Atlantis The Royal

Breakfast is in every rate at this house, and this is where it is served. The room is not a dining room at all — it is a run of open kitchens, with a mural of fruit and vegetables down the back wall and the morning's seafood laid out on ice. Nothing waits under a lamp; each plate is cooked in front of you when you ask for it. It runs through the day as well, and there is a late breakfast on Saturdays until 3.

The dishes are reconstructed from cookbooks, some of them 600 years old, and each one carries the year of its recipe beside its name. What arrives is rarely what the name suggests. The room is dark and low, with an enormous bronze pineapple at the door and the fires of the open kitchen along the back. Sunday lunch is a proper roast. There is a children's menu, and the room is 12 and over after 9.

A chequerboard floor, crimson velvet banquettes, tasselled glass chandeliers hung low, and captains in burgundy dinner jackets who dress the salad at your table and shave parmesan off the wheel in front of you. It is theatre, and the cooking under the theatre is serious. This is the loudest good room in the building, and the one to choose for a night meant to be an occasion. The room is 13 and over after 9.

The day's catch is laid out on ice at the front of the room and you choose from it by hand. Whatever you pick is grilled whole, with oil, lemon and nothing else. Lunch and dinner both run Wednesday to Sunday, and the room is 12 and over after 9.

Gastón Acurio is the chef who persuaded the world that Peruvian food is a cuisine rather than a curiosity, and this is his tribute to the coast: raw fish, citrus, chilli and ají amarillo, brought from street to table without being tidied up. The room is timber and pale stone with a large woven hanging at the end of it, a busy bar, and a terrace facing the fountain that is the place to be after dark. The room is 10 and over after 9.

The Hakkasan group's late-night room, built to change shape as the evening goes: a Pan-Asian menu of sharing plates first, then a bar on Level 23 where resident DJs take the room from smooth to loud, then the Ultra Lounge beyond it for anyone still going. The skyline is in the window throughout. It is the one room in the building where dinner is the beginning of the evening rather than the point of it. The room is 21 and over after 9.

The cooking is one family's — fruit, nuts and flower waters used with meat and rice the way a Persian household actually uses them, given a modern hand but not modernised out of recognition. The room is a set of tall white plaster arches with fretted screens and sea-green chairs, built to evoke a merchant house in Kashan, with a private dining room for 12 inside it. It is the quietest good room in the building, and the one people are most surprised by. It takes children of any age.

The repertoire is the one Nobu Matsuhisa's kitchens are known for — black cod, tiraditos, crispy rice — cooked here for people who have arrived in a swimsuit. It is less formal than his dining rooms and better for it. Access and a sunbed come with every stay at this house, so nothing has to be arranged to spend the day here.

The pool sits 22 floors up, adults only, and it is the room the whole building is photographed for. White sail arches over a deck of day-beds set into shallow mosaic water, an infinity edge that appears to finish out in the Gulf, and a round bar standing in the pool itself. There is proper cooking here as well as cocktails, and it is better than it needs to be.

An outdoor lounge on the podium looking straight at the Skyblaze fountain, with low seating around a shallow basin and a lamp on every table. Cocktails, and small plates better than a lounge menu needs to be. It is the one room here where the entertainment is water rather than a DJ, and it changes character completely between 6 and 10.

An open timber pavilion on the sand with cane armchairs under a slatted roof, looking back across the water at the Dubai skyline — which makes it the one room here that gets its sunset behind the city rather than behind the sea. Nothing about it is trying hard. Children of any age, a DJ in the evenings, and premium shisha if you want it.

White shiplap, navy leather booths and painted surfboard signs — a West Coast diner done warmly rather than ironically. Burgers, hot dogs, shakes, and plates nobody finishes. After 4 nights of celebrity chefs it is exactly what most people want, and it is the one room here where nobody is performing anything.

A small room off the lobby with marble counters, a vitrine of pastry and the mirrored droplet sculpture rising through the middle of it. Afternoon tea is the reason to come, served daily from 2 until 5: sandwiches, classic desserts and an unreasonable quantity of cake. It is also the best coffee in the building, at any hour, and it takes children of any age.

A small parlour in pink and pistachio with round marble tables, coloured globe lights and a lit wall of gelato. The gelato is churned here rather than bought in. There are also waffles, crêpes, ice creams and drinks. It exists for the walk back from the beach at 5 and for the hour before dinner when a child needs something, and it is open to all ages at every hour.