*UPDATE: Vineet Bhatia is no longer associated with Rasoi in Abu Dhabi*
It Feels like a Vineet Bhatia restaurant in Abu Dhabi is long overdue. The Indian chef has been operating up the road in Dubai for as far back as we can remember and has had outposts pretty much everywhere else across the region for years, too.
The first thing you’ll notice about this restaurant is the vibrant colour scheme and décor. This is not a stuffy fine-dining restaurant by any means. The colours are practically exploding from the walls.
The same vim is present in the staff, who are quite excellent from the arrival to the goodbye, operating with charm and knowledge throughout the meal and never missing a beat.
The menu is fairly compact here, certainly compared to some other Indian spots in the city, with the one-pager split into starters, biryani, mains and breads, rice and raita.
Prices are fair, certainly for the location and quality of what comes to the table, with the small plates starting at Dhs50 and mains averaging around Dhs110. We order around five plates in total, including a couple of the vegetarian options.
The first wave of dishes includes tandoori salmon, the intriguing-sounding BBC (more of that later) and koli paneer.
The cheese is perhaps our favourite. Squares of it have been covered in tikka spices and with a moreish peanut sauce on the side. The salmon is probably our least favourite of this round of food, being a little over compared to how we usually like it, but the tandoor has certainly done its wonderful thing to the fish, blackening the outside nicely. Talking of black, the BBC stands for black butter chicken. The butter chicken itself is encased in a black samosa and is served with a tomato ketchup. It’s striking and tasty, but perhaps the best part is the blackened chicken tikka on the side.
We wouldn’t order the caulilflower manchurian again – it’s just not to our tastes – but the creamy, coconutty coastal prawn curry is an absolute delight.
Whatever held Bhatia up, you should know this – it was definitely worth the wait.
