Chimes Restaurant

We headed for Al Barsha for a spot of Pan Asian food Dubai-style 2 Reviews

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There’s something eerily post-apocalyptic about Al Barsha. At night, it almost resembles a bomb site, what with its string of open construction pits and barren roads.

However, the neighbourhood, though oddly stark now, is starting to see life in the form of a spate of new hotels and restaurants sprinkling the street behind the new Holiday Inn. One of these new openings is Chimes, a pan-Asian restaurant with minimal atmosphere. The decor resembles a trussed up clinic. The odd pot plant and friendly waiters deflect from the brightly lit, starkly white interior. While it’s more the sort of place you stroll into as an afterthought than make a concerted effort to eat in, the food on offer is more than satisfying. Basically, it’s takeaway fare done well.

Chimes made a good stopping off point after a particularly harsh day at work, the kind of day when, diet be damned, you just want to comfort yourself with fried food. Well, Chimes is the place to do it. Seafood spring rolls were delicate and crunchy, even if the sauce they came with was the gloopy, oversweet type that usually comes from a bottle. My date sunk into a bowl of tom yum talay, a mildly tangy seafood soup. The soothing broth gave way to tender prawns and heapings of mushrooms.

Mains weren’t overwhelmingly exciting. My date’s vegetable fried rice was bland and stingy on the vegetables. While I loved the tender, crisply battered prawns in a sweet and sour dish, the sauce was overly saccharine and the dish could have used a more interesting produce, rather than the paltry few slices of bell peppers and celery.

Desserts here are pleasant, if standard. You can’t go wrong with fried bananas and vanilla ice cream. My date opted for a lighter combo of sago pearls, coconut milk and rock melon. It’s a light mix, for sure, with perfectly ripe melon. Chimes is certainly not a destination restaurant, but it is the type of place you could put on your speed dial for those days you just can’t be bothered to cook, and don’t fancy the ceremony of a big meal out.

This bill (for two)
1x Large water Dhs8
1x Spring rolls Dhs28
1x Tom yam talay Dhs24
1x Sweet and sour prawns Dhs39
1x Fried rice Dhs33
1x Sago pearls Dhs18
1x Banana ice cream Dhs22
Total (including service) Dhs172

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