The final frontier

Dubai started out too shallow, too blingy. Now, it seems like the deck of Star Trek’s Enterprise: Diverse, future-ready, attracting the top names in food. Dig in

- Vir Sanghvi

I took me 10 years to learn to love Dubai. In the beginning, I simply did not warm to it, and all the descriptions that the city’s haters had used seemed appropriate: Too much bling, vulgar, shallow, imitative and derivative, Singapore without the culture, etc.

But over the years, my attitude became much more positive. Either Dubai changed (which it has) or I have (more likely), or a combination of both.

My wife, whose views on Dubai used to be the same as mine, has also changed her mind. It is, she says, a question of perspective. Stop seeing it as another Singapore, she says. Its not. It’s the most international (and safest) city on the planet, kept afloat by a global assembly of talents. Sometimes, she believes, it's like looking at the deck of the Starship Enterprise, where every member of the crew has a different origin.

I thought of the Enterprise when we stayed at the Four Seasons in Jumeirah. The Four Seasons group is pretty international itself: A Canadian company now owned by Americans and Saudi interests, managing hotels around the world, with teams drawn from every country on Earth.

But I doubt if any Four Seasons can be as international as the Dubai property, where the staff are a mini United Nations. The hotel opened in the Jumeirah development in 2014, which is not so long ago, but it has managed to convey an air of timelessness. (A smaller Four Seasons opened in the more central Financial District in 2017). Partly, this is because it is regularly renovated, but mostly, because it has a restrained classy air that contrasts with the bling of many flashy Dubai hotels. Its large rooms look like archetypal Four Seasons rooms and the property is run to the chain’s high standards.