Exploring The Asia District
So The Pointe is starting to hit its straps now, will many outlets finally up an running. One of the much awaited venues to open its doors is the Asian District. Based around the idea of a Hawker Hall and taking notable design cues from the likes of Mr. Miyagi’s, the licensed Asian District presents a large and open format eatery that showcases cuisine from Japan, China, Thailand, Singapore, Korea and Vietnam.
Each region has its own kitchen and is represented through a series of district names like, Japanese (Ramen Route), Thai (Pad Thai Boulevard), Chinese (Dumpling Mew), Vietnamese (Pho Lane), Singaporean (Bao Lake?), and Korean (Kimchi Ville) which comes off as kind of lame and unnecessary. Despite this, the menu selections on offer seem pretty well thought out.
As for the semi industrial styling of this large space - it’s jam packed with all the things you would expect for a venue like this. There’s Lanterns galore, street art, lots of wood, bar stools, and chalk boards. While far from original it works quite well. One interesting part of it all is that each cuisine has its own kitchen that features a small display case with the typical ingredients of that region which was a nice touch.
The way it’s laid out and with a pretty expensive but impressive drink menu that has everything from Cocktails to Beer to Sake this would be a great spot to get your gang together and take a trip around Asia.
Moving onto the food and on this occasion we went soup crazy, opting for the ramen, pho, green curry and the laksa. Of the quartet the Beef Ramen (62 AED) was perhaps the least exciting in no small part due to devouring many a Raman over at Daikon. The Asian District version was ok but just not particularly strong in any one area to make it stellar.
Diving into Vietnam’s favorite dish - the Pho Bo (48 AED) and well, it was really quite good, albeit rather small, which was the case across the board with all of the dishes. The broth a had a nice little depth of flavor to it. Thai Curry (56 AED) was also quite nice without being spectacular.
Saving the best to last and yes, the Singapore Laksa (52 AED) is hands down to date, the best the Laksa in city. While not on par with those you would encounter in Singapore, it was a great effort that respected the flavors of a laksa in a genuine way.
Overall it was a reasonable start - even though this time around was all about soups, there does seem to be enough on offer here to want to come back and explore these Asian Flavors a little more.
