Capanna Nuova in Dubai Marine Beach Resort & Spa, Jumeirah, Dubai - Restaurant Reviews

Capanna Nuova

Italian food with a view of the Arabian Gulf 1 Reviews

From Time Out Dubai Eating Out 2008

First impressions of Dubai Marine Resort & Spa’s Italian offering are good, with the stunning sea-view outdoor terrace creating the perfect ambience for a romantic evening. The approachable wine-list is well worth checking out, with a range to suit any palette or purse.

The seafood-centric menu offers a similarly impressive range of pizza, risotto and salad dishes, with mouthwatering descriptions of fresh fish, home-made pasta and enough innovative concoctions to mark this menu out from other Italian eateries, including veal with tuna sauce and a risotto with taleggio cheese and asparagus.

A starter of seafood salad is a decent beginning to the meal, with the tangy lemon dressing complementing generous chunks of lobster, prawn and shrimp on a bed of chicory leaves. However, the beef carpaccio with parmesan, rocket and balsamic vinegar does not have the same success.

Rather than elegant shavings of cheese peppering the plate, the parmesan has been over-enthusiastically grated over the entire dish, completely smothering the delicate flavour of the thinly-sliced beef. And the tone is not raised by the mains.

The delightful-sounding home-made pasta tortalloni stuffed with ricotta and sun-dried tomatoes in sage butter sauce is a bowl of six shapeless, soggy parcels of pasta floating in grease. Although in fairness, not all of it is soggy; some of the thicker, more undercooked sections of the home-made pasta are really quite crisp.

The classic spaghetti bolognaise – a fine way to gauge the standard of any Italian restaurant – is another disappointment, with a line of baked-on sauce crusted around the edge. It is in fact extremely tasty, but the sauce to pasta ratio has been badly miscalculated.

If only Capanna Nuova could raise the quality of the food to that of the setting, then this would be a real gem. As it stands, this joint is decidedly average.

By Jeremy Lawrence