Blue Sapphire- A Calcutta Chinese Connection in JLT

What the heck is Calcutta Chinese food? I wondered to myself as I was asked to review Blue Sapphire, a Calcutta-Chinese fusion restaurant in JLT. When I did a bit of research, I was indeed surprised to discover that the Indian Chinese cuisine that I have grown up with has actually originated from Chinese of Hakka origin that live in Kolkata (Calcutta’s modern name)! The name Calcutta Chinese barely resonates with anyone, only ‘Indian Chinese’ does. Apparently the Chicken Manchurian that we have grown to love so much is a combination of a base of Indian spices, coupled with soy and corn starch invented by Nelson Wang in 1975.  Very, very interesting.

To taste this little piece of history, I headed over to this Calcutta Chinese restaurant called Blue Sapphire in JLT, not too far from F.C.’s house. The interiors of the restaurant, were well..blue. It’s a tiny hole in the wall place and I dragged F.C. with me to try out this interesting asset to the umbrella of Indian cuisine.

First of all, Blue Sapphire Chinese Cuisine is a very, well…blue looking restaurant. But we were happy to sit and dine in outdoors to enjoy the swell weather. We kicked off our tasting with the char siew pao, which tasted pretty damn close to the original. Soft, sweet and delectable. We also tried the stir fried chicken pepper which F.C. really liked, but was definitely too spicy for his European palate.

Quickly moving on to main course, we tried the Chicken Taro nest, which is a special at the restaurant. It tasted very akin to the pepper chicken we had, except that it was atop a potato crunchy nest. I also opted for one of my Indian Chinese favourites – the ”American Chopsuey'(In this place known as a Blue Sapphire Chopsuey). The dish is a ketchup like amalgamation of sweet sauce and chicken and it’s a childhood favourite. F.C. (who will never understand my obsession with ketchup) didn’t like it much, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Overall, definitely worth checking out.

Scrumptious Calcutta Chinese food @bluesapphirechinesecuisine. This chicken taro nest is one of their specialties and quite delicious. It was @francisco_caal’s first encounter with Indo-Chinese cuisine; quite pleased to see he enjoyed it! . . . . . #Chinese #Indochinese #delish #eeeeeats #nom #omnomnom #dubaiblogger #uaeblogger #dubaifoodblogger #uaefoodblogger #iphoneography #foodography #tasty #huffpostetaste #f52grams #yum #dubaifoodie #feedfeed #DubaiPR #foodie #thatsdarling #beautifulcuisines #lifeandthyme #zomatouae

A photo posted by Dubai Blogger – Om Nom Nirvana (@aneesha_rai) on Dec 13, 2016 at 8:12pm PST

DISCLOSURE: Offered a complimentary meal in exchange for a review.

LOCATION: Lake Level, Platinum tower, Cluster I, JLT

Update: As of May 6, 2022 – this restaurant no longer exists.