Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai - Restaurant Reviews

Gourmet Burger Kitchen

We pulled apart these beefy beasts with thuggish impatience. We tugged at the cocktail sticks that held them together and hurriedly toppled the upper layer of sourdough bread 3 Reviews

Picture 1 of 2

The world’s biggest car park, according to the book of Guinness World Records, is at the West Edmonton Mall in Canada. It has 20,000 spaces. The Dubai International Financial Centre, according to its website, has 32,600 car parking spaces. We wouldn’t be surprised if astronauts keep tabs on the comings and goings of Dubai’s stockbrokers from the moon. Yet we drove around the monolithic building twice and couldn’t find a single sign pointing towards a car park. Maybe we’re stupid, although by the time we finally reached the Gourmet Burger Kitchen, having traipsed across from the Emirates Towers and spent a further 15 minutes wandering the deserted corridors of DIFC, we were certainly hungry. Starving, in fact. So it’s a good thing that GBK produces burgers so big you have to disassemble them to fit them into your mouth.

We pulled apart these beefy beasts with thuggish impatience. We tugged at the cocktail sticks that held them together and hurriedly toppled the upper layer of sourdough bread. Our forks danced in our hands; it’d been a long wait. Ten minutes later, we had demolished most of the food on our plates, yet our forks were no longer dancing. The burgers were good, certainly, but the best in Dubai? We’re not convinced. I ordered one with beef bacon, and these rashers were too salty and slightly too tough. The guacamole smartly complemented the beef but didn’t interact very agreeably with the mayonnaise on the bun. The quality of the black Angus beef used by GBK is unquestionably high, but prepared medium it was a little too damp and lacking that deep, meaty flavour. My friend’s Cajun burger was more successful; prepared well done and given a kick by a potent chilli mayo.

Starters were a pair of deep-fried portobello mushrooms that benefitted from a dash of pesto and a heap of crisp rocket leaves, although the natural flavour of the mushrooms was slightly overrun by oiliness. The fries, which for some reason arrived first, were crisp, golden and hot throughout but not particularly flavoursome, while the dips came in pathetic plastic tubs. Not that any of this really matters. It’s all about the burgers, and while these are certainly good, we have had better.

The bill (for two)
Chocolate milkshake Dhs18
Orange juice Dhs12
Garlic mayonnaise Dhs3
2x GBK fries Dhs22
Portobello mushrooms Dhs30
Avocado beef bacon burger Dhs30
Cajun burger Dhs30
Total (excluding service) Dhs145