Everyone raves about Lah Lah.
Friends who live in the neighbourhood, online forums.
Last weekend we had the opportunity to review their evening brunch, and I was actually pretty excited. A group of friends had wanted to check it out as well so they booked, and it ended up being a table of 9. Fun fun fun.
So, how did it go? Is it as good as everyone makes it out to be? Read on.
The place, the ambience.
Let’s start with the setting.
Lah Lah sits on the 4th floor of Zabeel House, with a very homey indoor layout leading out to an extensive outdoor area by the pool. When we got there half an hour into the brunch, the place was already full. Groups are mixed – lots of couples of all ages, lots of large groups like ours as well.
Throughout the night, they were playing old school R&B. It was actually quite an odd choice of music for the crowd and the venue but hey – whatever works right? 🙂 It’s not too loud, so you can have a proper conversation with friends, and that’s the sorta place Lah Lah is.
Let’s talk about the food.
Lah Lah serves pan-asian, and I’ll take my hats off and say that they did do it pretty well.
Favourites from the starters would be the beef salad and (still crunchy) vegetable spring roll. Always happy to see dim sums – chicken and vegetable siew mais, and har gau (shrimp dumplings). The sushi platter could be better, the rice was too mushy that evening, and I personally am not a fan of sweet thai chilli sauce doused sushis. Still glad to have salmon nigiri as well as california roll though 😉
What about mains?
I wish I didn’t eat so much of the starters so I could save more of my tummy space for the mains.
The black pepper beef, the kung pao chicken, the shanghai noodles, the wok vegetables, even the green vegetable curry. Sorry, that’s basically everything. A chinese friend of ours (who is an amazing cook herself, by the way) – we both agreed that the reason why we can’t recreate the same taste at home is because we need a bloody wok and an open fire. We call the taste “wok hei” – have a read through this explanation in Michelin’s website.
What about desserts?
Do you know they serve mochi ice cream with the desserts? And if you are greedy wanted more, you can ask nicely? Do you know a lot of fine dining pan-asian restaurants (Sea Fu, February 30) serve mochi ice cream as a dessert item in their ala carte menu and 3 of these would be around 60 AED? Ok you get what I am trying to say 😉
Desserts came as a large platter of fruits, with mochi ice cream and a bowl of mango dessert.
Anything that could be better?
A few minor things that could be better :
- Possibly more staff on their busy nights to attend to the number of people trying to get drink top-ups.
- Suggest to clear away empty dishes, to be replaced with new ones before serving mains.
- Group of 9, and two dessert platters were served. Okay to share cut fruits but there were only two bowls of the mango dessert – so that’s 9 spoons dipping into two bowls. Suggest to have the option of having individual (smaller) bowls of the mango dessert for large groups… because it was so good 😉
- Fix the sushi rice please.
Very minor things. Thinking back, it was full house that night, I can imagine how busy they were trying to accommodate everyone’s requests and we did have a really good evening 🙂
Overall Thoughts
Go to Lah Lah for a laid-back brunch in a really nice, chilled setting. Casual date with the other half, group of friends – it’s one where you can talk to each other. Go there if you appreciate your pan-asian cuisine – they definitely did a good job with the food as I am keen to return very soon. Oh – did I mention the evening brunch goes on for 4 hours? 7-11pm, and the place was still buzzing at midnight when we left 😉
- Saturday Evening Brunch @ Lah Lah
- Website
- Zabeel House the Greens
- 225 AED per person (soft drinks), 295 AED per person (drinks)
- Offers : 20% with Greens Card or Privilee
Disclaimer : We were guests of Zabeel House to review the Lah Lah evening brunch. Our friends booked for themselves and paid for the brunch, availing to The Greens Card 20% discount.