I should start this off by saying that I'm not a big fan of extreme milk shakes, or at least that was my opinion of extreme milk shakes when I walked into a Black Tap Craft Burgers in Dubai. We were visiting Dubai with some friends and we decided we wanted to explore some of the chain restaurants we'd never tried before at home. None of us had been to a Black Tap before (keep in mind that two of us are Canadian and all of us have been living overseas for most of the last 10 or so years), but I had heard of it. As far as I knew, and as I explained to my friends, Black Tap is known for their burgers and crazy milkshakes.
As I mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of extreme milkshakes. I've had one or two of them in the past, and it was never too impressive. I've also seen pictures of them on the internet, and I often see the extra stuff as making it harder to drink the milkshake, rather than being a bonus. I also question the quality of a milkshake that has to decorate itself up so much. Basically, my few experiences with this where not great, and nothing online made me think it would get better. The reason I wanted to try this is because from what I understood, Black Tap was the place that made its name with these milkshakes. I figured that I'd give it a try and if they couldn't pull it off I would never bother again.
Let me start by saying, outside of the milkshake, my experience at this particular Black Tap was amazing. The burgers are actually very good at Black Tap, better than I thought they would be. I'll admit that the price was pretty high, but honestly none of us felt ripped off at all. The food was also matched by the service. Our waiter and the entire staff were amazing. They were there when we needed them, but let us have a good meal amongst our friends as well. I rarely find this perfect a balance when eating out with friends. The best part is that all of the staff seemed genuinely happy that we wanted to watch them make our milkshake.
We decided to order our crazy milkshake as a dessert, because we're getting on in the years, we understand the importance of hydrating and we understand that a milkshake does not provide any kind of real hydration. For those unfamiliar with Black Tap, often (I assume often because I have not been to every Black Tap) at the front of the restaurant they have a bar like area where they make the crazy milkshakes. It looks like a cross between a dive bar and a candy store. From what I understand they have a milkshake specialist on staff that makes the milkshakes there in front of people. I feel like it's used more for attracting people to the restaurant than as a place for people to gawk at the person making their food. Fortunately, as I said before, the staff at this Black Tap in Dubai was more than happy to let us walk up to the milkshake bar and watch the milkshake specialist make our dessert/drink.
The process of making the milkshake was mostly good, in particular our milkshake expert seemed to really know what she was doing. There were a few parts of the process however that disappointed me a little. First of all, there's an implication that the milkshake is entirely made fresh for you, I feel like this is only partially true. Sure I don't expect them to bake cookies or cakes in front of me, but there were certain parts of the process done in advance that I feel would have made the treat better if done live, as well as would have made the show a little more entertaining.
Most notably is the fact that the ice cream sandwiches and the mug decorations were all pre-done. She basically just pulled them out of the fridge/freezer. The ice cream sandwiches even came out of packages, which tells me they're probably not even made in store. Both the menu, and a lot of the advertising implies that these two features might be made live in store, but alas they were not. The only other part that disappointed a little was the fact that at this restaurant, the milkshake makers were at the back of this bar. I mean, the main part of this dessert/drink is the milkshake, and for the most part that process remained hidden from view.
While I feel like these improvements could have made my milkshake better, I was not disappointed at all. Every other element of our Snickers themed milkshake was pretty darn good. It looked great, and was actually a little less messy than I expected. At least messy for us, the table was a disaster, but the staff was totally fine with that. They also provided the right tools to deal with this milkshake, including plates and spoons. The surprising part that I enjoyed was the stuff on the rim of the glass. I used to assume that they used chocolate to rim the glass and adhere the various treats to the rim, but it's not. Or if it is, it's tempered in a way that makes it very easy to get it off. I thought scraping this off of a glass would have been annoying, and that I would have just not bothered and left it on the glass, but instead it was actually kind of satisfying and we cleaned off our glass fairly well.
The milkshake was also pretty good, and was surprisingly not too rich. I feel like they might go a little lighter on the milkshake to balance out the crazy ingredients, and that's a really great way to do it. In the past when I've had crazy milkshakes, they tend to go heavy on the milkshake and I'm pretty sick halfway through. Instead the milkshake provided a nice refreshing break from the cookies and treats. I'm not sure that I'm completely turned around on this whole crazy milkshake trend, but I feel like this Black Tap milkshake won't be my last. I believe there is hope for this trend, but it takes a lot of thought and a lot of work on the people making it.
CC
