Restaurant Review: Al Safir, Sheraton Hotel, Bahrain
- Lifestyles
- Travel & Leisure
- Restaurant Reviews
Author: Kyle Pakka
Released 5 August 2005
We’re standing next to the humming chocolate fountain in the epicenter of the circular buffet of Al Safir in the Sheraton Hotel in Bahrain, when a nearby English woman turns to us, shakes her head and says “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
It was clear to us that she wasn’t just referring to the chocolate fountain, but to the entirety of the lunch buffet’s offerings. We agreed with her: the buffet is outstanding in its presentation and in the quality of the food.
Buffets. Some people love them, some people hate them. We fall somewhere in the middle: we don’t seek them out, but sometimes, if the food is good and the atmosphere is pleasant, a buffet can be a memorable experience. You can’t hardly live or travel in the Middle East without eating at a hotel buffet, and we’ve eaten at our fair share of them, from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, from the Nile Valley to the Bosphorous Strait, and nearly all of them have been something to endure rather than enjoy.
All that changed with our visit to Al Safir. The restaurant doesn’t have a gimmick, nor is it the fanciest place in town, but it is attractive, pleasantly decorated and beautifully situated, overlooking the hotel swimming pool and beyond, past the palms along the Manama corniche, to the turquoise Gulf waters. The big windows with their gold drapes also provide a view to the west, to the fast-rising Financial Harbor towers, and close by, the World Trade Center project. When these skyscraper complexes are finished, the view at night from Al Safir should be even more breathtaking.
The décor is an elegant mix of white, gold, wine and tan colors, and little glass beads dangling from the drapes sparkle in the sun. Marble hemispherical lamps bathe the room in soft light, and a water fountain burbles happily by the door. On our visit, the tables were set with bamboo centerpieces, a burst of verdant green on the snow-white tablecloths.
The buffet is in the round, shielded by frosted glass panels and flanked by ficus trees in ceramic urns. The glass dividers are topped by glass jars of colorful vegetables, legumes, spices and fruit, and their bright colors prime the palette for the feast to come. The dividers also create a comfortable feeling of privacy, without completely isolating you from the rest of the room.
The buffet’s circular design is functional and efficient: diners are not faced with an epic trek down an endless line. You can see it all at a glance, the salads, appetizers, desserts and the gleaming silver steamers. It’s not the biggest buffet we’ve ever seen – although it is plenty big – but everything we tried was of exceptional quality.
While we were at the salad and starters bar, trying to divide our available stomach space by the number of dishes we wanted to try, our waiter placed a basket of bread selections on the table for us, relieving us of the agony of choosing the breads as well as the salads.
We each picked out a selection of salads and appetizers, plus a plate of dips to share. I started with a bit of smoked salmon, laying it on top of a hunk of chewy brown bread and piling on slices of red onion, black pepper and lemon juice – aah, fantastic. The salmon was sweet and luscious.
Next came a hot slab of garlic toast, heaped with a fresh salsa of tomatoes, onions, garlic and cilantro. It tasted like Spain: sunny, sweet, juicy and peppery. The artichoke salad was heavenly, the tabbouleh cool and lemony.
We peeled a couple of plump cold boiled shrimp, and are reminded of Florida. The shrimp were firm and sweet, the white cocktail sauce creamy and hot with horseradish. Just in time, our waitress brought us a finger bowl of lemon water.
We washed down the shrimp with some of the house wine, a terret-chardonnay blend from J.Moreau & Fils, and the wine is bright, citrusy and refreshing. We could have chosen wines from France, Italy, Australia, or Chile, or from two premium choices in red and white from each country, or two “wines of the month,” plus champagne and sparkling wines.
We moved on to try a salad of green olives, with chili, Indian pickle and chopped nuts. The dish was tart, with a fiery slow burn that zinged the palette. We scooped up baba ganouj and mutabel, using miniature pita pockets perfect for spooning dips. The former was smoky and creamy, while the latter was garlicky and more substantial.
My wife pronounced the potato salad was “like from a potluck picnic in Nebraska,” and praise for potato salad doesn’t get much higher.
We took a breather and surveyed what we could have had from the starters, if we had the capacity: Swiss, brie, blue and cheddar cheeses, handsomely arranged in wheels and slabs, and home-made cheese and zatar bread sticks. We could have spread tapenades, anchovies, aioli and Parmesan-rich pesto on more of the fresh bread, and in addition to our shrimp, we could have added chilled crab legs, served atop a big wheel of ice.
Even though we tried several salads, we had reluctantly passed on making our own salad from fresh greens, red radishes, cherry tomatoes, chives, artificial crab, pâté, feta cheese, carrots, baby corn, cucumber, red and yellow peppers, green and black olives, green beans, boiled potatoes, sliced red onions, tuna and slabs of smoked mackerel. Sadly, we didn’t have room to sample the beet salad, coleslaw, seafood salad or aloo bindi (okra with tomatoes). Nor did we manage a bite of the hummus, fatoush, torshi, or basturma (Lebanese style dried beef).
But believe me, we wanted to try it all.
Our fellow diners were business people, hotel guests, and others who came just for the food. The atmosphere was slow and relaxed. People weren’t stampeding through the line, jostling each other as they fight over the last shrimp. Such behavior is one of the main reasons we aren’t true buffet enthusiasts, but here, the pace is leisurely and people are enjoying themselves.
For our main course, we piled our plates with cannelloni, veal Zurichoise, hammour in dill sauce, chicken biryani, vegetable sambousa, cheese spring rolls and steamed vegetables. The biryani was a standout: the chicken was tender, the sauce spicy and the rice, thickly strewn with cashew nuts and caramelized onion, was cooked perfectly. The biryani was capped perfectly with a side dollop of cool, creamy cucumber-yogurt sauce.
The cannelloni, with plenty of fresh grated Parmesan cheese on top, was delicious. The pasta was flavorful, not gummy, and filled with zesty spinach. The hammour was cooked beautifully, but to cover such good fish with creamy dill sauce seemed like a crime.
My wife likes beef and gravy, and she was delighted with the tender slices of veal and plump mushrooms in a sour, creamy gravy. I initially passed on the sambousa and spring rolls because they seem to be the same everywhere, but my wife insisted I try these, and she was right – they were a revelation. Both were clearly home-made, lightly fried with a flaky, crisp dough. The sambousa were stuffed with crisp vegetables, not unidentifiable veggie mush, and the spring rolls were bursting with salty, creamy cheese.
We almost passed on trying the chicken curry, but since all the other subcontinent choices were so good, we had to try it. We were glad we did because it was fabulous, full of super tender chunks of chicken, with a complex, rich sauce, not hot on first taste, but with a slow, measured fire.
Along with the curry, we had crunchy paratha bread piled with a lime pickle that nearly exploded in our mouths. It was clear to us then that we could eat just the Indian food at Al Safir and have one of the best Indian meals in town.
We skipped a few of the main dishes – beef steak with pepper sauce, chicken barley soup and lamb kibsa – to leave room for dessert.
It’s not a buffet until you’ve sampled dessert, so we finished our wine, drank some water – the bottle kept in its own ice bucket – and lumbered over to the dessert bar. We felt like kids visiting a Willy Wonka who has branched out beyond chocolate. Spread before us were carrot cakes dusted with powdered sugar; cream and fruit filled pastries; two kinds of chocolate cake; spice cake from England; crème brulee with a gorgeous caramelized crust; tiramisu; fruit tarts; and fresh fruit and a mixed fruit salad. The cakes and pastries were in mercifully small portions, so you can try a bit of this and that and not feel too guilty.
But the centerpiece was the chocolate fountain, flanked by bowls of ripe strawberries and Arabic sweet bread. We skewered a few berries and held them under the warm waterfall of chocolate. Back at our table, we dug into the sweet, juicy strawberries coated in creamy chocolate and the delightful tiramisu, finishing off with some fruit salad.
One dish in particular brought home to us the exceptional quality of the buffet: the steamed vegetables. This dish is so often a throwaway item on buffets, and frequently dumped from industrial size cans straight into the steam tray. Not at Al Safir. These vegetables – zucchini, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, cherry tomatoes and green beans, sprinkled with fresh herbs – were bright, crunchy and full of flavor; the cherry tomatoes popped in our mouths like red balloons.
Food snobs and purists might turn up their noses at buffets, but there is a sense of fun and good cheer at buffets you won’t find in fussy establishments. A great buffet like Al Safir allows you to throw caution and restraint to the wind, but you don’t have to toss out good taste as well.
Unlike many such restaurants, at Al Safir nothing was bland, but neither was it over-flavored. Everything was zesty, fresh and possessed individual character, and it left us asking, as no other buffet ever has before, what’s for dinner?