Teatro

The Rotana Towers Hotel, Dubai

The hotel is a horror, more three star than lala and also home to the appalling Long's Bar, which is supposed to be a faithful copy of the bar at Raffles in Singapore. The faithfulness of the reproduction is perhaps questionable: Long's Bar is underground, dark, dingy and odiferous.

So to find a restaurant that is so regularly packed to the gunwhales and so highly thought of by a huge universe of regulars in this hotel is something of a surprise. But you ain't seen nothing yet.

Theatro is an eccentric restaurant, to say the least. The menu's a bonkers mix of Italian, Thai, Indian and 'International'. The Maitre d', one of Theatro's great assets, juggles guests with an expert eye that instantly differentiates a regular from just a difficult random and bills, coos, flatters and teases at the same time as taking no BS from anyone. Which is about everything you could ask for.

The food's good: not brilliant, not startling but fine. Mixing and matching menu items is quite fun, but then Theatro is quite fun. And like any piece of theatre, it's as much about the atmosphere as anything - and Theatro is a hubbub of conversation and clinking holloware, laughter and chatter. It's a warm, convivial place to eat together, drink together and laugh together.

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