Thursday, October 14, 2010

Dubai Restaurant Review: Saladicious, Jumeirah

In a nutshell: Friendly staff, bright colourful decor but disappointing salads.
2/5

As the name suggests, Saladicious offers a long list of different salads - plus homemade soups, sandwiches and main courses such as grilled salmon. Sadly the 'delicious' part that the name eludes to remains elusive. I would expect that a restaurant that is focussed on salads would provide Dubai's most amazing variety and choice of them. Unfortunately, Saladicious does not deliver and if a great salad is what you're looking for then I would recommend going to either Zest in the Ibn Battuta food court where you will find a fabulous salad selection which allows you to select exactly what you want in your salad and what dressing or to Paul's Cafe where there is a truly delicious range of mixed salads.

I ordered a crispy prawn salad with mixed lettuce, mango and wakame (a type of seaweed). It was only when I left and was thinking about this article that I realised there had been no wakame in the salad at all! I didn't count how many slithers of mango I had, but I would estimate there were maybe 6 small slices and the rest of the salad was just lettuce. In France I will happily eat a bowl of lettuce because the dressing they put on it is so tasty (no matter where you eat) but there was no dressing at all on mine. This is partly my fault because I had asked for the dressing to be on the side since it was a chilli dressing and I told the waiter I was concerned it would be too hot for me. What I would have done in his position would have been to bring my guest a bit of the dressing to try and if the guest didn't like it then I would have suggested an alternative. But that's just me. The prawns were extremely generous - 2 skewers of jumbo prawns - and they were succulent and fresh. If only the salad had matched up to them.


The other meals around the table were equally mundane. My Mum had a chicken liver salad and although she said the liver was nice (I took her word for it since you couldn't pay me to eat liver!), it was also served on a big bowl of lettuce with no other salad items and barely any dressing. One of the other's in our party had a salad nicoise which had the requisite tuna, beans, potatoes, tomatoes etc. but each item was placed in a small pile and there was no dressing - it looked completely unappetising. One of the nicest salad nicoise I've had has been at Paul's where there was, yes, a divine dressing on it and it was all tossed together with the tuna broken over the top so that it not only looked good but tasted great. I think Saladicious could learn a few things about how to make salads by visiting them.


Apart from the disappointing food, the decor of the restaurant is bright and airy and for a cup of coffee and a pastry it would be a nice place to sit and have a chat with friends. If you want to check it out for yourself then you'll find it behind The One on Jumeirah Beach Road, if you turn towards the carpark of The One but continue straight down the road you will see it on the left side underneath an apartment building. You've been warned though...don't bother with the salads!

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