Gary Rhodes' Lemon meringue at 'Taste of Dubai' - Dubai

Last night was spent at the Taste of Dubai festival. This annual food festival gives you a great chance to sample dishes from some of the top restaurants here in Dubai and to try to grab a few of their discount vouchers at the same time. The festival was held in the park in Dubai Media City over looking the lake and the CNN and Thomson Reuter's buildings. With empty stomachs we hopped on the Metro to Nakheel to taste what Dubai has on offer and for me, of course, to sample some cakes and puddings.

Wafts of wonderful Eastern smells met us at the entrance and wherever we turned crispy duck meat crisped up in a hot oven, meat sizzled in its juices, and fragrant rice dishes steamed in pots. We had come to the Chinese and Thai food section. Reluctantly walking past, we were quickly immersed in the wonderful smells from the Italian stalls, followed by the heat from the grill at Rivington Grill and Ruth's Chris Steak House.
Further down was a separate area hosting the Grosvenor House's restaurants and without much hesitation we headed straight to the Indego stall and minutes later were enjoying a wonderfully smooth and aromatic chicken tikka masala by Vineet Vahatia of Indego. I was particularly impressed by finding strands of saffron in my dish, always a sign of a good curry in my view.

This was followed by a scotch egg from Rivington Grill, the brilliant English restaurant in Souk Al Bahar near Dubai Mall. Unfortunately, not as crispy as I would have liked it but a perfectly cooked egg and great seasoning of the sausage meat made this a very enjoyable snack.

I had my eyes on the macaroon stall all evening, but on closer inspection I found these macaroons far too colourful and artificial looking and instead headed for Gary Rhodes' Mezzanine and Twenty10 stalls for some pudding. The man himself was there this Thursday night and spent most of the evening happily chatting to and posing for photographs with slightly star struck expats who congregated around his stalls.Rhodes was on Dubai One, the local TV channel last week and was quoted saying that he thinks 'Dubai will become the culinary centre of the world eventually', sounds very promising.

After deliberating over whether to have sticky toffee pudding or iced lemon meringue with strawberries I decided on the latter. It was sensational. Frozen, almost chewy lemon mousse on the thinnest of bases, a perfectly shaped mini meringue on top and finished off with strawberries marinated in a velvety strawberry sauce.

Iced lemon meringue and strawberries 

I did wonder if I should pluck up courage and ask Mr. Rhodes if he might be interested in coming along to VisitSweden's food event in London in September but he disappeared into the kitchen before I had a chance.

Very full and extremely happy we went back to the Metro, excited about soon using our vouchers at all the restaurants and vowing to go back to Mezzanine for the proper full sized portion of iced lemon meringue.