Paris, New York, London........Dubai??

Reading this article about Ferran Adrià's latest venture...one sentence jumped out at me...

'Rather than following the well-trodden celeb-chef path of cloning El Bulli in Japan, New York or Dubai...'

How times have changed....the fact that Dubai now rates in amongst the desired cities for fashion, travel and now food; would make the late Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed al-Maktoum very, very happy.

I lived in Dubai from 1976-1979 (before anyone tries to age me through this...I was at school there!). The Dubai I remember is one of miles of desert, camels, wind towers and the Creek. When the airport was one tiny little terminal with fans to cool the interior, arriving there on a Gulf Air flight and descending onto the tarmac to walk to the terminal was like walking into a fan assisted oven. There was one international hotel - the Intercon on the Creek, later the Sheraton on the Creek opened and then just before we left the Hilton at the Sunley Roundabout was being built. Jebel Ali port, town etc didn't exist....our first address was House No. 1, The Beach, Jebel Ali....there were four pre-fab houses on the beach, where now stands Jebel Ali port.

So, in the space of 30 years Dubai has turned into a world class city where chefs like Gordon Ramsey open up outposts of their culinary kingdom and chefs like Adrià know where Dubai is and actually consider the city as a viable location... It is amazing what some vision, a little bit of money and a willingness to try anything can achieve.