‘Gimmicky? No, just good’: Gulf House, Tradewind Square, reviewed

Gulf states are so much more than their public image. 

The headlong rush towards hypercapitalism, showing The West how it’s really done, has muddied the picture of what there really is to marvel at in the likes of Dubai.

That city in particular has become a sort of shorthand for crazed, overblown opulence, epitomised by the likes of grandstanding Wagyu-douche Salt Bae. 

Tell someone you’ve spent a week in Dubai and they picture you poolside, surrounded by grazing Russians slumped like walruses, followed by an evening of conspicuous consumption. 

But as anyone who’s ever dipped their toes in the murky pool of PR will tell you, there’s the image and then there’s the thing itself. 

So when it was announced that a restaurant styled out like a Dubai souk from the long-gone 1970s was going to open, you’d be forgiven for thinking it would be a gimmick with a few gas hobs. 

With an open mind, I paid Gulf House a visit.

It’s a terrible cliche to say a restaurant’s decor ‘transports you to another world’, when largely they’ve just installed some fancy lamps and forced the poor servers to wear quirky uniforms. 

But Gulf House does in fact have a transporting quality. That might have something to do with the fact it's in a basement, where the world outside is left to noisily rattle away and you briefly forget it even exists. 

It certainly has something to do with the decor, which is laid out with the attention to detail typical of a film production. But despite this it doesn’t feel like a gimmick. You don’t think twice walking past endless vespas and leathery nonnas in any Italian restaurant, so why should the Middle East be any different? 

There’s a palpable calm about the place; cool, comfortable and serene, from the friendly and attentive lady serving me to the Dubaian traditional music pleasantly occupying that space in your head where white noise or boredom usually sits. Even the faint clattering from the kitchen has a calming effect. 

It was lunchtime, and I was starving. I’d recently had my fill of the more kebab-adjacent sides of middle eastern food, as delicious as chargrilled pieces of chicken are, so I was on the lookout for something a bit brothier. 

And that’s what I got. A small, starter-sized bowl of lamb broth was brought unannounced, which was a pleasant surprise. Just enough to get things going without taking up too much room, it was done with in a matter of minutes. It rang with the flavours of long-stewed lamb bones and a well-chosen, not overfacing selection of herbs and spices. Those tell-tale globules of fat, while not enticing written down, were the sign of a happy lamb turned into a soup that makes you smile.

The brothy bent continued, and I chose the lamb fahsah (£9); shredded lamb in marag (lamb broth) with fenugreek, blended chillies, garlic, tomatoes, coriander and ‘a special mix of herbs and spices’, served with freshly made naan bread. Who needs rice when you’ve got a naan the size of a dinner table. 

While the fahsah might not win any beauty contests, anyone whose taste buds haven’t been bent out of shape by Instagram will tell you that it’s the flavours that matter, and on that score the fahsah is a winner. It was a stew of the sort that you know has been made with care and attention, and crucially making liberal use of the most important ingredient, time. When left to really stew these sorts of dishes, thanks to that fat happy lamb and the dance of herbs and spices, hint at depths of flavour that are genuinely mystifying. What’s that I can taste? Sometimes it’s better to just simply enjoy.

The humble naan bread is comfortably up there with the best ways of putting food into your face, to put it bluntly. Sack off the cutlery and assemble, scoop and pile high to your heart’s content. I did and it was a wonderfully simple way to enjoy a quiet, solo lunch. The Gulf House salad (£6) helped in this respect; a simple arrangement of tomato, cucumber, parsley, red onion, carrots, bell peppers, olives and feta. A sprinkling of each on an irregularly sized piece of naan, with fahsah liberally poured over and plenty of napkins to hand, was a truly pleasurable lunch. I could have sat there all day doing it but the annoying thing with stomachs is that they fill up.

Of course with Gulf House tending in many ways towards the traditional, alcohol isn’t served, which as someone who admits to liking a bev or two I was just fine with. No, honestly, it was a nice change. The mango lassi (£4.95) was both thick and yoghurty but incredibly refreshing, and a pleasant change from the usual fizzier side of a drinks menu.

I’d like to have been in the meeting when Gulf House was pitched. So much of the rest of the world’s cuisines have been Disneyfied in one way or another -  from a-little-a a-neighbourhood a-delis about as Italian as Frankie and Benny’s to the baffling circus that still surrounds East Asian influenced restaurants - so it’s nice to meet Emiratis who’ve made a postcard to home in four walls and a kitchen.

If you visit Gulf House in the hopes of being ‘transported to another world’ then while you might find it in the decor, you’ll certainly find it in the food.

Gulf House, 74 Tradewind Square, L1 5BG