Making an effort to disguise the fact that you are at least a kilometre in any direction from the nearest watercourse, new casual seafood restaurant The Shack certainly does its best to import American harbour-town chic into inland Abu Dhabi.
We were beguiled by the decor long before laying eyes on the menu. Aiming for a “rustic” diner atmosphere, The Shack is filled with marine memorabilia, including items sourced from the American seaside state of Maine.
True to its name, there is plenty of exposed wood across two floors, variously decorated by buoys, fishing nets, crab cages and bucket-shaped lampshades, while broken-up wooden crates create a striking ceiling feature.
There are retro touches aplenty–perhaps the cutest is the cutlery, which is presented in vintage Campbell’s Soup tins.
We started with The Shack shroom (that singular term is misleading, because it is actually six oven-baked mushrooms stuffed with lobster and crabmeat, topped with melted cheese) and the “volcano” poutine (a spicy stack of skin-on fries topped with chilli, jalapeños, cheese, beef gravy and cheese curds).
The former could perhaps have had a stronger seafood flavour; the latter should have Canadian expats, in particular, coming back for repeat helpings of this twist on their national-pride dish. Despite the identical price of these two starters (Dh45), the mushrooms were delicately dimensioned rather than Portobello-scale, served in a dimpled tray reminiscent of a French receptacle for snails. The volcano poutine was a veritable mountain by comparison, which had us struggling to find space for a full main.
We selflessly persisted, however, and shared the Shacky thermidor. At Dh235, it’s the second-most expensive item on the menu (Dh20 less than the whole, grilled lobster), but while it’s hard to justify such a spend on almost anything at a casual restaurant, the presentation had us feeling slightly less guilty about our splurge. It was a smartly but simply laid out on a chopping board, with a small bucket of mashed potato and a section of corn on the cob. The tail had just the right ratio of lobster meat to baked Gruyère cheese, while the hefty claw – self-broken with the provided set of lobster crackers – offered plentiful white meat.
There was something for most tastes in the dessert selection – unless, like my dining partner, you try to avoid ice cream. I had no such problems with the “Rolling in the Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep” (their elongation), a generous mini-loaf-shaped helping of fluffy French toast with berries and powdered sugar, plus sides of chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream.
My dining partner thought she was being less ambitious by ordering a nightcap of hot chocolate with marshmallows – what arrived was a large jar full of piping-hot liquid reminiscent of the rich chocolate sauce that accompanied my dessert.
A modest stream of fellow diners came and went while we were there. There was little to fault about the service, with the multinational staff always available without ever hovering conspicuously, and friendly in an unforced manner.
Despite a crop of similarly well-conceived casual-dining options within a block of each other in this area of the city, it’s a bit early to proclaim this part of the capital a new foodie mini-destination – not least because the lack of a widely used district name makes taxi navigation a lottery.
However, The Shack deserves to attract diners on its own stand-alone merits – and if you don’t splash out on lobster, your bill will be considerably less pocket-pilfering than ours.
• Our meal for two at The Shack, Guardian Towers, near Holiday Inn, off Muroor Road, Abu Dhabi, cost Dh458. For more information, call 02 449 1114. Reviewed meals are paid for by The National and conducted incognito
aworkman@thenational.ae