Fratelli La Bufala

Buffalo theme restaurant with unusual menu in Mirdif 3 Reviews

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Themes are dangerous things. They are ferociously single-minded, and they have a creepy tendency of ruthlessly quashing anything that doesn’t adhere to its strict, themey guidelines. The one thing that theme restaurants have going for them is that their freaky, foodish cult of personality is contained to a single space. I am scared of fanaticism in almost any form and so I am made nervous by these restaurants.

Fratelli La Bufala is one such place. As the name suggests, the focus of its obsession is the buffalo. There is not a single item on the menu that does not incorporate either buffalo milk or buffalo meat. The result is a very rich meal. My date and I decided to start off with a plate offering a broad sampling of both. In the centre was a smooth, oozing ball of buffalo mozzarella, served alongside a smoky half of gouda.

The cheese was delicious, but it was overkill. Our stomachs were churning in a lactose rebellion inspired by these massively sized samples. To break through the creamy mounds of cheese we moved on to some thick slices of buffalo ham, which just felt clumsy in the mouth, and didn’t offer the sexy complexities of good cured meat.

Rather, this ham felt amateur. The buffalo salami, packed with extra spice, fared better. What really disappointed, however, were the limp leaves of watery radicchio and wet, tasteless dressing that accompanied these samples.

The menu also had a pasta section, but a look into the kitchen (which was visible through glass) told me it was dried rather than fresh, so I ordered a hearth-cooked pizza, topped with buffalo mozzarella and ricotta, and with tomatoes and strips of buffalo prosciutto. I have to say, the pizza was heaven. The crust was an ideal thickness, plump without being doughy, and the toppings played together gloriously.

The cheese dribbled in tasty mounds, tomatoes were fresh and vibrant and the prosciutto was thin, pliant and thoroughly seductive. I’m choosy about my pizza. People often ask me, ‘isn’t pizza just pizza?’, as if it’s not a food worthy of standards. Anyone who wonders how a pizza can transcend, what makes it more than a lazy excuse for takeaway, the answer is this, right here.

My date, meanwhile, had opted for il barbecue, a platter encompassing buffalo meat in all its grilled forms: steak, burger and sausage. The meat was actually very nice. The steak was juicy and cooked perfectly rare and the sausage was made of dense, thick, spicy rounds.

The burger wasn’t a burger so much as a loose mound of pale, juicy ground buffalo. It was a pleasant combination, but it couldn’t compare to my pizza. It was also a heavy assortment, made more so by an accompanying side of (albeit fluffy) roast potatoes. We should have stopped there; we were full.

But I was too curious about the buffalo tiramisu and cheesecake to resist. The cheesecake was silken and exuberantly rich and came perched on a gloriously syrupy biscuit shell. The tiramisu was equally plush, with chocolaty chunks of espresso-laced lady fingers lining the bottom of a cream-filled teacup. But all this cream and cheese was getting the best of us. In the end, we felt more than full, we felt a bit sick.

Fratelli La Bufala is well perched to induce a dairy-fuelled coma. But if a diner orders wisely, it can also bring on euphoria. It’s a fine line, and moderation is essential here. The pizzas and desserts are the real show, and are examples of a theme well worked.

The bill (for two)
1x Large mineral water Dhs10
1x Cheese and meat platter Dhs42
1x La reale pizza Dhs39
1x Il barbecue Dhs59
1x Tiramisu Dhs22
1x Cheesecake Dhs19
Service (12 per cent) Dhs22.92
Total Dhs213.92

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