Happy Birthday Nik!

This weekend was a celebration weekend for my friend Nik's 28th birthday.  After work on Thursday I jumped in the car with Alex, Nik and Carl and headed up to Dubai.  Thursday night we went to the Buddha Bar at the Grosvernor House Hotel for the first birthday celebratory meal of the weekend.  Incredibly cool interior design and incredibly good food and drink.  Started with a selection of sushi and sashimi and then made our way through various hot and cold appetizers.  It was a bit like an Izakaya experience.

On the drink side of things japanese beer and much sake was had, followed by an unfortunate number of shots.  My head was not well the following morning...  The sake we had was wonderful - light, flowery and mildly tropically fruity.  Though it had better be good at around £185 per 50cl bottle...  Multiple of which were shared.  The shots that followed wouldn't have been too bad, except for the fact that we ordered shots for everyone, and Nik doesn't drink.   Somehow I decided it would be a good idea to drink his shots for him on top of my own...  Tequila and Jager (as illustrated  in the photo)...

Friday was a bit of a struggle for me in the morning.  Luckily there wasn't a whole lot planned until early evening.  I went to the Mall of the Emirates and wandered around doing a bit of shopping.  Picked up a couple pairs of shorts, which is a win for me because I didn't bring any with me!  While I was there, one of the stores I checked out was a department store called Harvey Nichols.  It was some sort of high £ department store.  ...and let me illustrate what I mean when I say high £.  There was a jewel encrusted foosball table for sale, the price tag for which was somewhere on the order of £30,000.  Uh huh, you read that right thirty thousand pounds for a foosball table.  Needless to say, I didn't pick anything up there...

Alex and Nik picked me up at the mall some time around 5:30pm and we headed out to Autodrome for some Go Karting.  We went Go Karting there last week as well, on the outdoor track.  This round was done on the indoor track.  Alex once again showed himself to be the top dog on top time.  They also have laser tag at the Autodrome, which I'll have to go back for at some point :)

Following Karting was a meal at a restaurant called The Meat Company, which is located right on the water at the Souk Madinat.  It's unfortunate, but for the most part the food sounded much better on the menu than it actually tasted.  Nik ordered some calimari, I tried a piece and it was probably the best dish I had there.  I ordered an appetizer of Boerewors for myself.  This is a traditional South African sausage served with a fine grained polenta and a semi-spicy stewed tomato sauce/relish called chakalaka.  Sounds good, right?  Well it sounds better than it tastes.  For main I had a Wagyu ribeye with steamed vegetables and sauted mushrooms, peri peri sauce on the side.  While the ribeye was incredibly tender and had tremendously flavourful fats (expected of Wagyu), it was also the skinniest ribeye I had ever seen in my life.  Dissapointing...  I ordered the cheese plate for dessert, which came out with seriously over a pound of cheese.  And it was more quantity than quality.  eh, well, you win some and you lose some.  I at least got to enjoy the company of 12 other Infusionites and significant others.

After the meal we headed to Bar Zar for a few pints.  Then it was back to Alex and Jo's place to crash.  Getting ready now and unfortunately have to hit the office for an hour or so before grabbing a taxi for my 1.5 hour ride back to Abu Dhabi.  fun... :(