Super Chefs Izu Ani and Orestis come together again with the Bulldozer Group to give us Gaia, an elegantly designed, contemporary Greek-Mediterranean restaurant in DIFC. Located opposite Cipriani, the restaurant has already become hugely popular with Joe Public and A-Listers alike. Even H.E. Sheikh Mohammad recently paid a visit, sadly not on the either of the two occasions I’ve been there.
As expected, the food at Gaia is superb. I am no expert on Greek cuisine but luckily had an Athenian with me who is already a regular there. He quickly took charge and ordered – grilled octopus, baked feta, spinach pie and the amazing red mullet tempura wrapped in a vine leaf. Of course, we started with a Greek salad and some complimentary olives and cherry tomatoes in olive oil and dried Mediterranean herbs – yum. All the Greek restaurants in town offer octopus but few can deliver such tender perfection. I loved everything we ordered.
Olives 
Greek salad
Spinach pie
Tiganita Barbounia
Grilled octopus 
Baked feta
Whilst I found the overall ambience of Gaia slightly pretentious and snooty, I felt the servers and supervisors were actually quite friendly. It’ll be interesting to see how Gaia stacks up to recently opened Ena on the Palm. Till then, however, Gaia is the new fine dining king of Greek in Dubai and almost as good as my favourite Greek restaurant, Mythos.
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Xerxes physically dines at, or orders from,
each and every venue he reviews. He pays in full for whatever he and his
companions eat, drink, take away or occasionally throw at each other. Xerxes accepts
no money, gifts, discounts or free meals in return for reviews or favouritism.
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