Secret menu order: Marmite chicken at Noodle Bowl, Zayed Sports City, Abu Dhabi

Marmite chicken from Noodle Bowl. Photo by Adam Workman

While researching our recent unusual eats feature, I was tasked with sampling some of the rather more off-the-wall menu items at Noodle Bowl, one of Abu Dhabi's hidden-gem restaurants, located above the bowling alley at Zayed Sports City.

When one colleague overheard the Noodle Bowl’s name being mentioned in conversation, he insisted that I also had to try one of its “secret” dishes – items that you won’t see on the menu, but that in-the-know diners can request regardless. Its name: Marmite chicken.

Among a delivery order piled high with century eggs and chicken feet, the undoubted highlight was this “secret” game-changer, described by said colleague as “dangerously tasty”.

There was no danger of it embodying the second half of the yeast-extract brand’s love-it-or-hate-it advertising mantra – the chunky poultry morsels were covered in a sticky, sweet, downright delicious dark-brown concoction that vaguely resembled a lighter-shaded version of black bean sauce. And I ate until I could eat no more.

According to the restaurant, the main ingredients of the sauce are indeed yeast extract, mixed with soy sauce, plus seasoning. At Dh35 for a generous portion, this “secret” menu item deserves to be very common knowledge from here onwards.