Scotch Whisky Experience is fun experience fro whisky lovers or novices like us, the location is on the same street that leads to the Edinburgh castle.

When the visitors enter the museum, they are invited to visit the shop which is expertly and beautifully displayed with all types of bottles and products based on the whisky flavors, but also souvenirs and paraphernalia from Scotland.

The tour started with a « Barrel Guide »  which involves jumping into a (clean!) “whisky barrel,” and riding your way through the production stages in a “whisky distillery.”

At the Scotch Whisky Experience, they’ve integrated the background information into a ride, using video and sound to capture the visitors attention with the key information of each stage, in a very clever way, and it did hold the attention much better than a typical speech from a tour guide.

Once the ride is over, the visitors moved into cinema room where a film will feature different landscapes and regions where whiskies have been produced through out centuries. 

When the film is over,  our guide invited us to the nosing and tasting area for an introduction to the five Scotch producing regions — Highlands, Lowlands, Speyside, Islay, and Campbeltown, and to work at discerning the differences in terms of taste and aroma.

Our guide introduced us to the four main regions, and helped us through the aromas using the scratch and sniff and some actual whisky.

After the nosing, it’s time for tasting the Scotch and we have to choose which region we wish to taste by putting our whisky glass on the color that represents the region on the card that has been handled out to us by our guide.

The highlights at the end of our experience, we are invited to enter into hidden place that houses the world’s largest collection of whisky, and where we can marvel at each of the 3,384 bottles displayed.

The best is for the end our visit when the guide informed us that we can keep our beautiful glasses in which we had tasted our whisky.

Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre

The Royal Mile, 354 Castlehill

Edinburgh EH1 2NE, UK

Telephone : +44 131 220 0441

www.scotchwhiskyexperience.co.uk

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Dean Banks at the Pompadour was remarkable fine dining in Edinburgh, it located in one of the most famous hotels in the city, the Waldorf Astoria Caledonian.

To fully experience our romantic evening, we went for a cocktail drink first at the beautiful and stylish Peacock Alley that set in the heart of the hotel.  After our drink, we walked slowly to the grandiose stairs to Dean Banks restaurant. 

The restaurant itself is wonderfully blue turquoise and it has a small blue boat that indicated that the sea is not far away, and that we will be tasting some great seafood for our dinner.

Once seated near the magnificent windows with a view on the Edinburgh castle, The head waiter handled out our blue book menu which has two menus, a Classic one (Six courses tasting) and a Chef’s Signature menu (8 courses tasting). 

For our dinner, we chose the Classic menu, from the snacks to the dessert, every dish was perfectly presented, cooked, and enhanced by the freshest products and ingredients.

Dean banks’ cooking is inspired by Asian flavors, like his hand dived scallop with Dashi and Kimchi or his grass-fed beef cheek with ponzu and sesame.

The wine is list is wonderfully eclectic from the cheapest bottles to the most expensive ones, wine lovers have the choice to enjoy a wide range of great wines.

The service was very nice, helpful, and professional at the same times.

With Dean Banks at the Pompadour and Aurora, we had two outstanding meals in Edinburgh for our romantic weekend.

Dean Banks at the Pompadour

Princes Street Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh - The Caledonian

Edinburgh EH1 2AB, UK

Telephone : +44 7770 451668

www.deanbanks.co.uk

Aurora at 187 Great Junction Street is an unlikely place for a high dining. The location is not very sexy or trendy, it’s part of Leith residential area. It is certainly not the place where you would expect to come across a fine dining restaurant. The restaurant could be easily missed if you are not careful enough and a peek through the window would reveal a narrow, high ceilinged room with minimal decoration and lighting.

We were glad that we had discovered this little gem of 18-cover restaurant. Once inside, the setting was minimalist and simple, but had a good vibe and atmosphere.

Our host and sommelier showed us our table of two and from there he handled us the menus, one for drink and one for the dinner. The degustation menu was £60 for six courses, and it came with amuse-bouche and petit fours as well.  You can add £50 for a wine pairing or £30 for non-alcoholic drink pairing.

The menu was incredible, each dish was like a little bijou, perfectly calibrated and cooked, each bite was delicate and full of flavor. The ingredients were dosed with balance and flawless technical mastery.

Kamil Witek’s cooking was inspired by Asia and Mediterranean flavors and ingredients which he masterly assembled into his creation.

The wine list and the drink list were quite impressive for a small restaurant. Even though, we did not order wines we had only order the non-alcoholic drinks like house-made bergamot & yuzu lemonade and rose petals & hibiscus iced tea.

The service by our sommelier and waitress was very nice, cool and easy going.

This meal was of one our best so far, we wish we could have a gem like Aurora in Paris. 

Aurora

187 Great Jct St, Edinburgh EH6 5LQ

Edinburgh EH6 5LQ, UK

Telephone :+44 131 554 5537

www.auroraedinburgh.co.uk

Rove in Dubai is becoming one of our favorite hotel brands. We really loved our stay at Rove at the Park in the attraction parks area. 

Rove at the Park has truly mastered the concept of what a family friendly resort should be. The hotel is perfectly built, designed, and decorated. From the parking lot to the rooms, the lobby, the breakfast area and from the kid’s game room to the gym and pool area, everything is well conceived and executed to make the guests (big and small) feel welcomed and at home. 

The service is warm, smiling, professional and competent. The entire staff, be it at check-in, in the restaurant, the cleaning or security squads, everyone is helpful and attentive. The hotel is very clean. 

We were also able to visit Rove at La Mer Beach which is located by the beach in the south of Dubai. There we were warmly welcomed by the Duty manager who showed us around the hotel and even a room. We immediately loved the vibe and the setting. 

We hope the Rove brand will soon extend to Europe and Asia as, in our opinion, it really captures the needs and wishes of 21st century travelers (big and small).

Rove At The Park

Dubai Parks and Resorts

P.O. Box 11944

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Téléphone: +971 4 241 9500

www.rovehotels.com

Trèsind markets itself as a fine dining Indian restaurant in Dubai. It offers a progressive Indian cuisine to its customers. 

We had read a lot of good reviews for this restaurant and its Chef, Himanshu Saini, so for our trip to Dubai in March we decided to go check it out, accompanied by a friend who lives there. 

For our dinner, we had the famous chef’s tasting menu which came in seven dishes, including amuse-bouches and dessert. 

We enjoyed arugula pani puri missi roti with green chili butter and the modernist chaat tart. We really appreciated the soup mushroom chai, dehydrated mushroom, truffle milk powder. The starter, tandoori rosemary lamb chops with chimichurri chutney and tandoori tiger prawn, amritsari soft shell crab demonstrated what Indian cuisine is all about, as it combines technical cooking with Indian ingredients and spices. The main course, prawn curry, lamb & coconut stew, chicken chettinad served with malabari paratha khichdi of India could have been served in a smaller serving size in our opinion, particularly when part of a seven-dish tasting menu. For the final, the dessert, black forest mithai cake and paan cotton candy, was a bit too sweet and too heavy. It would have deserved to be lighter and more refined. A dessert should always end a meal on a subtle note. 

The wine list is very, very expensive, too expensive for commoners like us. It has clearly been conceived for the ultra-rich. Our bottle from Sula, the Dindori Reserve 2020, was 100 euros, ten times its price at a wine retailer. We shared our surprise about it with the duty manager. 

The service at Trèsind was not up to the standard of a fine dining restaurant. The empty dishes were taken away to quickly even as one of us was not finished and still eating, one of the waiters came to present and prepare the next dish for our table in front of us and realized mid-preparation that the dish was actually for another table. 

Overall, the cooking of Himanshu Saini is good, his technical skills and prowess proved his desire to modernize Indian food and bring it into high gear. But the service is really in needs to up their game.

Trèsind 

Voco Hotel, Level - 2 Sheikh Zayed Rd - Trade Centre

Dubai - UEA

Téléphone  +971 4 308 0440

www.tresind.com/dubai