Atlantis, The Palm

The Swedish chef's Dubai room, and the only three-star restaurant in the emirate. There are 27 seats around an open kitchen tiled in oxblood, one tasting menu, and modern European cooking with Japanese technique running under it. The precision matters more than the flourish, and the service is quick and unceremonious in a way three-star rooms usually are not. Tables for 5 to 8 are taken by arrangement. Book weeks out.

Built into the side of the aquarium, so the far wall of the dining room is 11 million litres of moving water with rays and trevally going through it. That could be a gimmick and is not: the room is dressed in silver leaf and hand-blown glass bubbles rising through the ceiling, the light is low and blue, and the 9-course menu is genuine nouvelle-cuisine seafood cooking that would hold a star in a windowless basement. Ask for a table on the lower tier, against the glass.

Executive chef Andy Toh's kitchen, and the third starred room in this building. Dim sum made properly, premium seafood, the signature meats — and a lounge next door under a ceiling of cobalt blown glass where the cocktails get the same attention the kitchen does. The room has two personalities: family seating runs from 6 until half past 8, and after that it is 10 years and above, the lights come down and the music comes up.

Nobu Matsuhisa's Dubai room, moved up to the 22nd floor and much the better for it: the terrace looks straight down the Palm at the Marina and the Burj, and at dusk the whole west wall of the restaurant is that. Inside there is a bar with resident DJs, a dining room with real energy in it, and — the seat to ask for — a small sushi counter where the chefs hand each piece across. The Japanese-Peruvian repertoire is the one you know.

A New York steakhouse done at Dubai scale — two live trees growing through the middle of the dining room, curved leather banquettes around them, a theatrical open kitchen at the back, and a glazed wine wall carrying over 3,500 labels. The beef is Japanese and Australian, dry-aged in 3 stages on the premises, and finished over live fire. It is a family room until 9 and an adults' room afterwards, which for a steakhouse is the right way round.

White Moorish arches with black-and-white tilework above them, an olive branch on every table and a terrace beyond, and the warmest room in the building. The cooking is unreconstructed Lebanese — mezzeh arriving until the table runs out of space, charcoal grills, the proper sweets afterwards — and it is built for sharing rather than for ordering one plate each. There are 3 set menus, and the middle one is the right answer for 4 people who came hungry.

The same chef, an entirely different temperament. A modern European brasserie in brass and burnt orange with a long marble counter facing an open pass, red chairs, a checkerboard floor, and a bar that becomes the point of the room as the evening goes on. Happy hour is a proper one and the food does not drop off during it. There is also a candy room, which is as silly as it sounds and a good way to end dinner.

British-European cooking under a great curved ceiling with industrial glazing across the back of it and an open kitchen behind that. Tan leather booths, brass reading lamps on every table, and enough noise that a family of 5 is not a problem. The Wellington is the order, the Sunday roast is the institution, and the Tanqueray terrace outside is where the drink before dinner happens. The most relaxed of the celebrity-chef rooms here.

The big one, in the West Tower: marble counters running the width of the room under a glass shoal of fish suspended from the ceiling, 20 stations cooking in front of you, and a spread that changes theme through the week. As a breakfast it is the most efficient way to feed a family in this building. As a Saturday brunch from 1 until 4 it is something else entirely — DJs, live performers, 21 and above — and it is the thing a large part of Dubai comes to this hotel for.

Pastel parasols in 4 colours over teak daybeds, a long pool, cabanas from a two-lounger hideaway up to a poolside pavilion, and the Palm skyline behind all of it. Mediterranean cooking, a bar that keeps going as the light drops, and music that builds rather than arrives. It is booked like a restaurant and used like a day out, and the cabanas are booked by size.