A common complaint in Dubai is you can’t get a good breakfast. The past year has served up some good remedies: Clinton St Bakery does a great plate of pancakes, Tom & Serg in Al Quoz do a speedy shakshuka, but both lack the location if you’re wanting to spend a couple of hours mulling outdoors over coffee. Step forward Frioul Bistro de Luxe. Located at the entrance of Madinat Jumierah, there are steps just by the entrance to the carpark which will take you down to the water which is where Frioul is quietly placed.
Focusing on southern Mediterranean French cuisine (it’s named after the Frioul Islands off the Mediterranean coast of France where food is influenced by southern France, the Mediterranean, Spain and Italy), the cool home-grown bistro is headed up by Chef Brian Hughson. Having previously sharpened his knives with the Dorchester Collection in London and having worked with the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Gary Rhodes, Hughson certainly knows his stuff.
Get there early for the first batch of freshly-baked breads, brioches and pastries which come with homemade jams and organic freshly squeezed juices. Health nuts can opt for homemade granola with natural yoghurt, or Bircher muesli with guava syrup, or if you’re after protein, opt for the eggs, which come scrambled with spinach and goats cheese, poached or as an omelette. They’re good, but what we really love about Frioul is the duck eggs with smoked haddock. Duck eggs have twice the nutritional value of a chicken egg, have more omega 3 fatty acids and they’re an alkaline producing food, leaving your body more alkaline (beneficial for cancer patients as cancer cells do not thrive in an alkaline environment.) Oh, and they’re much tastier.
Each reservation at Frioul comes with a free three-hour valet, so there’s no need to be in any rush. This is the closest to a Parisian breakfast you’ll get in the city, so make the most of it while you can. If you’re not a morning person, lunch and dinner are not wasted here. Hughson’s sharing-style menu is loaded with impressive tapas including frogs’ legs, bouillabaisse, scallop ceviche, duck magret and côte de boeuf along with a licenced bar with excellent cocktails. He also changes the menu regularly, but for now, we’d suggest making the most of the canal-side setting for a long, lazy breakfast before it gets too hot. And when it does? Wait till the sun goes down and prop yourself by that bar.