Long-hailed as a top spot for Dubai’s wine buffs – thanks to the seemingly bottomless cellar of delicious, affordable grapes - it’s a little-known fact that the Crowne Plaza’s bijou wine bar also boasts a traditional French fine dining menu.

As you gorge on the starters of super soft fresh olive bread, with lashings of traditional French butter, flavoursome cold cuts (don’t miss the parma ham-smothered bread sticks), you could almost imagine you’re sitting in the rustic cellar of a chateau in the Vendee, rather than in the confines of a bustling city hotel in the middle of Sheikh Zayed Road.

The décor may not be the chicest in the city – with exposed brick walls, empty up-turned port barrels as tables, and a menu etched in chalk on a blackboard – but it’s unpretentious, and authentically French. And the same policy extends to the menu. What it likes in quantity (there are only four mains to choose from) it makes up for in bonafide garlic-infused Frenchness, with a beret on top.

Feast on steak tartare, or hearty black pudding with mash, all accompanied with the requisite basket of frites. The Anouillette – a gigantic bizarre-looking tripe sausage – is not for the faint-hearted and has a distinctive smell, but Francophiles will wolf it down, along with the delish creamy potato gratin accompaniment, faster than you can say, ‘Carla Bruni.’

Wash it all down with a full-bodied glass of merlot, or even a sauvignon blanc from the ample selection. And, with a superb wine list of over one hundred, even novice connoisseurs can’t fail to pick a top grape. Tres bien!

The Crown Plaza, Dubai, 04 331 1111