55&5th, The Grill

It’s always a pleasure dining at 55&5th, from the service to the food, everything is on point. This restaurant oozes chic, its high ceilings and cool blue back lit walls set the tone for an unforgettable evening. With only a hand full of tables you can easily enjoy a relaxing dinner as the staff cater to your every need, making you feel like a VIP.

Today we are sampling a few dishes from the new menu. Chef Manuel has taken over the kitchen at 55&5th and has reinvented its menu. Having studied at the Culinary School of Toledo, Chef Manuel has worked in a host of Michelin Star restaurants under a myriad of celebrity chefs, including Chef Pepe Rodriguez and Sergi Arola.

To start we enjoy a palate cleanser made of cucumber, marinated cherry tomato and thyme ice-cream. We eagerly await our first course. The marinated foie gras millefeuille with pear panna cotta, Spanish grape, grape poached pear and brioche, has to be one of the best foie gars we have ever tasted, rich, creamy and velvety the aroma invigorates our senses.

Up next my favourite dish the josper grilled octopus, perfectly grilled and served with green pea, chickpea and marinated cherry tomatoes, this dish is an adventure of the senses. To find grilled octopus is difficult, to find it grilled to perfection is near enough impossible.

The lightly smoked turbot comes with grilled artichokes, roasted sunchokes, caviar and lemon sauce. Turbot has a very mild taste with a medium to firm texture so the flavours of the artichokes and lemon sauce give it a much needed zest. The presentation is sublime, Chef Manuel has placed the vegetables on the turbot to represent small scales on a fish, a quirky but nice touch.

The Spanish young lamb is a 12 hour braised lamb shoulder with sundried tomato polenta, salt roasted beets, Espelette cherry and parsnip. This is my second favourite dish from the tasting menu. The lamb literally melts in your mouth, this dish is phenomenal. It refreshing to see basic ingredients cleverly used to add so much flavour to one dish.

We enjoy blueberry sorbet, lemon and orange granite, yogurt, cherry caviar. Another palate cleaner before moving onto the dessert.

The dessert consists of mango and coconut textures, cremeux, frozen, crunchy, liquid, dehydrated, poached and crispy.

Chef Manuel has left us impressed and wanting to return sooner than planned. You can definitely see the influence of his Spanish roots however he has skilful incorporated this into the menu without losing 55&5th’s core values. His new menu is nothing short of a culinary masterpiece and we will soon be back to explore more.

55&5th The Grill
The St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort
02 498 8888