The Coffee Club
Wasl Vita,
Opposite Civil Defence Station, Near Emirates NBD
Al Wasl Road, Jumeirah 1, Dubai
09th December, 2016
Picture this: It’s Friday. The weekend at last! You wake up (grudgingly!) in the morning, wipe the drool off your face, rub your eyes three times (don’t worry you won’t be transported to Kansas!), and stumble across to the curtain and pull it wide open. What you see is the best representation of a Dubai winter. Scattered clouds on a crisp, blue sky, not a sun in sight. You step out on to the balcony, and you feel the wind rustle your hair, the cold creep up your legs, and there’s only one thing on your mind.
Yep that’s right!
Coffee!
And so it was on this breezy Friday morning that the gang decided to venture out for brunch. Dubai, being the food hub that it is, has no dearth of brunch choices. Friday brunches, especially, vary from cuisine to cuisine, restaurant to restaurant. So the first question was ‘Where?’ A quick search online brought me to ‘The Coffee Club’ – a cosy cafe located in Jumeirah, near City Walk. It ticked all the right boxes. Non-vegetarian? Check. Affordable? Check. Breakfast and Lunch Items? Check. Coffee? Check!
Brunch, the combination of breakfast and lunch, presents a natural dilemma and our second question – What is the perfect time for brunch? Noon? (naa too late, might as well have lunch!) 10 a.m.? (It’s Friday morning! Who’s going to get up that early?) We decided 11 a.m., which gave everyone plenty of time to get ready, exercise, do their morning prayers, and any morning shopping (for which I plead guilty) that they needed to do.
But, of course, planning with the gang is never easy. I don’t recall a plan with the guys that went exactly as it was supposed to. Thus, we prefer the ‘take it as it comes’ or ‘roll with it’ approach. Ding! A whatsapp message. An ominous sign. Has the plan changed? You bet it has. The timing of the brunch has been pushed back to 12:40 p.m. (so exact!) due to…certain prior commitments (and I won’t name the guilty party!). So our brunch meet turned into a lunch meet. (It wasn’t much of a surprise really)
1:40 p.m. – I reach The Coffee Club. (I’m late!) Located at the corner of Al Wasl Road, opposite Emirates NBD Bank, the cafe provides a very ‘European’ feel as you walk through their doors. I was immediately greeted by 2 waiters, eager to seat me in what seemed an empty cafe. I told them that my friends were already inside waiting for me. I ventured inside but I couldn’t find them. I rang them up (praying to God that they didn’t end up at one of the other 3 Coffee Club locations!). It so happened that they were waiting for me outside (oops!).
1:45 p.m. – We were seated at a table and were handed the menus. Call it a burden or a positive thing – but I find good restaurants to have a wide array of tantalizing dishes that creates a dilemma in the minds of its customers. The same can be said about ‘The Coffee Club’. It took us at least 20 minutes – I kid you not! – to decide what each of us was having (we definitely switched choices 2-3 times!).
2:05 p.m. – We placed our order. Strawberry milkshake, Spanish Potato Hash, Chicken & Avocado Wrap, Classic Carbonara, and the Chicken Cacciatore Meatballs. The waiter, whose name will bring a smile to the faces of vegetarians – for his name was Eglis!, was prompt in taking our order, making sure we understood what each dish contained.
2:25 p.m. – Our order was served. On time, I should add. It’s a popular saying ‘You eat with your eyes first’, and boy were our eyes full! Each dish looked as appetizing as the next. Our concern, however, was the portion of the dishes. They didn’t seem too big and left us with an unsatisfactory feeling. But it just goes to show you how wrong first impressions can be. The Chicken & Avocado Wrap was as crisp on the outside as it was soft and yummy on the inside. The fries called out to you with it’s fat, bright golden fingers, urging you to take a bite out of it. The Carbonara, all spiralled up like a mountain (more Alps than Jebel Jais), with the cheese playing the role of snow and the bits of bacon playing the unsettled rocks, was begging for a fork to be twirled inside of it. The Meatballs, though covered in more greenery than would have preferred, were succulent. The Spanish Potato Hash was almost perfect, from the buttered bread, to the runny poached egg, and the tanginess and spiciness of the chorizo.
Of course no meal is complete without dessert (no matter how full you are!). It didn’t take us too long to decide which item to choose. One look at the menu, and it was a unanimous decision – the Brownie Fudge Delight it was! Our expectations of desserts, especially those containing Brownies and Ice Creams, are always high. So it has to take an extremely well crafted dessert to match our expectations. The Brownie dish arrived, accompanied with a shot glass of chocolate syrup. There’s something extremely satisfying about pouring chocolate syrup on vanilla ice-cream, no matter how slow it is. We were a little disappointed with the size of the brownie, but the surprise in the Oreo pieces dipped in melted ice-cream far for made up for the disappointment. While the Brownie Fudge Delight did not match our extremely high expectations, it came pretty close.
Our bellies full and satisfied, we paid the bill and left The Coffee Club. On our way out, we realized something. We didn’t even try their Coffee! Oh well, gives us another reason to visit!