Umi Teppanyaki at Rixos Dubrovnik, Where Gourmet Art & Entertainment Combine

August 17, 2020 – The Umi Teppanyaki experience at Rixos Dubrovnik, where gourmet art and entertainment combine to the backdrop of unforgettable Dalmatian sunsets. 

A perfect dining experience is an individual thing. For some it is about the food, for others the presentation and service, the ambiance or the entertainment. It is rare to capture all of these in one experience, especially when combined with beautiful sunsets from your open-air table view. 

The Umi Teppanyaki menu at Rixos Premium Dubrovnik is one such experience – a truly spectacular, and very filling, tour of Asian cuisine on a menu compiled by resident Nepalese chef, Pratap Koirola, who not only prepared the dishes before our very eyes, but engaged in conversation throughout the evening with his guests.  

Pratap entertains his guests with two sittings around his grill, which he commands with gentle authority and a warm smile. The 7pm sitting was completely sold out, as you can see above, and the lovely view out to the Adriatic and up to Mount Srdj provided a most romantic setting. 

As we chilled over a cocktail in the adjacent bar waiting for the 9pm sitting to come, the constant laughter, sharp intake of breath, and enthusiastic applause indicated that something special awaited.  

And so it proved. A sign of the magic to come came in Pratap’s introductory one-man culinary music show, as he expertly displayed his command of his utensils. 

Pratap first started cooking at the age of 17 years in his native Nepal.  He continued his passion for cooking in Dubai where he built something of a name for himself, before finding himself on his first visit to Europe, head chef at Umi Teppanyaki at Rixos Dubrovnik. Not a bad place to start your European career!

And so to the menu, which Pratap put together himself. 

A nice gentle starter – Vietnamese-style spring roll, with vegetables, lettuce and sweet chilli sauce. 

From Vietnam to China for the second dish – duck gyoza dumplings, in a soya vinegar sauce.  

It was a pleasure watching Pratap put together dish number 3 – scallops in a soya butter sauce, as he expertly moved his ingredients around his grill – which he kept immaculately clean all evening as he went along – before placing them on the shells on which the scallops were served. 

Over to Japan for a truly memorable tofu miso soup.  

And then the dish of the night – seabass fillet, with beurre blanc and blitva (Swiss chard). I have a well-documented aversion to blitva in general, much to the chagrin of my Dalmatian father-in-law. I am still trying to build up the confidence to tell him that I finally tasted it in a way I really enjoyed – prepared by a chef from Nepal.  

A few days before arriving at Rixos, I was having breakfast at another hotel, and each morning I visited their Egg Station, where eggs were prepared for you by the chef in the way you desired. As I watched the very friendly chef preparing scrambled eggs for two – hardly the biggest culinary challenge of her career – I asked her what the most exciting thing she had ever done when preparing eggs. 

I wish I could send her the video above, for Pratap gave a masterclass not only in how to separate the egg white from the yolk, but also how to bring frying eggs a romantic experience. Truly brilliant. 

 

 And the romance continued, as Pratap expanded his heart them to produce the first heart-shaped rice I have come across. 

The rice heart was soon broken, however, and shattered into several rice bowls to accompany the final main dish – dry-aged beef tenderloin in teriyaki sauce, accompanied by garlic fried rice soya. Gorgeous.  

Two hours earlier, we had been strangers, but we left sated as friends. The constant conversation, joking and visual display made it easily one of the gourmet highlights of the summer. A supremely nice young man, who pays great attention to his guests.  

And just when we thought we were finished, dessert… 

Paul Bradbury was a guest of Rixos Premium Dubrovnik in August 2020. You can read more in Luxury Dubrovnik Tourism in the Corona Era: The View from Rixos Premium 

(With thanks to Taliah Bradbury for photos and videos)

 

 

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