On top of my meals at Opal by Gordon Ramsay at The St Regis Hotel and Blue at the Grand Heritage Hotel, I also managed to squeeze in some Italian and some Lebanese food whilst in Doha – all in the space of some 52 hours. Yes it was an extraordinary amount of eating, but I assure you that I did try and work this off with walks along the Corniche and around Doha’s main market, Souq Waqif!!

IL TEATRO

My Italian experience was at Il Teatro Restaurant which is part of the 5-Star Four Seasons Hotel. We went for Sunday lunch which proved to be a very quiet experience as Sunday is the start of the working week in Doha. Il Teatro serves upscale contemporary Italian food in a classically decorated dining room that can only be described as sumptuous. The restaurant backs onto the pristine gardens of the hotel and there is also some outdoor seating.

For lunch, the prices are based on the number of dishes and type of courses you order from the a la carte menu and are as follows:

Starter and dessert – QAR119 (about £22)
Main and dessert – QAR139 (about £25)
Starter and main – QAR159 (about £29)
Starter, main and dessert – QAR199 (about £36)
Starter, soup, main and dessert – QAR239 (£43)

From the starters, the baby octopus in a panzanella salad with focaccia croutons, fennel, tomato and onion was tender and tasty. The leaves were fresh and nicely dressed but were quite cold from having come straight from the fridge. The croutons detracted from this salad as they had not been freshly prepared and were unfortunately stale.

Panzanella salad

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Grand Heritage Hotel

Day two of my stay in Doha saw me at the Grand Heritage Doha Hotel and Spa. The hotel is located inland away from the Corniche in the Al Waab district, right by The Aspire Zone, a famous Qatari sporting complex built for the 2006 Asian Games. The Grand Heritage Hotel is indeed very grand looking and resembles a sprawling Victorian mansion and houses Blue Restaurant that serves steak and Japanese food.

The Grand Heritage caters to both business and leisure travellers. There is a business centre which offers services such as binding, laminating, scanning and secretarial, etc, and a spa containing a number of amenities including treatment rooms, a natural pure water indoor swimming pool, a gymnasium, separate male and female saunas, steam room and whirlpool facilities.

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Grand Foyer

Doha, Qatar is not the choice of destination when most people head to the Middle East. Typically, people think Dubai first. To be sure, Doha is not in the same league as Dubai as far as entertainment options goes, but it looks to be seeking more recognition on the global stage. Doha is due to host the 2022 World Cup, and construction is going up left, right and centre. Currently the city is in the process of building one of the largest airports in the world, which is due to open later this year. The new Doha Hamad International Airport will be able to handle some 50m passengers per year, with some estimates putting it at up to 93million. Once opened it will only come second only to Dubai in terms of traffic passing through the Middle East.

And then there is the weather, which is always guaranteed to be warm to hot throughout the year. To be sure it is a little too hot during the summer days, but it helps that everywhere you go there is air conditioned.

Doha also has a string of nice hotels and restaurants, and for the first of my two nights in Doha I stayed at the St Regis Hotel, which was the epitome of 5-Star elegance. The hotel exudes a sense of Middle Eastern mystique and glamour, and as you walk into the hotel, the lobby, which is almost 4 storeys high, will stun you with its breathtaking beauty. As far as 5-star hotels go, this was in a league of its own and must truly rate as one of the most beautiful that I had ever seen.

St Regis Hotel lobby

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A Wong is the latest ‘buzz’ Chinese restaurant in London at the moment and is the baby of chef Andrew Wong who has studied in kitchens throughout China. But Chef Wong already came from restaurant stock for his father use to run Kym’s, the Chinese restaurant that previously occupied the same space as A Wong. Basically Andrew has taken on the same address as his own and refurbished it with a more minimalist taste. The result is a restaurant with shiny surfaces and none of the Chinese chintz. Not that there is anything wrong with Chinese chintz, but this style is much more in keeping with Western ‘cool’.

Chef Wong’s solid bio shows in his menu with a diverse range of dishes drawn from throughout China. During the day he serves dim sum from Hong Kong, and in the evenings the a la carte menu includes touches of the Sichuanese, etc. The pricing of the menu is also fabulously cheap, something of a bonus in this day and age.

To the starters and sweet and sour ribs (£1.50 each) were tasty if a little overcooked leaving the outer layer of the rib a bit dry. The sauce was well made and had a lovely sticky, sweet quality to it that was delicious.

Sweet and sour ribs

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The bus

Note: Monikers has now closed.

Monikers restaurant and bar recently opened on a corner of Hoxton Square, on a site that was previously occupied by The Hoxton Apprentice, a Training for Life charity restaurant that was set up to train young chefs in the same vein as Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Restaurant. The building was once an old schoolhouse and Monikers has cleverly maintained the spirit of its former history with a vintage blackboard that lists the daily specials. The wittiness continues with the upstairs area boasting a façade of an old London bus with trendy retro vinyl seats. It’s all very cool, and the restaurant exudes a sense of Hoxton fun. The bar area is funky as well with its chemistry-style water beakers and science-lab stools, and here you can sample some lovely cocktails such as the Greta Garbo (£8.50) with calvados, rhubarb, agave syrup and champagne, and the French 75 (£7.50) with gin, lemon, sugar and champagne.

Cocktails

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At first glance, Moscow does not come across as the prettiest of cities. And the momentary confusion that grabs you as you first walk into the metro feels a little overwhelming as there are no English signs. But as you learn to navigate yourself and chip away at the language barriers, you soon discover that Moscow is not without its charms. The more you dig, the more you realise that there is more than meets the eye. There is an incredible depth of history behind this grand old city – inside the Kremlin walls is a treasure trove of riches and the fine art offerings in its museums are world class. And St Basil’s Cathedral – well it’s hard to capture the sense of awe that you feel when you first lay eyes on its colourful grandeur.

Saint Basil’s Cathedral

Friends of mine who went to Moscow 20 years ago told me that back in those dark communist times one had to wait about ten hours to get served at McDonald’s. Now the restaurant choices are plentiful and varied, Japanese restaurants are en vogue and some critically acclaimed chefs such as the likes of Pierre Gagnaire have set up shop in Moscow with his restaurant Les Menus at the Lotte Hotel.

So I was on a mission to do some eating of my own, and the first restaurant on the agenda was Expedition, a restaurant that is unique for its sense of adventure and its use of native Russian products. Also popular in Russia are cuisines from the ex-Soviet states so Georgian cuisine at Saperavi Café was up next. Finally Restaurant 57 rounded up the list for a spot of Soviet self-service eating which proved to be surprisingly good.

Expedition Restaurant

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Aside from dinner at Momofuku Daisho, I also managed to get my teeth into a number of other restaurants during my stay in Toronto. I hereby present to you Canoe, Acadia and Pure Spirits Oyster House.

CANOE

Canoe Restaurant is part of the Oliver & Bonacini Restaurant Group, a partnership founded by Peter Oliver and Michael Bonacini in 1993, a pair of restaurateurs who have since created a string of 11 successful fine dining restaurants in Ontario, Canada. Their restaurant, Auberge du Pommier, ranks highly in the guidebooks as being one of the best fine dining venues in Toronto.

Canoe bar

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Back in the day, Katrina Kollegaev from food blog Gastronomicalme use to host a series of lunch clubs at her home in North London. Being of Russian decent, her focus was on food with Soviet roots. The lunch I attended centred around Ukrainian food and it proved to be tasty and interesting. It was also an insightful glance into the eating habits of Ukrainians (for that post click here).

Since then, Katrina has gone on to form the Russian Revels with another Russian lady Karina Baldry. Russian Revels specialises in hosting Russian themed supper clubs with a twist, and their latest project is a series of Secret Soviet Suppers at a secret location near Farringdon.

The backdrop of these Secret Soviet Suppers is 1920s Russia, and in keeping with this theme the location was kept secret until two days before the event. We were charged with a Soviet ‘bourgeois’ dress code and impressively almost all the forty or so guests made an effort to dress up. We were also given a Soviet identity and an ID card for admission (I was Olga, a nurse), as well a special, secret password for use at the door. How fun!

Soviet ID

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