Restaurant review: Voi, a Vietnamese sensation at Zabeel Saray in Dubai

Recently part of a BBC shortlist for the best table in the region you will not feel short-changed after a night in Voi, the delightful Vietnamese restaurant in the uber glamorous Zabeel Saray hotel on the Palm Island in Dubai whose lobby featured in the latest Mission Impossible movie.

The salon is modern Versailles with soaring ceiling, white baroque interior, chandaliers and mirrors. The terrace outside is equally impressive. French colonials never had it this good but they stamped their influence on Vietnamese cooking.

Asian nouvelle cuisine

This is a kind of Asian nouvelle cuisine. Tiny portions of superbly cooked and presented food. ArabianMoney tried the smaller of the two set menus paired with wines, French of course. We could not fault this medley of courses.

First came some snowy crab or for somebody allergic to seafood the also delicious Scottish salmon roll. Small but perfectly formed and flavorsome. Then we enjoyed a really excellent lemongrass soup made with beef bone marrow.

Somewhere in between came a couple of scallops for my partner and a King Henry fillet steak for me. It must have been some sort of joke on King Henry because the pepper-studded portion was extremely small, albeit immensely tender and fine to eat.

This finally got us to the main course, duck with fois gras on a bed of sprouts. Extremely succulent with fine flavours, it was wonderful. Many set meals die off at this point and to be fair we asked to change the dessert.

But what a great idea! The Memories of the Colonies rice pudding with ginger ice-cream was out-of-this-world, not too creamy or too small. My partner’s rice pancake creation was similarly rich and fairly substantial, indeed perhaps a little too much.

Top-marks for service

The service in Voi is attentive, intelligent and polite. Nothing is forgotten or mislaid in what is quite a complicated presentation with many small side dishes and there is always an explanation on hand.

Similarly the somelier offered some nice pairings from Alsace and St Estephe in Bordeaux, and the wine always appeared spot on cue. You could bring Tom Cruise here or a visiting CEO to this restaurant and they would not need to make a special effort.

For a restaurant this special tries its best to make every guest feel a star.