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