Restaurant Review: Benjarong at the Dusit Thani, Dubai

Last weekend, I stayed a night at the Dusit Thani in Dubai, and had a dinner at their Thai restaurant, Benjarong, which was more adequate than exciting.

The DT's cute lobby has a pretty, open glass ceiling, like a Victorian train station. The twin-legged structure looks really smart from the outside, but I gotta say, having to get the lift down 22 floors from your room on one leg of the building just so you can go up 24 floors again on the other side to get to dinner gets tiresome.

The décor was the most memorable thing about the evening at Benjarong: heavily Eastern themed with dark wooden beams and luxe carpeting, but pretty restrained (by Dubai standards). My favourite feature was the beautiful painted pillars. Unfortch, I didn't get any good pictures, because Dining Companion firmly and explicitly banned me from instagramming anything (buzzkill). You can kinda sorta see in the background of this grainy disaster, though.

There's also a pretty great view of the Burj Khalifa, which by the way is mesmerising, and stunning lit up at night. 

The BK, from the rooftop pool

Pre-dinner, we were unexpectedly witness to a Thai dance performance on a small stage in the middle of the room; since the backing music was turned up loud, I'll confess I found this more disconcerting than enjoyable. Later, the two performers returned to play some traditional Thai music with mysterious long-handled lute-like string instruments. (I didn't catch the name of these, and a Google search isn't turning up any definite answers.) Presumably this is an aspect of the “famed Thai hospitality” that the Dusit Thani pushes as its USP? Like many places in the UAE, this also involves waitstaff who spring to pull out your chair, unfold your napkin and spread it across your lap for you, inevitably making uptight Brits feel slightly uncomfortable.

The multi-floor upwards view from the entrance to Benjarong

Benjarong serves the same moderate drinks selection as the Champagne Lounge and Italian restaurant PAX on the same floor, and dingy hotel bar downstairs, and there isn't a lot to report (though the wine list and menus come in cloth bound hardback volumes so giant you can only open them lying down). Our waitress clarified that I wanted alcohol in my mojito, but brought me an alcohol free version anyway.

Between two people, we ordered Yum Ped Yang, Goong Mungkorn Benjarong, Pu Nim Phad Prig Thai Dum, and Khao Ob Sapparod (we achieved this by pointing at the menu and mumbling).

The Yum Ped Yang – roast duck salad – was heavy on uninteresting lettuce, but the duck was light, fresh and delicious, in a lime chilli dressing.

Goong Mungkorn – battered lobster with peppers – was a major letdown. Its showy presentation just covered up a generic red sauce which wasn't highly flavoured, overly large chunks of pepper, and swimming balls of fried lobster which couldn't stand up to the stronger flavours. It was edible enough, but at 259Dhs (and by far the most expensive thing on the menu), it was underwhelming – I could have been eating any other meaty fish and never known the difference. Apart from the intact lobster shell on the plate, it wasn't more refined than the fusion Thai café I used to go to in the student area of Manchester, where you got your 10th £7.95 meal free.

Sorry buddy

The Pu Nim Phad Prig Thai Dum, on the other hand, was a phenomenal battered soft shell crab with black pepper sauce, and the standout dish of the meal. Rather than harsh and fiery, the black pepper was warm and didn't overpower the excellent crab; we could've eaten twice as much of it.
The Khao Ob Sapparod was a classic and enjoyable fried-rice-n-stuff side, whose main interest came from being served in half a hollowed out pineapple, which was a bit cool.

I ordered the assorted house desserts, but this turned out to be a plate full of those little mysterious Thai sweet things – syrup-dunked doughy balls, garishly coloured sugar shapes, and golden flowers of unidentifiable ingredients – which were all but unpalatable to my Western tastes. They were the pinnacle of Thai dessert excellence for all I know, though. Dining Companion loved his coconut ice cream with roasted peanuts.

My(dark)Bar

After dinner, we went down to the hotel bar, MyBar, which is so dimly lit you can hardly see your hand in front of your face. A friend had warned us that it would be full of “businesswomen, here to…do business”, and this proved to be correct, but the incompetent bartenders were the real problem. I had a Planters Punch which was inoffensive only because it tasted of nothing but fruit juice; Dining Companion’s whiskey sour tasted like lemon juice topped with Sprite and had to be sent back, only to be replaced with the undrinkable house white wine. This was a low point, in an otherwise very delightful stay at the Dusit Thani.

Our food total at Benjarong came to about 600Dhs for two people, or approx £100. Most of the main dishes were between 80 and 140Dhs, so you could easily save 100-150Dhs if you don't take someone who orders the lobster. And you shouldn't, because it sums up how I felt about Benjarong overall: enjoyable, pleasant, a little bit stylish, but ultimately unmemorable. 3/5.

(Full disclosure: this meal and hotel room were free for me, but only by coincidence.)

Bonuses: hotel room view, at night and during the day, and Dining Companion and I expressing our feelings about hotel breakfasts

Hanging Out In: Brew, North Oxford

Tiny, delightful Brew on North Parade combines many of my fave things about coffee shops, including quirkiness, fancy cakes, and being a very, very short walk from my house. 

Since, as pictured, it is hipster as hell, in the name of objective blogging, I went undercover to explore.

Accessories for dressing up as the kind of person interested in buying hand-ground Sumatran coffee from an indie retailer with a record player include: plastic glasses (selectspecs.com), gap yah scarf (ASOS), antiqued gold-ish deer head necklace (Primark), ironic expression (model's own).

Just kidding, these are my regular clothes. Hashtag academicjumblesale.

The centrepiece of Brew's decor is this shiny, shiny coffee machine. I have no idea how this makes coffee but it looks like a robot and has all kinds of exciting dials and knobs on it and a bird on top and therefore I love it. 

On the right side of this photo, note a pile of sticky cinnamon buns. From personal experience I can tell you that these are an excellent breakfast food. For your convenience, I am also working my way through all the other cakes, and so far they've all been delish. 

Pro tip: this is also a prime people-watching location. One time I sat next to an earnest tutorial about an Ian McEwan novella during which there was a reference to Daria. One time I came with a friend and we sat opposite a guy who she was 70% sure had messaged her on OKCupid. Almost always there's a swoony beardy guy in a cable knit jumper. 

Upsides to Brew!:

• It's run by two cute guys and is always full of cool attractive people having interesting, eavesdroppable conversations. This is a bonus.
• They have great taste in music and a giant record collection. If you feel like listening to Neil Young, Animal Collective, Neutral Milk Hotel, or some band so cool you've never even heard of them on vinyl, this is where you should hang out.
• They really know about coffee. I mean, I don't understand it, but I'm impressed. Tastes good to me.
• They sell super cute birthday cards and notebooks and things, which I love.
• The sugar comes in tiny jars. Swoon.
• A little bird told me they sometimes host teeny tiny gigs here on Sunday evenings.
• It's super close to a bunch of university buildings, so if you are a student, you get the holy grail of wifi access. (This also means it is in between my house and my tutorials.)
• I have been here for over an hour and a half now and no one has yelled at me. (cf. the nearest Starbucks, which put up a bunch of annoying signs telling students not to stay too long, the cutthroat capitalist jerks.)
• It is so cute I can't even deal. Fact.

Downsides to Brew:

• There are exactly four tiny tables, so if you get there at the wrong time, you are doomed to take away or perch awkwardly on the corner of a bench. Boo.
• The seats are wooden stools and benches. Ouch. Cushions, please.
• The coffee only comes in one size: small. I think this is some kind of function of the shiny shiny coffee machine, but also, I need more caffeine than you can fit in one tiny latte.
• They MIGHT be judging me when I put two spoonfuls of sugar in said tiny latte.
• I just overheard cute coffee shop boy disparaging Harry Potter. Not cool, cute coffee shop boy. Not cool. 

In short: go to Brew, and join me in pretending to be a cool, attractive person. If you can find somewhere to sit.

New Year's Day: Starting the Year Off Right

V&A Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950

image via The Guardian

This gorgeous exhibition in the fashion gallery at the V&A contains some stunning dresses, modern and vintage, classic and avant garde, and displays most of them to their very best advantage.

The One With All The Instagramming: London

Sooo I trundled off to London for the day to see the ballgowns exhibition at the V&A, and here are some pretty pictures! Everything is Instagrammed to death in case I have to give it up in January because they are being jerks. 

One of the galleries at the V&A:

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge - The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China

So, last week I went to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, to see this gorgeous exhibition, The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China. (The virtual exhibition at that link is well worth having a look at.) The Han Dynasty existed between 206BC and 220AD; the things in this exhibition were excavated from the tombs of the elite and royal classes, which were replicas of their own palaces complete with everything they could need in the afterlife, including their servants. The Han Emperors were buried in what is now Xi'an (the site of the Terracotta Army), but those tombs have been looted or lost (and the main tomb site in Xi'an, where the warriors are, can't be excavated because apparently it is protected by a lake of mercury.) The objects in the exhibition come from the tombs of the Kings and Queens of Chu, located in Xuzhou, the home of the Han family. They contained hundreds of intricate, decorated pieces of goldwork, jade, bronze, and pottery to prepare the body for the afterlife; these pieces have never been displayed all together before. It's astonishing and fascinating. It's also kind of heartbreaking to think of these beautiful things being jealously walled up in a grave, but at the same time, that's the only reason they've been preserved and not lost.

In the Museum Director Timothy Potts's very interesting podcast about this exhibition, he explains that they kept the exhibition rooms very dim on purpose and spotlighted the objects to create a tomblike feel and a "dramatic experience". It makes for a very beautiful and intriguing space.

Along with a bunch of postcards (below), I bought this little guy! It's a replica of a turtle seal from the exhibition, and way heavier than it looks. The name on it is Liu Zhu, who was the sixth king of Chu.

The exhibition is running until 11th November. Way more images below. Some are from the podcast and some are postcards from the museum shop. All images copyright the Fitzwilliam Museum, I guess?