Nahaam is the poolside restaurant at Jumeirah at Etihad Towers which provides a casual spot for lunch or dinner as well as feeding hungry sunbathers on the beach.
The interior subtly reflects the nearby pool and beach with open spaces, medium-dark woods and sea green accents dominating the décor. Seating is comfortable inside and out and though service is very friendly and attentive we found it a little on the slow side for a mid-week lunch visit when we had to keep an eye on the time.
The lunch menu is varied and extensive, offering a range of cuisines and plates of varying sizes to fit your level of hunger and the time of day – you can get everything from soup and salad, through sandwiches, burgers and pizzas to steaks and stir-fries.
Being the middle of the day, heavy meals were probably not the wisest choice if we wanted to stay awake at our desks so we ordered the roast beef sandwich and the lobster and crab salad. The roast beef sandwich was pretty good – the beef was cooked rare, thinly sliced and tender and it shared prime sandwich space with a very mild horseradish cream, some rather overpowering roasted mushrooms and a very interesting addition of sauerkraut which we worried would be too strong a flavour with the gentle beef, but was in fact superb and added a delicate hint of crunch and sourness to the whole mouthful. The Gruyère cheese listed on the menu was sparse indeed and could have suffered a slightly heavier hand for our tastes. It was a tasty sandwich, but it was also a pretty tiny one.
The lobster and crab salad with green papaya and avocado also tasted fantastic. Hefty chunks of lobster were simply cooked to allow the natural sweetness through, though the taste of the crab was largely lost among the stronger flavours of papaya, red chilli and the very interesting pineapple vinaigrette. Aside from that it was a well-balanced, fresh and refreshing dish but, again, was woefully small. Though we had plundered the breadbasket for all its worth, we were still hungry by the time we had finished our mains so we asked for the dessert menu.
Despite it being fairly warm and sitting outside we couldn’t resist the siren call of the sticky toffee pudding, served hot with a thick and deeply flavoured sauce, frozen vanilla custard and a little nugget of honeycomb on the side. Again this is a teeny tiny portion – really not enough to share – but everything tasted fantastic. The pudding was dense and moist, the custard was delicate but managed to hold its own against the sauce and the honeycomb was a cheeky little taste bud teaser that we could have done with a lot more of.
We’d be more inclined to be regulars at Nahaam if we didn’t think that we’d need three courses to feel full at lunch time. The food is good, but we’re talking more burgers by the pool than nouvelle cuisine and so is pretty overpriced for the portion sizes.
The bill (for two)
Lobster and crab salad Dhs95
Roast beef sandwich Dhs75
Hot sticky toffee pudding Dhs45
Total (excluding service) Dhs215
