Bridge, The – JBR

The Bridge is two restaurants, a Middle Eastern seafood specialist and Lebanese, and a shisha lounge and café on the JBR Walk. It’s a sprawling facility, the middle of which is the shisha lounge. You get up to the restaurant via a lift under the overhead walkway with a big red sign of The Bridge. Parking is the Achilles’ heel of all restaurants on the Walk so think ahead if you are coming by car, especially in the summer. Consider one of the @greenparking sites. Once up, on the right as you enter, is the seafood part of the restaurant my food buddy Soheil and I visited. The Lebanese section is on the left.

A selection of fresh fish, calamari, squid, crab and lobster are displayed on a bed of ice towards the front end of the seafood restaurant – so fresh that there was no smell whatsoever. A young, well-groomed Egyptian waiter by the name of Rami showed us to our table and then designed our meal for us – we selected the seafood and he recommended how we should have it cooked. Whether it was the baked shrimps and stir-fried calamari we started with or the fried, whole seabass and baked, butterflied hamour we had as our mains, everything was superb…and delightfully Middle Eastern without being too heavily spiced.

Breakfast and lunch on weekdays are not when The Bridge is in its element. This is very much an evening and weekend venue. We were only one of three tables occupied in a restaurant of 50+ tables. Although this allowed Rami to focus all his attention on us, it did nothing for the restaurant’s all-important ambiance. Soheil, who lives nearby and has visited the lounge area before, tells me it’s a totally different story in the evenings. Both Entertainer and Zomato Gold work making The Bridge a cost-effective proposition, especially for a seafood restaurant. So, if you’re in the area and fancy a meal with a little Middle Eastern flair, this is the place for you.  

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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. What you have read was NOT influenced in any way by the venue. Join me on Instagram @ravenousxerxes or email me on xerxes@dellara.com.