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

Malecon

Roudy Cuban restaurant at Dubai Marine 9 Reviews

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From Time Out Dubai Eating Out 2008

This Cuban bar-cum-restaurant, named after Havana’s famous seafront stretch, is normally heaving with couples sashaying to salsa. The dining area – a mere break-step away from the dancefloor – does its best to grab your attention, difficult between the dancing and graffiti-scrawled walls.

Start your evening with the excellently prepared cocktails – a fresh and minty mojito, and an icy strawberry daiquiri. Then move on to the tuna ceviche. This Peruvian salad combines tender slivers of cured raw fish with a lively lemon and lime dressing.

‘Mar negro’ mussels are presented in a steamy mambo of soft shellfish in a thick and spicy bean and sweetcorn sauce that unleashes intense rushes of smoky flavour. Indulge in the Camarones prawns, which are crowded around a mound of black lobster-strewn rice, and an Ecuadorian salsa so pungent it sends citrus fumes into the nose. Red snapper fillets are slightly more pedestrian and come with crunchy fresh vegetables.

Round off your meal with chocolate ice-cream balanced against brittle molasses. Perhaps give the treacle drizzled ‘banana Cubana’ a miss, it’s incredibly thick and sticky, and almost impossible to remove from your teeth after each mouthful of soft banana and ice-cream.

Whether your mouth is gagged with syrup or not, this is hardly the kind of romantic restaurant to whisper sweet nothings across the table. But if you want to combine good Caribbean and Latin American food and drink with fiery music and even hotter dancing, this place will have your spirits sizzling.

By Jeremy Lawrence