Pullman Dubai Downtown Review: Couqley Breakfast & Club Lounge

Part 2 of my stay at Pullman Dubai Downtown!
Breakfast Restaurantand club lounge review

For the room, check my earlier post above.

Breakfast at Pullman Dubai Downtown
is served at Couqley in the lobby.

We had a room with club lounge access,
so technically we didn’t need to add breakfast,
but I’d heard the food here was good,
so I just booked the breakfast-included rate anyway. 🙂

The restaurant is gorgeous from the outside, with its burgundy-colored facade.
Breakfast runs from 6:30 AM to 10:30 AM,
so there’s plenty of time to enjoy it.

They check your room number at the front before you go in.

There’s even a chart showing how busy it gets by time slot,
but the hotel itself didn’t seem overly crowded,
so even “peak time” never felt packed.

Maybe that changes during the winter high season, though.

Sorry, babe…
The seats near the entrance were especially pretty, but this is the only photo I took.

Since it also operates as a French restaurant for lunch and dinner,
the whole place is styled beautifully with a very French feel.

They ask whether you want to sit inside or outside,
but the “outside” tables are still indoors, so it’s not hot at all.

It has a terrace vibe while still being enclosed,
and personally, I liked those outer seats much better.
The space looks especially beautiful in the morning sunlight.

The main setup is buffet-style,
but there are also a few dishes you can order separately.

You just look at the menu on the table
and ask for what you want, and they make it fresh and bring it over.

Overall, I liked it a lot, but one small downside was
that the food layout felt a little inconvenient.

It’s not the kind of setup where you can scan everything in one pass—
bread in one area, cold cuts and hot food somewhere else,
then the salad and fruit in another section,

all slightly spread apart,
so at first I didn’t even notice where the fruit and salad station was.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the food.
Maybe I should’ve posted it as a slideshow.

There were also a few Middle Eastern dishes,
and they seemed to change daily.
They weren’t really my thing, so I mostly just looked. ^^;

Since this is a country where pork isn’t commonly eaten,
the bacon options were beef bacon and turkey bacon
instead of pork bacon.

I tried one waffle,
but it was so soggy that I didn’t go back for another.
Maybe there was a separate oven nearby that I missed?

There was a decent bread selection too,
and the croissants were actually really good,
so I ended up trying several kinds of croissants.

There were also donuts, pound cake, Danish pastries, and more.

Still, somehow,
I think the pastries I had at hotel breakfasts in Southeast Asia were better.

The yogurt here was pretty solid.
After trying yogurt at a few other hotels later,
I realized Pullman’s was actually the best one.

Cereal is one of those things I always end up eating at hotel breakfast for no reason,
and they had several kinds of milk too.

The salad station was tucked away all the way in the back,
so it was easy to miss.
But the vegetables were fresh and the dressing selection was good, so I liked it.

Next to it, there were a few kinds of fruit too.
No matter which hotel you go to in this country,
there always seems to be melon and watermelon.

Looking at the photo now, I guess there wasn’t melon that day,

but most days they had both green melon and orange melon,
and they were usually pretty good too.

Coffee is self-serve here,
and next to it you’ll find tea bags and juice.

The coffee was good too.
I used to think good coffee at a hotel was a given,
but after staying at a bunch of other hotels later,
I realized plenty of places serve pretty bad coffee.

They had orange, watermelon, and apple juice,
and all of them tasted fresh and not overly sweet, which I loved.

On the first morning at breakfast,
I was ridiculously happy sitting at that table.

Not because I’d already tasted the food and knew it was amazing,
but more like, wow—I’m really in the Middle East!!!
And wow, hotel breakfast for the first time in a while!! That kind of excitement.

This was one of the dishes I ordered separately from the menu:
Turkish eggs!
The presentation was not what I expected at all.

There was a huge dollop of something that looked like cream cheese next to the eggs, which definitely caught me off guard,

and when I checked the menu description,
I saw it was Labneh,
a Middle Eastern strained yogurt that’s somewhere between yogurt and cream cheese.

Anyway, I mostly just broke the eggs and ate those,
and barely touched the labneh. ^_^

Oh, and also—

I asked if they could make iced Americano, and they said of course.
But when it arrived, it looked like
they’d taken hot coffee
and dropped in a few ice cubes, so by the time it got to me it was somewhere between lukewarm and warm… technically an iced Americano(?)

Still, the coffee itself tasted fine,
and the server was so kind that I just drank it happily.

Had some fruit too, of course.

During the whole stay, we didn’t go every single day, but we used it three times,
and every visit was satisfying with zero complaints.

The staff were all upbeat and genuinely friendly,
which made the breakfast restaurant feel even nicer every time.

Next up, the best part of a hotel stay:
the 19th-floor club lounge review.

It’s right there as soon as you get off on the 19th floor.
The lounge is open from 7:30 AM to 8:00 PM.

I thought I had taken a photo of the information sheet,
but apparently I didn’t, so I’m going off memory here—

I think breakfast here was served until 11:00 AM,
then there was a daytime snack and tea time in between,
and in the evening, happy hour ran from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
with alcohol and simple finger foods available.

I really loved this lounge.
It was spacious, the floor-to-ceiling windows made the view feel wide open,
and it faces the same direction as the view from Room 1611 in my room review.

The seating was comfortable and nicely spread out,
and although it’s not in the photos, there’s another seating area on the opposite side too.

We mostly stayed on this side because it was closer to the food.

The canal view was lovely,

and if you look closely, way off in the center,
you can even spot the Burj Al Arab.

I do kind of regret not visiting it on this trip.

Next time I go,
even if I don’t stay there, I want to at least try one of the restaurants.

The Pullman Dubai Downtown club lounge breakfast spread was pretty simple.
But honestly, whenever we went down to Couqley,
we mostly ended up eating the same kinds of things that were available here anyway,
so we probably could’ve skipped adding breakfast altogether.

Coffee here is self-serve too.
If you want to take it back to your room,
they’ll give you a disposable cup if you ask.

I grabbed ice and a paper cup and made my own iced Americano to go.

They had bread, yogurt, fruit, and all the basics.

And more than anything,
it was so quiet that the whole space felt incredibly comfortable and relaxed.

Babe, sitting there like that, you look rich!
Ignore the construction-site view in the back…

This is what it looked like during happy hour, when it started getting dark.

There were a few simple snacks,
and soft drinks were stocked in the fridge below.

A few breakfast items made a repeat appearance too.

For alcohol, they had beer, white wine, and red wine,

plus a few basic spirits.
I think they also had Johnnie Walker Red Label, unless I’m remembering wrong.

Nothing especially premium, though. ^_^
Still, it was convenient being able to help yourself whenever you wanted.

At some other lounges,
you have to order each drink one by one, and honestly I find that more annoying.

As for the food,
there were a few wine-friendly snacks,
plus several kinds of dried fruit.

Sausages, dumplings, and chicken salad too.

They also had Japanese-style maki rolls,
and those were surprisingly filling and tasty,
enough to work as a light meal.

Apparently other Western guests liked them too,
because they disappeared quickly and the kitchen kept bringing out more.

I also tried the mango roll underneath,
and it was decent—the mango flavor wasn’t very strong.

There were breads and desserts too.
The lounge never seemed that busy,
so honestly they probably didn’t need to put out quite so much of this stuff.

This is about what I grabbed for myself. Hehe.
I also asked for ice separately and made an ice-cold beer—so good.

The food wasn’t mind-blowingly delicious across the board,
but everything was decent enough to enjoy.

Peroni was the only beer they had,
but I don’t mind Peroni, so I drank it happily.

My husband made himself a highball here too,
and they also provide sparkling water.

I ended up making small talk with one of the lounge staff,
and one of them was from Myanmar.

She said she loves K-dramas,
and because of the current situation in Myanmar,
she told me she wants to go home but can’t right now.

Anyway,
this was a lounge I genuinely enjoyed every single time we visited.
On the day we checked out, we had breakfast and were heading out,
and they asked if we were leaving that day,
so I told them how much I loved the lounge before we left.

If you’re staying at Pullman Dubai Downtown,
I really recommend booking a room with club access.

Without the lounge, my overall satisfaction with the hotel
probably would’ve dropped by at least 30%—that’s how worth it it felt.