Summer in the Gulf - and things are heating up

Hello from sunny Dubai - well, not just sunny but too damned hot, even though the summer is nearly over - where we have a busy time ahead of us this month. The International Monetary Fund conference is being held in Dubai and the Middle East for the first time, so we are pretty much fully booked for most of the month.

We have been very busy over the summer, which is unusual for Dubai. I don't think we have dropped below 70% occupancy at all, which is great. I hope it means good things for the coming season, which starts properly in late September.

The autumn menu in Verre started last week, and we spent the past month perfecting it. The difficult thing about having to change menus seasonally - which we must, because 80% of our clientele is European - is that it is always hot.

The problem is, when you sit there with thoughts of autumn ingredients simmering in the back of your mind - game, butternut squash, cŠpes, and all those wonderful things - it is difficult to assemble them in your mind because it is permanently summer.

Back home, you have the first leaves falling off the trees and the greenness is staring to fade, so it is easy to get into the mood for menu-creating.

On the plus side, here, when you're creating a winter menu and you've finished thinking about the cold and braising root vegetables, you can whip on your trunks and head for the beach - so don't be too sorry for me.

Every day that goes by there's a different construction project announced in the local newspapers. The latest one is the world's largest building, which will be ready by 2006. (It will be situated on the Sheik Zayed Road, for any readers who are familiar with Dubai.)

The most exciting project is the world's first complete hotel resort under the sea. Yes, you read that correctly - under the sea.

The artist's impression looks amazing. You will enter the hotel through a glass tunnel from the mainland just off Jumeira.

This project is also scheduled to be ready by 2006.

Most of the hotel looks like it will be made of glass - so they'll have to be careful with the flying Champagne corks, then. n

Jason Atherton is head chef of Verre, Gordon Ramsay at Dubai Creek in Dubai