Le Belvedere

Le Belvedere is the all-day dining room at the Mercure Grand Jebel Hafeet, perched near the summit of Al Ain's tallest mountain and delivering what may be the city's most dramatic dining view: a panoramic look across the desert to the border with Oman from the floor-to-ceiling windows. The restaurant functions as the in-house option for Mercure guests and as a logical stop for visitors driving up or down Jebel Hafeet between the summit viewpoint and Wadi Mubazzarah. The core offering is buffet-driven: a generous breakfast with a live-omelette station, a weekday lunch and dinner buffet at a mid-range price point, and a more ambitious Friday seafood-and-grill buffet that most regulars single out as the reason to come. At its best, the spread reaches creditably across Arabic, Indian, Italian and Moroccan dishes, with a salad bar, live-grill station handling steak and lamb chops to order, a respectable cheese selection, and dessert options including umm ali and assorted cakes. On good days the live-cooking meats and the Friday seafood spread (including lobster when the kitchen is on form) justify the drive up the mountain. Unlimited-beverage packages at reasonable price points add to the value. The experience is inconsistent and worth naming honestly. Off-peak weekday service can be thin and slow, dish labelling is often missing, and some mains (particularly the non-grilled meats and certain frozen fish dishes) suffer from over-cooking or lack of freshness. Vegetarian options are narrow at dinner, and management-guest interactions have drawn sharp criticism from several guests. When the kitchen is in form and the room is staffed for the volume, the view, the buffet value and the live grill make it worth the trip; when it isn't, it shows. Come on a Friday for the seafood spread, request a window table, and treat this as a view-and-value proposition rather than a destination kitchen.