Sonia Majumder

The first thing to know about FZN by Björn Frantzén is that you are not simply sitting down to dinner. Dinner comes to you in chapters.

Tucked away at Atlantis The Palm, the culinary journey begins behind a small, rather secretive door. You ring the bell. Someone lets you in.

There is a sense that you have wandered into an exclusive private club whose rules you have not yet been told.

Upstairs, the mood shifts. The room feels more like an elegant, slightly eccentric living room than a conventional fine-dining restaurant: warm, intimate and quietly theatrical. There is an open kitchen, a counter where the chefs work with calm concentration, and just enough separation from the rest of the room to make the whole evening feel somewhat undisclosed. You are close to the action without ever feeling that the kitchen is performing for you and that becomes part of FZN’s charm.

The evening unfolds in stages, with a tasting menu that is playful, luxurious and occasionally mischievous. I was greeted with bubbles and caviar. Fine dining is always telling the diner what is important, what is valuable. What could be more important than this?

FZN is the Dubai outpost of Swedish chef Björn Frantzén’s culinary universe, where Scandinavian restraint meets Japanese precision and French technique. But calling the food a fusion makes it sound more orderly than it is. FZN is interested in surprise. It likes an unlikely pairing and, more importantly, trusts you to follow it.

The opening bites beautifully composed with an edge.

A crustacean tartlet, bright with mint and tiny teardrop peas, is delicate enough to disappear in two bites. A croustade brings foie gras together with cinnamon and date, bringing you from bitterness to sweetness, from intensity to softness.

They arrive looking almost too composed to disturb. Then you disturb them. That is part of the fun of FZN. It does not seem particularly interested in being sensible.

A beignet, the restaurant’s nod to its “Grand Tradition 2008,” gives way to crudo of otoro with fermented strawberry and a generous scattering of Frantzén’s selected caviar.

The langoustine arrives with Koshihikari rice, spring onion and ginger. The rice gives the dish a quiet softness, while ginger cuts through the sweetness. Japanese in its ingredients but unmistakably Frantzén in its building, centered on delicious, deceptively simple contrasts. Then there’s the French toast, king crab, ikura & wagyu, an unexpected balance: salt, richness and texture arrive almost simultaneously. It has softness of comfort food and the decadence of something far more elaborate. These two were my favorites, and every bite was vivid.

The lamb barbecue is darker and more grounded, its smoky char softened by aubergine cooked almost to silk. The vierge brings a clean flash of acidity, while the morel adds a deep, woodland savouriness. It is a dish built on contrast: smoke against brightness, richness against freshness, the earthiness of the morel giving the whole thing a lingering depth.

Salted milk, banana, lavender and yuba is quietly strange. The banana brings an almost pudding-like sweetness, checked by the salt in the milk. Lavender comes and goes, while the yuba keeps the whole thing from becoming too soft. Strange on paper, convincing on the plate.

Then come the black cardamom madeleines, warm from the oven and almost impossible to leave alone. The crumb is tender and buttery; the cardamom gives the familiar French cake a darker, more grown-up brim. After a meal built around precision and surprise, there is something wonderfully uncomplicated about reaching for another.

There is an electric charge to FZN and it makes its mark through detail.

Its pleasures are multifaceted: the hush of the room, the choreography of the open kitchen, the succession of unexpected combinations, the sense that something slightly surprising is always about to arrive.

And perhaps that is what makes the restaurant memorable. FZN does not ask you simply to eat. It asks you to surrender to the evening, one small exquisitely constructed chapter at a time.