12
Feb

postedbyYousef

We got an e-mail from Alf Laila where she kindly wrote a Dean & Deluca review for us to publish. Here is what she thought of the place:

“Wanting to try out the all too hip Dean and DeLuca café in the Avenues my family and I went there for a light early dinner. While I’m impressed with their collection of caviar, honey and marinades, I have but one phrase regarding their café: ALLA YZEED IL NI3MA. (May God increase our blessings).

Unfortunately I don’t recall the exact names of the orders and I do apologize for the poor quality of the photos as they were taken from my phone. My order was a goat cheese and avocado sandwich, both ingredients that I like. But, there was way too much of the goat-cheese-avocado mixture inside the sandwich and I had to leave some of it out. The picture shows what was leftover of my sandwich. One of us also ordered some sort of chicken sandwich and please do speak up if you’ve seen this 7araka before but I don’t recall ever going to a restaurant where they actually left lemon peel INSIDE a sandwich! Again refer to the picture. Last but not least, the pizza was not made of bread that was typical of pizza bread but rather it looked more like pita (Lebanese) bread and it kind of looked like hospital food because it was so thin. All in all the café was a disappointment and we decided not to stay there for desert. I did decide to go again but I warned my cousin this time against eating there. We ordered two coffees and a muffin and when we finally asked for the bill we received a stack of maybe three or four bills stapled together and on top of them it said on a small piece of paper a price of a little over 14KD. I was astounded because there was no way a Chai Latte, a Café Au Lait, and a Blueberry muffin would cost that much! It turned out the register was broken. Our actual bill was for only KD 3. That, I can forgive because a broken register is an understandable glitch in the beginning of a restaurant’s operation. Also, in their defense I have to say that the waiters were polite and friendly and our waiter was very apologetic about the mistake in the bill.


^Goat cheese and avocado sandwich

Now more of a personal request than a review, seeing all those scrumptious looking cans of caviar stacked on top of each other, here’s my suggested dish: Salmon with crème fraiche and caviar on a brioche.

Other improvements could be made with a larger selection of salads, especially those with less common ingredients such as raisins, hearts of palm, and even pomegranate. Also I suggest getting more inspiration from their New York branch which does catering and I suggest they offer breakfast dishes. See this LINK.

All in all, I am hoping that these are just glitches on the way to the creation of a more successful and enjoyable café experience. I really do want them to succeed because having such a brand in Kuwait is something that makes me proud. But more effort please!”

Thanks Alf Laila

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 12:43 am

11 Responses to “Dean & Deluca’s Food Review”

  1. J says:

    My experience at Dean and Deluca was great, in fact it was worth every penny.

  2. Hamad says:

    whats up with the d&d attacks with every webpage/dewaneya/dawam.. I think it is a gourmet grocery and should be reviewed as a grocery with a little cafe to kill time in while your family do the shopping. review the goods of the shop please. I heard it has some nice stuff that is not available in other groceries in kuwait.

    PS: since I never went there and not planning to. may I ask for a full review by you guys 😀

  3. Bo9ale7 says:

    well we had a family gathering couple of days ago and one of my relatives brought 3 deserts from D&D

    1- pomegranate cheese cake which was very delicious
    2- postachio cake which i would give not less than 7/10
    3- box filled with various flavors of macarons which reminded me of Laduree’s macarons (not the same but closest to it available in kuwait)

    im not a desert expert but i would give it 8.5/10 for those 3 that i`ve tried

  4. waleed says:

    Hi
    Never heard of Dean & Deluca until it came to q8 but anyway heard it was a posh type of store so im sick of hearing pple complain about the prices!!!! That place isnt 4 pple who worry about prices of products and worry if they have enough money in their wallet! I do worry about prices so i choose not 2 go and i think u should do the same 😉 As for the pizza well from ur description i do believe that this is the true way pizza’s are made!! Eat at any cafe in europe and u will find the pizzas 2 also be very thin… Restaurants usually pride themselves with how thin their pizzas are… From ur whining about the pizza i do think u have been brain washed with the cheap franchise pizzas of pizza hut where even the thin crust is hard and not so thin! :s as for the other 2 dishes i agree with u they do not look tasty and a lemon peel in a sandwich is strange :s At the end of the day i heard that the concept of the store acts like a grocery but for pple to go there and just eat at the cafe does sound funny to me!!! Its like going to IKEA just 2 eat at their cafe 🙂

  5. Alf Laila says:

    LOOOOOOL Waleed your comment actually cracked me up! Brainwashed by Pizza Hut! I liked that, that was a good one 🙂
    Ok. While I sympathize with your clearly thinning wallet 😛 and hope that you can one day afford gourmet food I do not share that concern (at least not when it comes to food) which is why I didn’t complain about the prices here at all. I thought they were charging us KD14 for two drinks and a muffin and they weren’t, they made a mistake. They actually only charged us KD 3. So just to be crystal clear, NO COMPLAINT about the prices.
    Now I don’t remember the last time I ate at Pizza Hut and I’m guessing it was a minimum of 5 or 6 years ago. The last time I had a pizza from a restaurant was Lorenzino and before then it was Pizza Express and before then it was the Pizza place at Harrods. All these places serve thin pizzas so I’m quite familiar with the taste of a wonderfully made beautifully cheesed splendidly sauced thin pizza. Ah how to explain… I don’t know. Please please go ahead and try the pizza at Dean & DeLuca yourself and do let me know if you think that this is the pizza that the chefs in European cafes would pride themselves on. 😉

  6. Daddy's Girl says:

    Ana 3n nafsi i went to it twice…

    once at the opening laman kan matroos brits… didn’t eat from their e ready food but bought stuff… i like the place and the sandwiches looked scrumptios

    I went again two days ago… there are even newer things… they have Raclette cheese which they did promise me they will bring a week later and they kept their promise… good, but alll the brits were gone!

    and when i took a look at the sanwdiches section cause i had my eye on the yummy looking avocado and goat cheese sandwich, i saw it, it looked hidious, mushy, and over stuffed… i am guessing the indians behind the counter do not measure up to the brits who made it the first time around. I did not buy it… i did not try it…

    Still, gourmet buying wise, 3jeeb…

  7. q80saracen says:

    Istughfuralla, Alla iyzeed il ni3ma. Don’t go guys…really, there is no way of enjoying absolutely anything there. Maybe (big Maybe) it will improve with time, but anyone who’s tried will be skeptical at the least. (As for fulfilling that gourmet product craving, it does the job well…)

  8. waleed says:

    hehehehehe ok “Alf Laila” u just asked 4 it 😉 by the way u were whining about the price at 1st :p

  9. Alf Laila says:

    No I wasn’t. Shakaktni ibnafsi I started looking for where in the post I had complained about prices, makoo shay ! Read more diligently my friend. 😛

  10. waleed says:

    I am! Ur post does suggest that!

  11. Yousef says:

    Waleed, I don’t think she complained one bit about the prices.. All she said was that a mixup happened and that they got the wrong check.