JUMEIRAH AT ETIHAD TOWERS, ABU DHABI

Jumeirah at Etihad Towers

On my recent visit to Abu Dhabi I stayed at the iconic 5-star Jumeirah at Etihad Towers, a 280m tall luxury hotel located on the West Corniche in the exclusive Ras Al Akhdar area of Abu Dhabi overlooking the Arabian Gulf. The hotel is close to the central business district and adjacent to the famous Emirates Palace Hotel. Jumeirah at Etihad Towers is one of a group of five towers that includes a prestigious office tower and three towers housing apartments, premium boutiques and contemporary restaurants. The Etihad Towers are an integral part of the Abu Dhabi skyline and most famously featured in the blockbuster movie Fast & Furious 7.

The construction of the Etihad Towers was overseen by Australian architects DBI and began in 2006. The Towers are particularly dramatic for their staggering modernity and are beautiful on the eye. Inside, the hotel is no less beautiful, oozing with a cosmopolitan ‘city’ chic that is sublimely sophisticated. The lobby is wide, tall and deep, shining with natural light during the day, and dazzling from the glow of the handmade chandeliers at night. Much care has gone into the selection of the finishing touches which were awe-inspiring and which features a unique use of rare marbles, semi-precious stones and crystals.

Jumeirah at Etihad Towers – The lobby

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Eleven Madison Park

Eleven Madison Park – so named as it is located on Eleven Madison Avenue facing Madison Square Park – is a three star Michelin restaurant, a designated Grand Chef Relais & Châteaux restaurant and the fourth ranked restaurant on San Pellegrino’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Housed in the classical looking Credit Suisse building, the spacious dining room speaks of grandeur with its huge floor-to-ceiling windows and impressive art deco design.

Eleven Madison Park is the brainchild of Executive Chef Daniel Humm, a Swiss-born chef who earned his first Michelin star with Gasthaus zum Gupf, a restaurant located in the Swiss Alps. Humm also cooked at the famed Restaurant Pont de Brent, a Michelin starred restaurant in Montreux before moving Stateside to San Francisco in 2003.

His rise in the States was meteoric. In 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle named him a 2004 Rising Star Chef, and in 2005 Food & Wine named him one of Best New Chefs of 2005. Humm took over the reigns as executive chef of Eleven Madison Park in 2006, and under his guidance Eleven Madison Park received a four star rating from The New York Times in 2009. In 2010, Humm was awarded the James Beard Award for “Best Chef, New York City.” And of course, Eleven Madison Park holds three Michelin stars and a ranking as one of the best restaurants in the world.

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Glass Brasserie is The Sydney Hilton Hotel’s signature restaurant by Australian celebrity chef and restaurateur Luke Mangan. Chef Mangan cultivated his craft at Michel Roux ‘s 3 Michelin starred Waterside Inn, leading to the contemporary French influence that marks his cooking. Chef Mangan operates a string of restaurants in Australia and Asia, and in addition to having written best-selling cookbooks and a string of TV appearances, Chef Mangan famously cooked at the wedding of Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Mary of Denmark. Glass Brasserie has won a number of awards including the much coveted ‘One-Hat’ from the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food Guide.

Glass Restaurant holds an impressive 240 seats and has been lusciously refurbished in dark glossy tones by the highly claimed New York designer Tony Chi. Glass Brasserie is comfortable and glossy. It makes for a restaurant well suited for power lunches, especially as The Hilton Hotel in Sydney is a hub for business meetings and corporate travellers.

We went for the degustation menu ($140 – about £76.40), beginning with an amuse bouche
 of pumpkin soup with croutons and feta. It was really lovely with a pleasant sweetness. The croutons and feta added a nice contrasting touch to the soup.

Pumpkin soup

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The Dining Room Restaurant in The Park Hyatt Hotel occupies one of the most prime positions on Sydney Harbour. It sits under the Harbour Bridge and is located directly across from the Opera House, thus offering an incredible bird’s eye view of this timeless Australian institution. The Dining Room is the Park Hyatt Hotel’s signature restaurant, one of the most luxurious 5-star hotels in Sydney. The restaurant’s decor is every bit as sumptuous as the hotel (helped in no small part by the beautiful views) and comes with a revamped menu following the recent appointment of its new Head Chef Franck Detrait who joined in October 2013. Chef Detrait has cooked in many notable restaurants in France including the one-star Michelin restaurant Vendôme in Paris where he worked closely with the highly acclaimed Jean-Francois Rouquette.

The Opera House at Dusk, from The Dining Room Restaurant

The tasting menu was great value at $95 (about £51) and was hard to pass up. But first we celebrated the beauty of Sydney Harbour with some Sydney rock oysters ($5 each – about £2.70) which were fabulously fresh. The delicious shallot vinegar dressing was also well judged for both sweetness and acidity and complemented the oysters nicely.

Sydney rock oysters

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Quisine by Guy Savoy Doha is the first restaurant in the Middle East by the famous three Michelin starred French chef, Guy Savoy. Quisine embraces the same philosophy of Restaurant Guy Savoy in Paris and therefore bears many striking similarities including a menu that adopts many of the dishes available in Paris, albeit with some local twists thrown in.

Chef Guy Savoy believes that the environment in which you eat in is as important as the food itself, and accordingly the interior of Quisine also embraces Guy Savoy’s deep passion for style and beauty. Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the Interior Designer responsible for many of Guy Savoy’s other restaurants, also took charge of designing the Doha outlet. With Quisine by Guy Savoy he has created a spectacular space with a monochromatic colour scheme that creates both a sense of harmony and indelible comfort. A mesmerising wall of flickering flames also greets diners as they enter the restaurant.

Quisine by Guy Savoy

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After Dubai I headed back to Doha where I spent one night at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Doha. It’s located right on the water’s edge in the prestigious West Bay area, north of the Pearl (Doha’s version of Dubai’s Palm) and downtown Doha, and its strategic position means that the hotel offers expansive views of the City of Doha.

The décor is a blend of classic European and Arabic design, and would appeal to those who favour a hotel with a more classical, traditional feel. Particularly impressive was the lobby with its high ceilings where the opulent Grand Lobby Lounge is situated. It’s a great social meeting point where you might meet up with friends or grab a cup of tea. My deluxe room was similarly decorated in a classical style and was incredibly comfortable. The bed was kitted out with the loveliest of Egyptian cotton sheets to make for a heavenly night’s sleep.

Deluxe room

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The Lotte Hotel in Moscow only opened three years ago, but in that short time it has managed to earn the top spot on TripAdvisor as the number one hotel in Moscow as well as string of other awards such as Conde Nast Traveller Readers’ Choice Award for the Best Hotel in Russia 2012. It’s easy to see why. The hotel, within walking distance to Red Square, is finished to the highest standard and boasts of conference rooms, a state-of-the-art fitness centre and a Mandara spa. The rooms are spacious and comfy with many classy touches such as an easy to use touch-pad lighting system and an impressive bathroom that boasts of Molton Brown products, a heated loo seat and a automated bidet. The Lotte Hotel chain is little known outside its home country of South Korea but it is one of their most respected top ten brands, and all the ingredients that have made it such a success there have been brought to the Moscow location.

Superior room

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Palace Square, St Petersburg

There are not enough superlatives to describe the beauty of St Petersburg. The Neva River runs through the heart of the city, and this and the city’s many canals add to it’s picturesque nature. St Petersburg’s architecture is decidedly European, a legacy from the time of Peter the Great and his love affair of all things European, and this is one of the reasons why The Palace Square overlooking the world-class Hermitage Museum must surely rate as one of the most spectacular squares in the worlds. It might not be as famous as The Red Square in Moscow, but it certainly holds its own in terms of grandeur and wow-factor.

The Hermitage

St Petersburg also lays claim to a collection of world-class art with the famous Hermitage being the second largest museum in the world after the Louvre in Paris. And what is also attractive about St Petersburg is that it is a tourist-friendly city. Contrary to Moscow where I travelled to a few months ago, signs are labelled in both Cyrillic and in the Latin alphabet, and there are tourism offices positioned throughout the city that make the travel experience far easier.

The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

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