HEALTHY EATING DUBAI

We all need a bit of Healthy Eating in Dubai after the Christmas and New Year excess, but how to do it so it’s easy on the calories and the wallet at the same time? Listen to my suggestions with Mark Lloyd, Stef Burgon and Zahra Soar on this week’s Food News, my regular slot on The Ticket Dubai Eye 103.8.

The radio podcast will be available at the end of this post as soon as it’s up on the radio’s blog! No radio show this week as they are in Abu Dhabi talking about sustainability!

Healthy Eating Freedom Delivers Superfoods Organic Salad

Did you know Freedom Pizza (not just pizza by a long shot!) delivers ANYWHERE in Dubai within 30 minutes?

I recommend their SuperFoods Salad. Ingredients include baby spinach leaves, pumpkin seeds, toasted almonds, shredded purple cabbage and red peppers, they even have some dried cranberries in there!

I say top with a half boiled egg and a bit of your favourite dressing. I chose their spicy apple, vinegar and spice dressing that has cinnamon, turmeric and organic honey in it making it a cool, post yule meal! Dhs 28.00 plus the cost of your egg – organic or otherwise the salad is a great healthy eating option.

In addition you could order the chicken tenders with the salad, I reckon it’s plenty for 2 people.

Nutritional Values & Allergens displayed on Freedom Pizza website

I LOVED that you can order from the website and clearly see the nutritional values of all they have to offer. Each item is even given a calorie count and allergens are also there for you to see.

So if you had a superfoods salad with chicken tenders and the whole dressing pot and split that meal between 2 people then your meal is very well balanced, tasty and under 300 calories.

Got the sweetie munchies? Then try a portion of the gluten free chocolate brownie.  Ian Ohan the Canadian owner of Freedom Pizza had the idea to split the brownie into 4 sections so making it easy to share and at only 80 calories a portion you can eat guilt free. Can we have it in a resealable packet please?!

If you really wanted a proper pudding as opposed to a brownie bite, they have some FAB options. The newest and my favourite is a vegan mango, passion fruit dessert called Mango Pasho. It’s made with chopped almonds as your base, a cashew nut cream instead of cheesecake and some mango with a bit of passion fruit! I would actually serve these for desserts if I had a dinner party!

Competition Alert

We’ll be running a competition on DoinDubai, giving away 6 of their NEW PIZZAS called Beetnik.

I like the company Freedom Pizza for what they’re doing. There is a full post featuring them in the pipe-line and I’ll talk about them closer to Valentines day as well!

Healthy Eating In a Mall –  Vantage Terrace

Dubai Shopping Festival is all around us, how do you eat healthy in a shopping mall?

Well a bit of a find in the Mall of Emirates is a place called Vantage Terrace in the Sheraton Hotel that’s attached to the mall. It was newly refurbished last year and they’re making a lot of their gorgeous outdoor area, which we all must take advantage of while we can in our Dubai winters! You find it by going to the new part of the mall, pass Tom and Serge’s Common Grounds and there’s a lift, take that up to the 5th floor and come out to a place called Vantage Terrace and voila!

There’s a very large, welcoming outdoor space, lots of comfy seating and even patio heaters as it’s mainly outdoors at the moment! Order a ceasar salad with proper anchovies and bacon, but perhaps get dressing on the side to stick to healthy eating.  Cost only Dhs 40.00 and I think they throw in some bread for free.

Or choose from their range of burgers, I think the Aristocrat burger that comes in a set of 3 burgers with gourmet toppings, caramelised onions etc. And again the point would be to share this one. So lots of ideas for light bites here and some very good new deals on Thursday nights for as much as you can eat sushi with or without drinks.

But I think that space with all the natural light is a really good find for somewhere like the Mall of the Emirates. The day we visited it had alot of guys spending time waiting for their partners to finish shopping! That was the 3rd of January 2016.

Healthy Eating in Box Park at Markette and Yogurtland

Markette, nothing too unusual about this one, it’s one of a few of the same type of place in Box Park, but it does have a fair bit of outside space on the side of the premises that is a little bit away from the main road. I think they also have a new branch that’s just opened in Dubai Mall.

The chef is Indian, his name’s Pradeep and he came and said hi to us and so immediately I looked at the Indian things on the menu.  I wasn’t in the mood for lamb biriyani so opted for a starter of beetroot felafel, chick peas, beetroot felafel cutlets served on little rounds of pitta bread. Definitely a new way of serving felafel. Very good, but I wish they had been shallow fried as opposed to deep fried. I have a recipe for my version of beetroot cutlets as well.

The salads were good too, one with prawns and one with chicken. Portions and ingredients very good, not too much of nuts and seeds going on here but plenty of spinach leaves. The prawns were sort of tempura style large prawns so very good value, but I wish the batter was more like a tempura batter, more than a fish batter so they could have been crispier!

Very good service and a fresh pot of earl grey tea, that was served in a cafetiere, which I thought was strange but worked really well actually!

A few minutes walk away is Yogurtland so opt for a yoghurt instead of a heavy dessert! My favourite flavour is Tart White. A little sharp and sweet going on at the same time. Nothing added to this, it just tastes like an Indian yoghurt dessert. Their newest (introduced in January 2016) and already most popular flavour is Red Velvet Cupcake Batter and I tried it, did taste a bit like red velvet cake, frozen! This flavour’s also a fan favourite in America!  But each ounce of frozen yoghurt has between 20 to 40 calories depending on the flavour you choose and a sensible portion size according to Humi the manager would be around 4 ounces, now that’s excluding tastings and toppings.

Go for the lower calorie options like the Tart white and top with some blueberries and pomegranate seeds,  I think 4 ounces would come to about 80 calories so the same as a portion of the chocolate brownie, 80 calories for a very tasty pudding.

But here’s the issue, the cup sizes are actually much larger than clear cut 4 ounce portion cup. So I suggested to them to have 4 ounce cups made as well as the larger variety currently available. That way it would be easy for adults who are watching the amount they eat and for parents who are buying the kids a pudding that they are free to create, they know where to stop.

A very nice option would be the spicy lamb biriyani from Markette followed by tart white yoghurt from Yogurtland!

Healthy Eating Up market at Fortnum and Masons in Downtown

Do you know exactly where Fortnum and Mason’s is? Easy to miss, I’ve walked past it many times, but it’s between the Dubai Mall lower ground floor and the entrance to the Address hotel Downtown so just in front of the fountains. It’s on 3 floors, the ground floor is a shop and some bargains to be had at the moment, some jams for AED 20 instead of the usual AED 65!

The Dubai branch is it’s only branch outside the UK, with the flagship store in London’s Piccadilly. There is also a branch in terminal 5 at Heathrow airport, handy for a fancy cuppa if you’re travelling in style and another has just opened in King’s Cross station. But how did it all start? Here’s Alan their manager telling us a bit about how this now iconic brand was born:

The first floor is the restaurant and the top floor is an ice cream parlour with the most spectacular view of the Burj Khalifa and the terrace is about to reopen. I was blown away with how elegant and romantic this restaurant is, gorgeous aquamarine blue and white colour schemes with dark pink roses on the table and starched white linen table cloths with silver cutlery, get the picture? They’ve just launched a new Hamperling take out afternoon tea with sandwiches and scones and a hot drink in a take away cup, with a Fortnum and Mason’s table mat and some napkins,  a great idea for a posh picnic in this weather, get them for 1 or 2 people and I think it just takes 10 minutes or so to prepare!

But how to do some healthy eating here? I suggest you opt for a newer item on menu and that’s the apple and celeriac soup that’s got a piece of french bread with caramelized apples in your bowl, then the soup is poured around it! But I really loved my smoked haddock and potato fish cake that sits on a bed of spinach and has a perfectly poached egg on top. It does come with rather a lot of mustard cream sauce on the side though and if you are watching your weight, then I’d order this on the side. Priced at AED 60 I think this is a great way to experience this restaurant, this dish is from the breakfast menu but they can serve it to after the cut off for breakfast which is a very civilised 12pm.

We’ll have to do a special session on fine tea in Dubai as Fortnum’s is a tea salon with over 50 varieties of tea! Their Earl Grey served in a classical, elegant teapot was very good and I got at least 3 cups, proper cups of tea out of my pot. And this is is one of my top choices for a romantic Valentine’s evening out, but do note there isn’t any accompanying alcohol.

What’s your favourite restaurant out of those mentioned in this post? Let me know in a comment and we’ll ask them for a competition prize!

Thanks Monica

The Ticket Podcast Dubai Eye 103.8

The Ticket 5 on 27th Jan 2016

Coming up next week, a real Turkish find, hidden away in Jumeirah with a great rooftop terrace and some ideas for Chinese New Year, this time it’s the year of the Monkey!