Grégoire Berger opens Solenn, his first Abu Dhabi restaurant
The former Ossiano chef has opened a Mediterranean dining room at Abu Dhabi's equestrian club, built around long lunches, and says he now sees himself as an entrepreneur first.
Grégoire Berger, the French chef who ran the kitchen at Ossiano in Dubai when it won its Michelin star, has opened Solenn, his first restaurant in Abu Dhabi, and told The National on 29 September that he now sees himself more as an entrepreneur than a cook.
Solenn opened in August at The Arcades, part of the Al Khail Square development at the Abu Dhabi Equestrian Club in Al Mushrif, and looks out over the club's grounds. The partner is The Creative House, the company led by Adnan Alzarooni. The format is a Mediterranean dining room built around long lunches, with sharing plates of seafood, grilled meat and seasonal vegetables, according to the restaurant's own site.
The menu borrows from Greece, Italy, the Levant, Turkey and North Africa and adds Arabic spices and ingredients. One dish keeps the trompe-l'oeil habit of his fine-dining years: Illusion of a Tomato, a shell of white chocolate and cocoa butter filled with tomato salad and local burrata. Prices are not listed on the website.
After a Michelin star under an aquarium, the new brief is a long lunch by a paddock.
From Ossiano to Kraken, Grégoire Berger changes pace
Berger, 40, arrived in the UAE in 2014 to lead Ossiano, the aquarium-side restaurant at Atlantis The Palm, which gained its Michelin star under him. He left at the end of 2024 and opened Kraken in Jumeirah, a seafood restaurant that cooks over fire. Its tasting menu costs AED 695, and around 70 per cent of the ingredients are sourced locally, partly through the restaurant's own fishing boat, Fact Magazine reported in November 2025.
Solenn is the looser of the two. In the interview, Grégoire Berger said his role now covers creative input across several projects rather than one pass, and mentioned plans for a restaurant in Turkey. No name, city or date has been given for it.
A dining room for an equestrian club
Al Khail Square was launched in December 2025 by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan as a mixed development around the equestrian club, combining stables and training facilities with homes, clinics, shops and a members' club. A restaurant there is aimed at residents and riders as much as at visitors.
The move runs against the recent traffic between the two emirates. Dubai has been collecting imports, from Gymkhana's arrival in the DIFC to Rocambolesco, led by a Michelin Guide Abu Dhabi Young Chef Award winner. Grégoire Berger has gone the other way, and the ambition he describes is modest in its own terms: "Right now, I have what I could not even have dreamt of," he told The National. Solenn has no star to defend, which appears to be the point.
