Image is everything when it comes to high-end nightspots. This is especially true of those of the calibre of the Buddha Bar, which is the company behind Barfly, the latest addition to the Venetian Village development in the grounds of the Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi Grand Canal.
This makes a couple of things here slightly incongruous. Firstly, there’s the name: rather than the intended slinky suaveness, it conjures images of sweaty ne’er do wells swatting away insects in the dark corners of a pub.
Secondly, when we arrived for dinner, early on a Wednesday evening, we were shown to our table, but before we had chance to open the menu, a maître d’ came over and asked for my name. Did we require a reservation, I wondered aloud, glancing around the deserted indoor dining area? No, she wanted to add my contact details to the restaurant’s mailing list. It was an intrusion that seemed ill-suited to a self-described “edgy restaurant and supper club”.
Setting aside such quibbles, we perused the Far East-inspired menu which, together with Barfly's twinkling red-and-black decor, was more than a little reminiscent of Novikov, a similarly swanky rival in Dubai that was recently reviewed by Arts & Life.
After a pre-starter of steamed edamame, we went for full appetisers of beef tataki “Kobe” style, and the Alaskan crabmeat and mixed seaweed salad, which will set you back a wallet-busting Dh175.
The former was imaginatively presented on a bed of cucumber, carrots, leek, onion and chives. The latter was less-fussily put together. Although there were no complaints about the taste, it needed to be rather more life-changing to justify that kind of price tag on a salad.
Our mains, thankfully, came with a larger helping of pizzazz. We couldn’t tell you what made the tropical miso black cod particularly equatorial, but the fall-apart fish flakes were of perfect consistency, while the accompanying steamed sprouting broccoli offered a subtle vegetable twist, albeit one that was slightly tricky on the chopsticks.
Almost as memorable were two quartets of sushi rolls: green caterpillar (thankfully comprising tempura prawns, eel and cucumber, rather than butterfly pupae) and the more self-explanatory mango foie gras.
The service up to this point had been decently passable, if rather standoffish, but then one waiter took it upon himself to add a touch more personality to proceedings, explaining the dessert menu with a friendly gusto.
There was nothing out of the ordinary on offer for this course – or the “pastry” menu as Barfly puts it – but the two options that weren’t ice cream or sorbet were very enjoyable.
The mango pudding with coconut-milk tapioca and mango ice cream was a glassful of pure sweetness, while the rectangular cheesecake with scoops of raspberry and passion-fruit sorbet was made with mascarpone, ensuring that we weren’t overly weighed down by the time we requested the bill.
The only consistent thing at Barfly by Buddha Bar, then, seems to be the inconsistency – in its food, prices and service.
Luck out by getting the right waiter and choosing the best choices on the menu, and it has the potential to wow. Flip the coin to the other side, however, and you might be left looking at a several-hundred-dirham receipt wondering what went wrong.
• Our meal for two at Barfly by Buddha Bar, Venetian Village within Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi Grand Canal, cost Dh860. For more information, call 02 404 1951. Reviewed meals are paid for by The National and conducted incognito
aworkman@thenational.ae