And for starters...

Rules are made to be broken, they say, and sometimes dining conventions should also be smashed 
— especially at Prime 68

“What the hell are you doing?” asked my dinner companion.

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“What?” I 
replied, already primed for the question, but wanting to drag out the 
inevitable nonetheless.

“Are you insane?” (emphasis on ‘in’, as though the word doesn’t carry enough standing as it is). “Why are you eating cheesecake before your starter?”

And so was breached the age-old argument of tradition over choice.

Unlike some, I’m perfectly happy to eat sweet foods at the start of a meal, or to drink white whilst eating red. Why not? There are no set rules to dining, just traditions that have become social conventions, leading to those conventions being generally broken at your peril.

Which brings me on to conventions that should have been broken at Prime 68 — both the need to eat steak at a steak house, and the need to have a starter, main and dessert with every meal.

Now here’s the hard part, justifying such statements — so let’s start with the latter and work our way to the former. Why do you need to eat three courses at every meal out? The honest truth? You don’t. You just think you do.

And so it was at Prime 68, where we could happily have only had a spread of starters for the whole evening, mainly because the starters were of such stand-out quality, but also because it’s unnecessary to eat until you need a forklift to carry you from your table.

The absolute star dishes of Prime 68 are the starters, led far and away by the hand-chopped tuna tartar; it’s a magical, melt-in-your-mouth portion of raw tuna that beats anything offered by the city’s Japanese restaurants.

Following closely is the Prime 68 lump crab cake, which oozes seafood flavour without overwhelming your urbanite senses. If food from the sea isn’t your thing then my next two choices will be tough to swallow... lobster bisque soup and pan-seared diver scallops. The former is rich, tasty, almost bettering any actual lobster tail; the latter is light, fragrant, slightly zesty and demanding of a second serving.

So with such starters on offer, not to mention the wagyu meatballs and duck rillettes that weren’t even tried, why buy any main course?

That brings us to the other convention that should have been broken — the need to eat steak in a steakhouse. Some restaurants excel at dishes they don’t even place front and centre, and Prime 68 is guilty of just that. It’s not to say the steak wasn’t good, it’s just that it wasn’t as good as the starters. And at Dh620 for the finest cut on the menu, that meat needs to be the best in the city — something it wasn’t. Premier league, but not top of the table.

So break conventions at Prime 68. Order the starters, maybe even start with the signature Prime 68 cheesecake. After all, it’s your dinner, you’re the boss and you can dine out however you so desire, regardless of anyone questioning your supreme wisdom.