liam on Substack, Instagram, Threads and Facebook.
This has been on my list for AGES -- thanks for moving it up! I'll make plans to get here soon.
🤤🤤🤤