What better way to celebrate 10 years of success than a fabulous gourmet dinner at one of Doha’s best restaurants?

Recently, Qatar Living invited some of the city’s coolest foodies to its first ever Food Bloggers Dinner at The French Olive.

This event marked the start of a series of celebrations of the website’s 10^th birthday this October.

The French Olive’s General Manager Cristiana Magnabosco and Corporate Executive Chef Gene Cormier hosted the evening along with Qatar Living’s Marketing & PR Manager - Rochelle Zonnenberg who mentioned, “ the event was the start of many such community events to come in the near future. She also said “ The French Olive and Qatar Living were delighted to host the special evening with the cities renowned bloggers, editors and freelance food journalist.

Opened a year ago, The French Olive has built a reputation as one of the cities must-visits on Doha’s gourmet food trail. Thanks to a mixture of classic Italian fare and wickedly indulgent French pastries.

The delicacies served by them that evening were delightfully scrumptious.

Chef de Cuisine Ernest Alford began the meal lightly with a trio of exquisitely presented salads which included Prawns with cous cous and artichoke hearts, pearl barley with mozzarella and the citrus tang of orange and grapefruit and lovely little tuna tartare. This was followed by some deep-fried arancini rice balls which had cheese and mushroom filled centres.

The risotto al funghi arrived next, one of the highlights of the dinner, along with a pizza polpette with meatballs and parmesan.

Wagyu beef tenderloin and salmon fillet were some of the other preferred dishes. Osso buco, a milanese dish, was served with melt-in-the-mouth veal shank along with traditional saffron risotto, which was so good that it seemed an offence to waste a single bite.

The dinner ended with a trio of Italian and French waist-expanders – coffee tasting tiramisu, pink pannacotta and crème brulee, the latter presented in a vertical latticework of fine chocolate.

Executive Pastry Chef Ernesto Lingad also prepared a series of sweet mini fruit tarts and gorgeously personalized cupcakes for all of the guests to take home!

The excitement at Qatar Living is at its crescendo, giving an upsurge to the evolution of new ideas and concepts, to make its 10^th birthday celebration the best.

Writer Intro: Dawn Gibson is a contributing feature writer for magazines such as Qatar Airways’ Oryx Premium inflight magazine, Time Out Doha and Qatar Happening. She’s a part-time actor and a full-time foodie.