FZN is arguably the most anticipated restaurant of 2024.
FZN is Björn Frantzén’s latest opening. He’s Sweden’s former footballer-cum-gastronomic poster boy. His eponymous Frantzén was Sweden’s first three Michelin-star restaurant. Zén, his Singapore outfit, notched three stars less than 12 months after the doors swung open. Björn is a big deal.
FZN’s ambition of a three-star hat trick is palpable and plain. The new Dubai restaurant inside Atlantis, The Palm, stocks a stable of Björn’s thoroughbreds dispatched from Stockholm, led by towering Executive Chef Torsten Vildgaard.
You deserve a prize just for finding FZN: venture down a corridor beneath Ossiano, pass a coffee shop, and you will ring a doorbell before opening a discreet, fluted glass door that opens to reveal a Chantilly cream foyer, striking fear that my shoes are not clean enough. This foyer foreshadows what’s to come.
FZN is sweepingly elegant in an old-world, made-to-look-new sort of way. The elevator carries you to a restrained-for-Dubai lounge: a room warmed with woods, mid-century modern pastiche furniture, smatterings of ash marble and little Art Deco-like lighting and ceiling art accents peppered throughout. It is a lovely place to dress up, slink into the plush sofa of shocking teal and take the people you want to impress.
Our evening feels refined and special. The initial rush of jeweller-like snacks: a tartlet of Jerusalem artichokes, black truffle and smoked maple syrup swallowed like a lozenge, and the unpronounceable råraka–a crispy potato baton shingled with magenta alliums takes two days to create and two seconds to disappear.
Downstairs, the dining room is divided between conventional modular tables and a chef’s table. Do yourself a favour. Book a seat at the chef’s table. Sit in the corner near the woodfire for maximum front-row views of the action. Never will I tire of watching consummate professionals work repetitively and uncomfortably close to the fire. Ozzy Osbourne hits the speakers and we are off to the Thunderdome.
FZN’s menu stakes an unrelenting focus on quality with mostly sublime results. The wine, juice and water are decanted into Mounjaro-thin glassware. A Crossfit champion of a langoustine is dredged through a mellifluous ginger emulsion. A Japanese turnip rose layered with otoro tartare spooned with strawberries, tomato water and coffee oil sounds like a car crash, but it is delightful, almost too beautiful to eat. The pillow-soft bread and life-shortening butter play second fiddle to a bolshy, throat punch of an XO sauce. A gloriously lardaceous caviar-topped bone marrow chawanmushi achieves meaty, saline and quivering rewards, emulating both the texture and flavour of bone marrow.
A brilliant plate of king crab with saffron beurre blanc and sea buckthorn is gone before you finish this sentence. In my view, Dubai’s best restaurants often fail on dessert, but FZN understands the assignment: give the people delicious, sweet and creamy. Stuff that ensures a good time and a short life. A tarte tatin of apple and celeriac twinned with TWO creams, one of oolong tea and a bay leaf ice cream that should be sold as a night repair cream. With all these hits, a turbot with shio kombu feels like a superfluous Michelin showpiece, as does the duck barbecue.
We return to the beginning. FZN is undoubtedly audacious and uncompromising, assembling true world-class talent. They know what they want, and they are going for it. There is however one detail that will trouble no one. All this is admirably premeditated, crafted and honed. Media trained, rehearsed and workshopped to the fibres. Still, little of this is new. Some light Googling shows near identical dishes in Stockholm and familiar fingerprints in Singapore. A decadent fleck of gold leaf over the chawanmushi’s caviar is FZN’s most obvious Dubai accommodation. Who cares?! Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Dubai does the same.
Price-wise, FZN’s AED 2,000 a head soars past both Frantzén’s and Zén’s fixed menus and punches above almost everyone in Dubai. But you do get caviar bumps the size of a child’s fist, Mr Olympia langoustine and, well, the water is included.
I waddled away from FZN satisfied that it was one of 2024’s best meals. Service is impeccable and friendly. The experience is cosy and intimate, like a night out at your local oligarch’s winter retreat. I want to bring my wife in that dress she’s saving. I want to order the full pairing and talk too loud with THOSE friends. And Björn, Torsten, if you’re reading, I want the tarte tatin recipe so my family can bury me with one.
GO: Visit www.restaurantfzn.com for reservations and more information.
