Doha brunch guide

Friday brunch is a Doha institution. Here’s our guide to sushi and salads. puddings and play areas Discuss this article

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Grand Hyatt Doha: A fresh new addition to the Doha brunch scene, Grand Hyatt is ideal for a stylish grown-up and leisurely Friday feast. The Grill restaurant is modern and spacious. We like that you can sit outside, but the pesky West Bay flies bugged us – what’s the big attraction for them on that side of town? Anyway, it’s a minor irritation solved by staying inside. The food is excellent, with seafood, sushi, imaginative salads and perhaps the best dessert selection we’ve seen. Service is attentive, without being annoying, and staff offered to make us a Caesar salad or a Pavlova pudding, which is a nice (and tasty) touch. Kids get a few dishes especially for them, but are most excited by the enormous pots of sweets on offer. Play facilities are limited, the small supervised playroom didn’t impress even our six-year-old, but something better is in the pipeline.
(448 1234) Brunch served 12.30pm-4pm. Prices QR250 or QR350 with wine, beer and bubbly.

InterContinental Doha: A very popular venue for a long brunch with a great range of food and a few glasses of fizzy thrown in. We’ve never loved the dining room, but aren’t sure why. Perhaps because it is downstairs, the (very nice) room feels a bit basementy? Anyway, the food is very good and it always feels lively and fun – the choice is massive and the quality is very high. While you are working your way around the food stations, the children can have their faces painted or hang out in the supervised play area. Like some other hotels, the InterCon has been trying to boost the idea of Saturday brunch and lays on mini cookery classes for kids with their chefs. And they promise no Gordon Ramsay-style shouting at your little darlings, however messy they are.
(484 4444) Brunch served 12.30pm-4pm. Price QR240, includes bubbly.

Marriott Doha: This is one of the nicest venues for brunch, with its lovely, airy conservatory dining room. You can also eat in the dimly lit Asia Live restaurant nearby, which is fine if you like to watch the sushi being prepared, but not so good if you like daylight. Eating at the Marriott is like a very tasty trip around the world, as they make good use of their international cooking skills and have lots of dishes from a number of countries, including Mexico, Japan, India and China. There is a kids’ corner with the usual face painting and child-friendly food, and there may even be a visit from a clown.
(429 8888) Brunch served noon-3pm. Prices QR225 or QR295 with wine, beer and bubbly.

Mövenpick: This is the old Mövenpick, not the new towers. It doesn’t look great from the outside, but has perhaps the best value brunch in Doha, with top notch seafood and sushi and a scrummy chocolate fountain – now, there’s a weird combination. But that is the joy of brunch, you can work your way around the room having mini meals of whatever combination you fancy. The cheese at the Mövenpick is pretty nice too, thank you Switzerland. The dining room is quite small and not as swish as in other hotels, but low key is often nice in a city bustling with fancy pants five-star venues. The kids are supervised and entertained in a room far, far away from the dining room, which is good if they are old enough to navigate their own way to the bouncy castle, but maybe not so great for little children.
(429 1111) Brunch served noon-3.30pm. Prices QR155 with soft drinks, QR195 with house wine.

Ramada Plaza Doha: One of the better value brunches around, the Ramada now has its Friday foodfest in the Ruby Wu’s and Bombay Balti restaurants, which are side by side in the huge but smart hall in the new(ish) Ramada Plaza Doha wing. There’s the usual range of salads, roasts, seafood, sushi and – of course – the very good British restaurant-style (if that makes sense) Chinese and Indian dishes from the aforementioned eateries. There’s not much for kids at the moment, and the management are currently wrestling with whether to go kidtastic or stay more grown-up. We are especially fond of the chocolate fountain and have to restrain ourselves from lying under it in a Homer Simpson kind of way. We’ve managed it so far.
(428 1428) Brunch served noon-3pm. Price QR190 per person, includes bubbly.

Ritz-Carlton Doha: This is our choice for dumping the kids elsewhere, getting our high heels on (and that’s just the men) and dining out with our grown-up friends. The Lagoon restaurant’s huge windows overlooking the Gulf make it a really bright and airy spot. The range of food is good, the seafood especially, but we get most (guiltily) excited about the fois gras brioche with mango salsa. And some think the Qatari umm ali pudding is the best in Doha. Like all brunches, the joy is in grazing – and we are experts at trying a little of what we fancy, and have been known to make our visits last five hours. It’s popular, though, so you must book a few days ahead.
(484 8000) Brunch served noon-3.30pm. Price QR250, includes bubbly.