Food Blog | Rhain Steak House | Conrad Hotel | Sheikh Zayed Road | Dubai
As you will see across a lot of my blog posts, I generally write about restaurants that I have positive reviews for. However, at times, like in this case, I NEED to share certain negative stories about restaurants - just so people know about these issues, and restaurants can either respond appropriately for next time or continue being disappointing.
I say this with the caveat that the meal was alright, but what happened with regard to the service was absolutely appalling, I’ll go into it in the price section. I’ll be covering their new business lunch offering in this post.
Edit: 16/03/2022 The staff actually came back with the right response - they offered a complimentary meal to compensate for my experience - as per the comment section. I definitely appreciate this and think this was the right thing for them to have done.
Where It Is
Rhain Steak House is located at Conrad Hotel along Sheikh Zayed Road. You can valet your car or even take a metro to the World Trade Center Metro station and it’s a very short walk to Conrad hotel.
Address: Conrad Steak House - Sheikh Zayed Rd - Trade Centre - Trade Centre 1 - Dubai
Operating Hours:
Daily - 12pm - 1am
What it Costs
Their business lunch operates like so:
Appetiser + Main + Dessert + Wine = AED170
Main + Dessert = AED130
Main Alone = AED110
Strictly speaking, for a weekend lunch, this is actually fairly worth it (most business lunches don’t operate on the weekend), but if you directly compare it against other weekday lunches, this is pretty pricey.
We got 3 AED170 sets and one AED110 set. If you’re going with 4 people, this isn’t a bad way to go as their appetizers and desserts are pretty big - and there are 3 apps, 3 mains & 3 desserts on the set menu, so it’s quite worth to do that to sample all the different dishes.
You can take a full look at their business lunch offerings at this link right over here.
We also got 3 of their meat sushi - (AED20 per piece) and this includes a spectacular fire performance in front of your eyes.
Onto the part that upset me and my family. We had asked whether the wine was interchangeable with juices initially. The waiter said yes. When the receipt came, they had charged us for the apple juice. Let me clarify a few things about this.
This is FROM THE CARTON apple juice for one. (I’m trying to say that this is 100% cheaper than a glass of wine)
We had already clarified earlier.
Granted, it was our mistake for paying the bill before fully checking the bill
Supervisor included, nobody is willing to easily rectify this mistake and say “sorry for our mistake, we’ll reimburse you for that (which I know is the case for ANY restaurant that wants you to come back)
I suspect this is the waiter not admitting it was his mistake from the beginning (where we clarified we can switch it to a juice) - he says that he can give us a glass of wine on the house from his paycheck - but wait, we’ve already paid for the wine (because at that point, we’ve paid for the juice and we’re supposed to get the wine from the set anyways), so that’s some next level gaslighting.
Quite frankly, this has ENSURED that I will never return and this goes on the blog.
How it Tastes
As I said before, I don’t want to discredit the food simply because of poor service. The food is decent and pretty big in portion size.
Starting off with the meat sushi, here’s how it is served:
Quite a stunning fire show and the sushi itself is pretty decent for a more ‘fusion’ kind of sushi. I actually like the crispy potato chips (they use it for a few dishes) that they use because they add a nice crunch to the sushi.
Next up, the tiger roll. As again, I would say that this isn’t really the type of ‘authentic’ sushi you would get from a Japanese sushi restaurant, but its flavors are decent - and even cream cheese detractors should be able to eat this despite there being a bit of it in this dish. (I’m generally a sucker for tempura in sushi)
The Nicoise Salad is probably more along the lines of a traditional Western kind of salad - with a focus on the greens and the fresh tuna confit. I won’t talk too much about this because it’s pretty much what you would expect from a salad.
Meanwhile, the greek salad is a kind of wet salad - just keep in mind that this one is heavier on the feta cheese (generally, this is a heavier salad relative to the Nicoise Salad).
Onto the mains.
I would say that my personal favorite among the 3 mains would be the Chateaubriand, followed closely by the Rigatoni.
The Chateaubriand (Angus Tenderloin) is super juicy and is complemented by an equally delicious peppercorn sauce and potato puree. A very classic dish that doesn’t do any wrong. The cook was a perfect medium and the dish is super yummy.
As mentioned before, the Rigatoni comes in a close second. Strangely, it isn’t even because of their truffle - I thought the truffle they used was a bit disappointing to be perfectly honest. But the sauce and the pasta really are fantastic - not too light or heavy - and honestly a super delicious pasta dish.
Their cheesy meat with french fries is more akin to a Middle Eastern meat kebab if anything - with a small cheese component inside the meat. I think the dish is a bit disappointing relative to the others - a bit dry (although this style of cook usually is). The french fries are seasoned with paprika (I believe), so there’s that little bit of spice to the fries.
Baklava
The desserts were in my “okay” kind of territory. Weren’t fantastic, but are okay to finish off the meal. I would say that the baklava was a bit lackluster as a whole, and the caramel churros and fruit salad were alright.
Star Rating
3.5/10. The fact that the front office of the restaurant chooses to ruin a meal by insisting we pay AED35 per glass for orange juice from a carton when this has been clarified and not retrospectively fixed by offering us a refund (which by all means, they made more money from a cup of orange juice relative to a glass of wine anyways) is ridiculous.
Edit: 5/10. Just for the simple fact that their response was quick and appropriate.
Not coming back here again, because this was just such a petty thing for them to do - and shows me that they don’t value customers at all. Food is alright, but not good enough to convince me to come here after that poor display of customer service.