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For the island's jazz lovers, Upstairs Downstairs restaurant in Adliya provides a perfect setting to sit back and relax with a range of tasty dishes and live entertainment.
Decorated in a comfortable European style, the venue offers a feast of continental cuisine under the watchful eye of award-winning master chef Kavindra Ratnaweera
Chef Kavindra, 44, has 24 years of experience in the kitchen and has been serving up delights since the restaurant reopened in 2002.
Hailing from Sri Lanka, Chef Kavindra has worked with a variety well-known hospitality names such as Hotel Ceylon International and Hilton International Hotel in Sri Lanka, Gatwick Hilton in London, Jebel Ali Hotel, Dubai and the Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait.
On earlier visits to the island Chef Kavindra, from Tashan, also worked at the Sheraton and Hilton Hotels Bahrain.
Prior to joining Upstairs Downstairs, Chef Kavindra was at the Club des Pins Resort and Towers in Algiers.
He said: "This is the longest I have stayed away from home and it's a great place to be with family."
At Upstairs Downstairs, Chef Kavindra strongly recommends the smoked salmon and the hammour patŽ.
He said: "We do our own preparation of smoking the fish. It is very popular and I feel that's mostly because of its freshness."
Other appetisers include crab cakes with sweet corn and Cajun spices alongside a spicy remoulade sauce, coriander oil and crisp green salad leaves, red bell pepper and tomato soup, prawn and avocado salad dressed with tomato basil vinaigrette and topped with lemon and coriander marinated prawns, grilled portabella mushroom salad served over spinach, the classic Caesar salad, chicken and mushroom soup, leek and bacon mornay with English mustard and mature cheddar cheese, chicken liver patŽ, warm goats' cheese salad and sizzling prawns.
The grills on offer including beef fillet, rib-eye, sirloin and T-bone steaks, chicken breast, salmon, hammour, crayfish alongside mixed grill with fillet steak, beef or pork bacon, liver, beef or pork sausage and mushrooms and a seafood platter with flame-grilled hammour and crayfish with citrus-cured prawns and calamari.
Mexican fajitas are another specialty at Upstairs Downstairs.
The fish and seafood section includes grilled salmon, smoked salmon, hammour and prawns nicoise, crayfish thermidor, fish cakes, sea bass and pesto crusted hammour.
Other main courses include salmon grilled chicken breast, cotton club fried chicken breast, stuffed prawn chicken breast, grilled marinated pork chops, veal escalope with beef or pork bacon and sage and osso bucco - a traditional one-pot casserole of tender veal knuckle served with au gratin potato and seasonal greens and calf's liver with herbs.
The restaurant also offers curries served with steamed basmati rice, crispy fried pappadoms, tomato and onion raita, pickle, chutney and yellow lentil dal prepared with in-house spices.
Penne Arabiatta, vegetable risotto and arborio rice, spinach and ricotta cannelloni and grilled polenta are also available.
The dessert section provides a lip-smacking variety including banana flambŽ, crpe suzette, Charlie Parker brownie, New York cheese cake, tiramisu, passion fruit and orange tart and chocalate ganache.
Chef Kavindra shares a favourite recipe (below)_with the GulfWeekly readers.
Roasted wild sea bass fillet with galette potatoes and orange scented red pepper sauce
Ingredients
180gm of sea bass fillet with skin on
Seasoning olive oil
Few drops of lemon sauce
Salt
Fresh ground pepper
For the sauce
1 small red pepper
5gm shallots
3gm garlic
2 basil leaves
10ml olive oil
30ml white wine
100ml fish stock
30ml orange juice
10gm butter
Method
SautŽ shallots and garlic in olive oil and roughly cut red pepper pieces.
Glaze the pan with white wine, add orange juice and fish stock.
Bring to boil, blend the sauce and butter. Season.
For Galette
1 medium potato
Egg yolk
Butter
Salt
White pepper
30gm roquet leaves
30gm carrots
Method
Bake the potato and scoop out the pulp mash with butter. Then add egg yolk and season well.
To Serve
Pan fry the sea bass fillet, at the same time grill potato galette place on a warmed plate. Place the sea bass, then blanch and sautŽ roquet leaves and carrot place on top and spoon over the sauce.
