Just passing by to share a few photos of our fancy-pants dinner last night courtesy of my very generous boss who simply refused to let his people dine in a 2-star hotel (though I don't see anything wrong with that, tbh.) So we found ourselves walking into Armani Hotel in Burj Khalifa. Yes, THE Burj Khalifa of Dubai. It's not my first time here, we always have meetings in the building as my manager actually lives in Burj Khalifa Residences, but I've never actually dined in any of their restaurants before. We got shooed into Ristorante, serving Italian cuisine. We all came directly from work so we were in our regular office clothes, but got the A+++ treatment nonetheless. We got seated near the chefs' bar where we could pretty much see everything going on; staff laid dainty beige (or khaki, I can't be too sure as it the lighting was too dim) napkins on our lap and handed us golden menus to pick our drinks.
Outrageous prices, I know. I was content boomeranging the menu and posting it on my Instagram story. Still water all the way for this gal. :)
Then came this tiny set menu (still in hard bound gold foil, no less.)
You know, I love McDonald's and I'm pretty sure I know the menu by heart, but I still almost always have a hard time deciding what to order. So imagine my struggle looking at these complicated options. Forget about pronunciation, we googled the heck out of them just to see what they actually looked like and ended up pointing and waiting for the server to tell us whatever the hell it is we're ordering.
Our boss ordered a bottle of champagne, gave a bit of a toast and then walked out to the balcony to smoke his cigar while we take pictures. lol
THEN FOOD CAME ONE AFTER ANOTHER...
I'm not really sure what this is, but it was slimy and had two pieces of seafood in it.
I'm allergic to shrimp/prawns, but I love seafood and who knows when I'll ever get to dine in Armani for free again? I braved this one out and had a piece which made my tongue itchy so I switched starters with Joey (he had this white cheese thing called Burrata) Mine's called Gamberi. It's seared prawns, sweet peas puree, olives and espelette pepper according to the menu.
I had Agnello for main course (grilled lamb with herbs, potato with pistachio, and black pepper sauce) Y-U-M!!!
Heavenly Tiramisu for dessert!!!
Whenever food got served, I always marveled at how ridiculously tiny the servings are. But I couldn't believe how filling the entire meal was!
and more pictures, of course.
This is the man behind this superb evening.
It was a great time to bond with colleagues without the pressure of work (only the pressure of deciding whether the sauce on the tiny bowl was melted butter or lemon juice or a little bit of both.) I hope we get to do this more often.