The Middle East debut of Chef Daniel Boulud's renowned French restaurant concept, located within the luxurious Four Seasons Hotel in Kingdom Centre, Riyadh.
Café Boulud Riyadh is the Middle East debut of Chef Daniel Boulud's renowned French restaurant concept, located within the luxurious Four Seasons Hotel in Kingdom Centre. It features an elegant, art deco-inspired design with a notable skylight area, creating an indoor-outdoor ambiance. The restaurant offers a refined dining experience with a focus on French cuisine and an exclusive Cheese Library.
Customer Perception
Customers generally praise the restaurant's beautiful design, elegant ambiance, and the unique skylight area. The Friday brunch, with its live music and food stations (including duck, steak, and pasta), receives positive feedback. Specific dishes like the onion soup and madeleines are frequently highlighted as excellent. However, some reviews point to inconsistencies in service quality, with guests occasionally needing to repeatedly request assistance. While some main courses are well-received, others, like the lamb shank and beef harees, have received mixed reviews regarding taste and texture. Prices are noted as expensive, and portion sizes can be small.
Additional Details
Café Boulud Riyadh is situated in the iconic Kingdom Centre, offering a sophisticated dining experience in a prominent location. The interior design, crafted by Rockwell Group, blends French elegance with elements of garden calm, daylight, and marble.
We had our anniversary dinner here, from the time we sat floor in the restaurant we felt the welcoming, friendly, attentive service level. The restaurant has the nice romantic European vibe. From the bread basket, to our ordered, salad, grilled prawns, mushroom soup and rossietre chicken, each item was tasty, juicy and amazing. Dessert picked on recommendation was melted chocolate cake with ice cream, another lip smacking . We were offeredcomplimentary drinks. They really took care of us and i look forward for another visit
Came to Café Boulud for lunch with my family. The place is beautiful, with great attention to design — the skylight area in particular creates a perfect indoor-outdoor feel. The staff were very welcoming and attentive, doing their best to make the experience enjoyable.
We started with the onion soup and mushroom soup cappuccino, both of which were really good. Then we had the pistou linguine, which was nice.
For the mains, we tried The slow-cooked beef harees had very good beef, though the harees itself wasn’t to our liking. the lamb shank with freekeh, which unfortunately didn’t work for us — even the shank was tougher than expected, and overall the infusion didn’t suit our taste.
We finished with coffee and madeleines, which were absolutely excellent. Perfectly baked — soft inside with a slight crunch — I personally loved them.
I’d definitely come back to try the steaks, hoping they’ll be more to my liking when it comes to main courses.
3
We’ll go back for their dessert and perhaps a coffee?
We’ve mentioned this already to the staff member but there was a portion in the menu about “chef boulud’s specialty” it didn’t mention if it was an appetizer or an entree. We assumed it was an entree, priced similarly— so we ordered. To our surprise I had a good portion of fish and here my husband was presented with a tiny poached salmon topped with caviar.
Confused, we asked the staff if it was an entree or an appetizer. Surprisingly, he said it was infact an appetizer. It was supposed to be mentioned upon placing our orders. We could’ve changed our order to a proper entree. Missed opportunity 🥲
We had to order another entree which is octopus, just okay and it was tough. One of our dessert was from the chef to compensate with all these. Thanks!
My seabass was good but the garnish was infact the same amuse bouse we had. What a miss! 😅 Never had I experienced that in other top restaurants. Maybe it’s a thing now? Idk.
I had better french onion soup in other places. I’m pretty sure they added soy sauce much than its supposed to.
All in all, it’s just okay for the experience but not particularly for the dishes we had.
5
Abdulmalik, I just wanted to take a moment to sincerely thank you for your wonderful service and professionalism. Your kindness, genuine smile, and attention to detail truly make every visit a pleasant experience.
It’s not often that you come across someone who is genuinely passionate about making customers feel welcomed and valued. Your positive attitude and excellent service do not go unnoticed.
Thank you for always going the extra mile. You truly deserve to be recognized and appreciated. Wishing you continued success and all the best! 👏🏻
2
the overall vibes and location is prefect. but they’re lacking the quality and service of a find dining restaurant. we had repeatedly asked for someone to help/serve in everything. we haven’t gotten the drinks menu and we asked for it, yet we didn’t receive it🤷♀️. anyways we ordered food and it was way below average, we ordered a black angus ribeye steak in medium well and we received almost a well done and hard to chew steak… the one thing i will ordered if i was forced to come back is the onion soup 🫢
