The Emirati Fusion restaurant

Remember the time when I couldn’t recommend a good Emirati restaurant to a friend from abroad because I simply had never been to one. It was embarrassing, yes. Thus started my quest for an authentic Emirati restaurant which could be added to my list of 10 things to do in Dubai. That is when I discovered Milas at the Dubai Mall.

Milas is now shifting to a new location within Dubai Mall. It will now offer it’s guests unparalleled views of the Burj Khalifa from its large al-Fresco dining area and will feature a brand new Emirati- fusion menu. To coincide with this change, they are also rebranding the restaurant. They are giving away a VIP number 05X-6500000 to anyone who guesses the name of the restaurant. All you have to do is go to www.milas.cc/vip and fill out your details along with the new name. (They have dropped a hint to make to get your creative juices flowing and that is: I am what I see in the mirror.)

I was lucky enough to be invited to preview the new menu before the official launch and absolutely loved the new fusion concept. The service of course was top notch as expected and I was seated in a heartbeat and  handed an Ipad mini to browse the new digital menu. One of the advantages of this was that all the dishes looked better on an HD screen than they would probably have looked on a printed menu. The flip side was that I had a harder time making a choice.

I liked everything that I tried but would like to share some of my favorites with you. If you want to know what camel meat tastes like, you should order the camel sliders. The texture of the meat was like beef but a lot leaner, hence a little dry. It’s a good thing the sliders were smothered with date sauce and mustard so the dryness got balanced out. The jalapeños complimented the sauces and there was a medley of sweet, tangy and hot flavours in every bite.

The winning  dishes of the night were the Jumping Tempura and the Musical Shawarma. I liked the names so much that I had decided I would love them even before they had arrived. Thank God they lived up to the expectation or it would have been such a disappointment The jumping tempura was  exactly as it said on the tin; A dish of fried shrimp and calamari coated with flavoured tempura and covered in a mayonnaise chili sauce that would shock and awe your tastebuds. No, it wasn’t unbearably hot. It is just that one would not expect a prawn tempura to have chili added to it. Also, the heat was camouflaged by the creamy mayonnaise. It takes a couple of seconds for it to register and when it does, you jump out of your seat a little. Hence the name.

The Musical shawarma is probably named as such because of all the various notes present in the dish. A soft Emirati bread was stuffed with marinated and sautéed beef, onions, parsley, sesame sauce and (get ready for this), fried kunafa. Now when was the last time you had kunafa in your shawarma? Probably never because we all know it as a dessert right? It turns out that kunafa is actually not sweet at all. A sugar syrup is added in order for it to be consumed as a dessert. Without the syrup, fried kunafa is actually the best thing that has happened to shawarmas since someone invented the large rotating column of meat.

The competition closes at the end of the month and the restaurant opens soon after.  You still have some  days left to try and win the VIP number but if that is not your thing, don’t worry about it. Soon you will be able to enjoy Emirati food with a twist and enjoy the Burj laser show at the same time. Do share what your favorites are once you visit and I would love to go back and try anything I have missed out and share my experience of that too.