Atmospheric pressure

This month Caterer met up with a handful of F&B industry professionals at Al Murooj Rotana Dubai’s Zaika restaurant to discuss ambience and discovered that the region’s outlets are under increasing pressure to meet expectations in the face of growing time and budget constraints.

What different kinds of ambience have you implemented at your various outlets?

Helen Beardsley: In Dubai, we've worked on Aprés in Mall of the Emirates, both of the Left Banks, one in the Madinat one in Souk Al Bahar, on Carnevale and La Parrilla at Jumeirah Beach Hotel and then some more casual dining concepts such as Sana Bonta in DIFC and the four residents' community bars down at Shoreline on Palm Jumeirah.

Thorsten Sbrzesny: At One to One we've tried to create a kind of living room feel - so you come in and the feeling is very casual, as if you were at home. We didn't want the atmosphere to be too complicated. So for example you can have breakfast and read the newspaper and just feel very relaxed.

Peter Redding: I think we've got a unique concept at One to One, in the fact that the hotel is based in clusters. So we have an F&B cluster, with our international restaurant on the ground floor, then directly above is the steak house and then our Asian restaurant is on top. So these three main outlets out of the six that we're ultimately going to have are all in the same block.

Dominique Jossi: I think all our outlets offer a different atmosphere - in the main building we have our coffee shop and the Lebanese restaurant, then we have the three restaurants close together: Zaika, an Indian restaurant, the Waterside seafood restaurant just next door and Latino House, all of which are totally separate from the hotel.

I would pick out Zaika as having a particularly unique ambience; it feels very traditional and authentic, but with a contemporary edge.

Elmar Pichorner: Zuma is just one restaurant, but I like to think of it as having three different ambiences. As a concept, Zuma is what we call an ‘izakaya', which is a very informal Japanese eatery. We've added a lot of contemporary flair to it; the ground floor is the restaurant, with the sushi counter and grill and the flame and smoke and the chefs, while upstairs we have a good-sized bar.

There's obviously the lounge element as well, which is attached to the bar. And to pick up on the living room feel that Thorsten mentioned, we have upholstered lounge furniture, very warm tones of walnut, brass and a timber ceiling, so it has a very cosy feel.

Michael Allegra: At the Park Hyatt we have three restaurants - one is the Thai kitchen featuring four cooking stations, which is relaxed and informal. Then we have Traiteur, our modern European outlet, which is our dramatic signature restaurant with a large open kitchen, a meat locker, a sizeable wine cellar and a 15 metre-high ceiling, so it's quite an amazing setting. Then Café Arabesque is our Arabic restaurant, focusing on the Levant region. We also have a terrace bar overlooking the marina.

Hakim Karoui: We have a Lebanese restaurant, an Italian restaurant, Jimmy Dix, which is our nightclub, the main lobby restaurant and an Irish pub.

Of course as the hotel has been open for over seven years we have had to make some changes to our outlets during that time to keep them up-to-date with Dubai - with the exception of our Irish pub, where the rustic concept has remained the same because that's key to its atmosphere.

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