Dining DUO Style

The Pink Tarha Team have had their enormous share of steaks, sushi, and shawarmas (that's American, Japanese and Middle-Eastern food). It's time for some European flair, must I say? Enter...


Located on the outskirts of Riyadh's city center, the extra drive to Exit 5 may well be worth your time. DUO serves a combination of fine French-Italian cuisine, aimed to awaken our senses to an authentic French and Italian experience. To begin with, the open dining area is the closest you can get to an al fresco feel with it's high, glass ceiling allowing natural light into the room. The yellow-painted walls are adorned with window panes carrying green fauna and the cobblestone-like floors and indoor light lamps are reminiscent of the streets of Italy. The ambiance is a fresh retreat from the overcrowded restaurants of the metro. It must be those high ceilings that make all the difference.

The entire restaurant is extremely spacious, also allotting seating area for those who would prefer closed dining. There is a second level, where the "Playstation" for children is located along with a couple of banquet halls that are available for corporate events or personal parties.

We arrived at DUO at around 6pm, and it wasn't a busy time just yet. As we sat on the wood-crafted, outdoorsy furniture browsing through the menu, we were served with complimentary fresh bread with mustard and olive spread.

For starters, we ordered DUO's delectable fruit drinks, concocted right off from their open bar. (No, unfortunately, there is no red or white wine with cheese to boot). They had an open salad bar though, which shows off their garden-fresh vegetable selection and several other healthy options.

DUO's Fruit Cocktails: Ciao (orange, banana and strawberry syrup), Monot (orange, pineapple and grapefruit) and Duo (orange, pineapple, apple, lemon and grenadine) at 18 SR each.

The salad bar was well-maintained and boasted of only the finely prepped vegetables. Fill up your plate for 25SR. Well worth the freshness!

From S, some crab meat, boiled egg, sweet corn, cheese and lettuce (there's some macaroni salad underneath too).

For J, some cherry tomatoes, fresh pineapples, lettuce and boiled egg. Looks delish, eh?

For me, French onion soup served in a round french bread with melted cheese for 15SR.

We had a good chit-chat as we waited for our food to arrive. The open dining area is open for smokers so if you are a "sunog-baga", feel free to puff a ciggie away just like the French do. Ahh, now for the main course:

A duo-style pizza. As the manager explained to us, DUO translates to "two" or a combination of two things. In their restaurant, it is the fusion of French and Italian food. In this pizza's case, it's the coming together of an Al Salmone pizza with a classic Pepperoni pizza. Al Salmone is made up of smoked salmon slices lying on a bed of tomato and cream sauce, mozarella cheese and rocket leaves. That bit was a hot item for us, as the tender salmon went well with the textured and mildly-spicy rocket leaves. I can't remember how much it was for a half-of-each pizza, but the price range of their pizzas go from 32SR to 48SR for 8 slices.

Chicken breast with 3 pepper sauce (42SR). Personally, we didn't think highly of this dish. It is after all...chicken. But what made this intricately different from your regular grilled chicken breast is the sauce and the spices used. According to the manager, the sauce was the most difficult one to prepare in the chicken section. The vegetables were scrumptious and sweet.

Spinach ravioli (42SR). Behold one of the definite highlights of our dinner: stuffed pasta with spinach in tomato and cream sauce. It was a very light and tasty dish. I wanted the cream sauce to linger on my mouth a bit longer...very delicious and I would highly recommend this dish to any vegetarian out there. :D Yum-OH!

Escalope Cordon Bleu (66SR). Here we have, pan fried breaded beef escalope stuffed with turkey ham and Gruyere cheese (a kind of Swiss/French cheese), served with mashed potatoes. Once we got over the slightly pungent scent, we thoroughly enjoyed the savory thinned meat. A bite size of this went well with the creamy mashed potatoes.

The girls and I shared the main courses and didn't fill ourselves up too much (hindi pa ba?!) because upon a friend's claim that their desserts are equally fulfilling, we decided to leave some space for the real goodies to come rolling in...Their dessert menu was composed of mostly French desserts, here is what we had:

I ordered this homemade strawberry cheesecake (25SR) and it really came off as light and fresh. The cream is fine and the strawberries were ripe and huge! This kind of cheesecake has a stark difference from the commercially-made cheesecakes we usually feast on at the mall. Apparently, french-style cheesecake are really light.

Creme Brulee (25SR). Creme Brulee is actually french for "burnt cream" and its preparation does require a bit of burning, so to speak, by caramelizing the sugar on top by using a small, kitchen butane torch. Now you've probably tasted leche flan before right? This is pretty much its posh, elegant, rich sister. It is essentially made of custard, only in this case, only the finer and fresher ingredients are used. I would imagine this better with some fruits to go with it. But on its own, I would say that there is nothing too special about its recipe.

Profiteroles with chocolate sauce (18SR). This towering piece of desert love is made up of cream puff pastry (aka "Profiteroles") in between generous scoops of vanilla ice cream. It was too picture perfect that we almost didn't want to dive our spoons into it. But we can't help it, this dessert is too much of a temptation to be left alone melting in its glory. It's not too sweet but it's quite addicting.

Now we originally didn't order this next desert, but when Chef Faisal, whom we were fortunate enough to meet, insisted that we try this, we just couldn't say no. He even said that he will prepare it himself! Chef Faisal is the Head Chef of the restaurant and also stars on his own cooking show on the Saudi cable network. Fancy huh?

Meet the Chocolate Fondant (25SR)

[Enter halo and cherubims singing]

Without a shadow of a doubt, this chocolate fondant is the Piece de Resistance of DUO's dessert list. Think Lava Cake, only a thousand times better! The cake is cooked to perfection and the chocolate that pours out of it is simply smooth and rich. It may appear to be one of those things that can give you instant diabetes, but I swear to you, it is not too sweet as it looks. We learned that all the chocolates used in their restaurant are made from Swiss chocolates that they purchase in block-form. For any order they prepare, they create it from scratch from these imported blocks of chocolate. One of us described this as, "Simply DIVINE! " while I commented that, "I would LOVE to eat this off someone". Yum. Yum. Yum. After tasting this chocolate fondant, we guarantee that we will never EVER taste chocolate and chocolate cake the same way again.

And you thought dessert would mark the end of our dining? Oh not just yet. :P What Italian experience would be complete without a sip of coffee? Or better known as their "espresso". This also gave us some more time to talk and let all the spirit of good food and good company take over us that evening. Isn't that how the Italians do it?

Mocha Viennois (12SR). S enjoyed this coffee made of cafe mocha and cream very much. She wished she had more space in her stomach to drink this down to the last drop.

Cafe Caracas (12 SR). Another tall order of coffee, vanilla ice cream and cream for our friend, J. It is pretty much like dessert part II really. But the coffee somehow jolted us a bit from our pending lethargy from all the food that we've consumed.

Cappuccino (8SR). This cup of capp is for me. One of the little things I love about any java cup is the little details, such as the foam and that sprinkle of cinnamon on top. Ahh, this was the perfect way to end such a lovely dining experience.

DUO is definitely not your ordinary restaurant. But don't let the extravagant interiors and fine dishes intimidate you. They surely have something for everyone: kids, couples, friends/co-workers, even large family gatherings. As me and the girls say, "Try something new everyday"...and look where it took us! A little indulgence once in a while wouldn't hurt. (especially when it comes to great food!) Rest assured, everything that we had at DUO was fresh and intricately prepared. The service was attentive and respectful, the space was unique and serene, and the food...well, you read our post and saw the pictures! What else can we say?

Spend your next special occasion at a place that makes everything special: DUO.


Salute!

-ec-

DUO
North Ring Road, Exit 5 (near Le Mall)
Tel: 01-200-6868
Fax: 01-456-0583

Soon to open in Jeddah!