We had the opportunity to try out the Iftar at Paramount hotel Midtown located at Downtown Dubai. The Iftar is hosted at their all day dining restaurant Cinescope. It was a quiet and peaceful Iftar with not much crowd to compete at the buffet station. The Iftar offered at Cinescope had a wide range of Arabic cuisine, live stations, a dedicated Sushi and BAO station. You even find a dedicated cheese station. They also have a kids dining corner as a bonus serving American favourites such as Beef sliders, nuggets, donuts, candies etc. Traditional drinks such as Jallab, Tamarind, rose milk are available else you can also ask for soft drinks as part of the package.
- AED 190 for adults
- AED 90 for children (6 to 11 years old)
Cinescope is an elegant restaurant located on the 14th floor of the hotel. A spacious restaurant with high ceiling, stylish wooden chairs, wide open views of Dubai through their tall windows. The Iftar buffet is actually spread all around their restaurant. Every corner of the restaurant has something to offer. You need to make sure you take a good look around all corners of the restaurant because honestly I did miss out noticing the kids corner at first but my little one did pick up some sliders and nuggets from that space. The restaurant is grand and spacious like you’d expect at a Paramount Hotel. They had a beautiful dates booth and breads counter which also made the restaurant look prettier.
The moment you enter their main buffet station you are greeted by a long stretch of impressive cold mezzeh and salads. This was actually my favourite part of the buffet. They had everything covered from well known cold mezzeh to amazing salads. The salad station can’t disappoint anyone for sure. The cold dippers such as Muhammara, hummus, mouthabal were well made and truly authentic. Next to the salad station was the Grill station where you had all the mouth watering grills stacked up in front of you. My favourite from here would definitely be the grilled Tiger prawns. The Prawn inside had an irresistible flavour to it. Tiger prawns definitely get’s a 5 out of 5. You would also find a collection of manakesh. There was a live station dedicated to chicken wings. They mainly had 2 different flavours of chicken wings and you could choose your garnishing and they would toss it up in the pan and have it delivered to your table. The service here has been amazing. The attendants were always available to get you anything. For some reason, the shawarma was not visible at the counter but they make it fresh inside and is occasionally served around tables in different rounds.
For drinks you had Jallab which is what I enjoyed drinking here, they also had others such as orange juice and rose milk both which I thought could have been better. The orange juice was packet juice I assume and the rose milk didn’t have enough rose syrup on it to get that real flavour out. It was more milky in texture. You could also ask for soft drinks which they serve to your table. For starters they had the typical 3 Arabic appetizers which were either stuffed with meat, spinach or cheese and doesn’t disappoint. The lamb Ouzi was the center attraction at the Iftar. Considering there were less diners, the meat was always there till the end. Never had to worry about the meat not being available. They had different kinds of rice dishes. Arabic rice was mainly paired with fish. You also find a vegetable biriyani in between. Many of the Arabic mains were lebanese favourites and all tasted great. Cinescope restaurant definitely excels in the mains and this what you are going to enjoy the most at Cinescope. After a heavy selection of Arabic mains, it was challenging to try the Asian station of sushis and BAOs. The baos looked pretty as well as the Sushis which were handmade in front of us. The Asian LIVE station also had well known Asian speciality curries such as the prawn red curry. The sliders and fried nuggets also looked enticing from the kids corner which served American favourites.
You had mainly Arabic desserts waiting for you at the end. They also had the hot favourites Umm Ali and cheese Kunafa. Pistachio Mafroukeh which came stuffed with clotted cream definitely needed an applause. Mafroukeh was soft and incredible in taste. I personally did appreciate it very much. They had a big collection of baklavas and they tasted fresh and crispy so that was good. They also had the Emarati favourite which was the Luqaimat. The highlights for todays’ Iftar at Cinescope has been their salads, mezzeh, grills, main courses, Asian collection at the Sushi counter, kids corner and the giant lamb Ouzi.
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