Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa Review: Food and Beverage

Now that I have gone over the actual rooms that we stayed in, I am moving on to the Park Hyatt Maldives food and beverage services.

Something to consider: you are on an island. The closest island is miles away and only accessible by boat. You’re eating every meal on the island. For some people, that’s a good thing: it makes the choice easy. For others, it will drive them crazy to eat from the same set of kitchens everyday.

I didn’t mind it. I personally really enjoyed the food. For a 7-day, 6-night stay, we never got sick of the food. We even did not get sick of breakfast, which was only at one restaurant. The food is very high quality, which I think stems from the fact that room rates are high, and, thus, your typical patron will expect the food to be worth the money. I found that the price to be worth it, particularly since I felt like a lot of care went into creating the food overall.

It also might just possibly be that it was typically food I normally don’t eat (I ate a lot of different variations of different Asian dishes). In the states, when it comes to Asian food, I eat mostly ramen, sushi, and Korean BBQ. However, they had a much larger variety here, highlight Maldivian cuisine that I personally found delicious.

The Park Hyatt Maldives food and beverage team also demonstrated a strong commitment to quality in other ways. For example, multiple times throughout our stay, a manager who was overlooking breakfast asked me (by name) if we were enjoying the food and beverage. I don’t know if he was asking me because I hold top-tier status with Hyatt (Globalist), but I had no problem saying absolutely yes.

Note for Those with Food Allergies

I also wanted to give a lot of credit to the team at the Park Hyatt Maldives for their handling of a food allergy in my party. My wife is allergic to shellfish, to the point where she can’t even kiss me if I’ve been eating it because I may have oils on my lips.

A few days before your arrival, the resort reaches out to you and ask if there’s anything they can have ready for you when you arrive. I mentioned asking for extra water and towels in our room and a few other things, but I was very explicit that my wife could not come into contact with shellfish while we were there. They stated that they would make sure that that would not be an issue, and they absolutely delivered.

For every dish that she ordered, even down to the person just taking our order, they all told her explicitly which items did and did not have shellfish. They also explicitly stated that they would remind the kitchen about her allergy and to make sure they prepped everything correctly. Additionally, at the Globalist happy hour every day, they substituted items that were still delicious so that they did not have shellfish. What really blew me away is that our server knew it without us even mentioning it when we ate dinner on the day we arrived. Now that’s service!

Now, let’s get into the review of the Park Hyatt Maldives food and beverage outlets.

Park Hyatt Maldives Food General Overview

There are 5 bars and restaurants on the island, as well as in-room dining. We didn’t partake in in-room dining, but you can find the current menu here. Additionally, we did not dine at the Chef’s Garden Treehouse, but you can find the current menu here. (It’s a cool concept, but we just weren’t feeling it any night.)

A couple of notes: First, when you arrive at any restaurant, you are given an iPad with the menu for that specific restaurant. I think this is actually quite brilliant, because printing real paper menus on the island could be tricky as the menu changes. What if they run out of ink mid-print? More importantly, they’re also trying to be environmentally-friendly and limit what could fall into the ocean. I think it was clever.

Second, they do have an all-inclusive option, but, given the prices, unless you aren’t a Globalist, and do plan on drinking a lot, you don’t need it. I’m a Globalist, and we don’t really drink much, so it wasn’t necessary for us. Each meal per person is between $50-75 per person.

Third, other than the main restaurant and the Bar, you need reservations for every restaurant. Your host will have no problem getting you a reservation and will be incredibly proactive in helping you out. You really shouldn’t worry about this at all.

Finally, given that we were both jetlagged and had such a massive breakfast each morning, to save money, we brought protein bars to eat throughout the day between breakfast and the happy hour. We really ended up eating two meals a day because of this, saving money on lunch. We did eat a snack on two days at the Bar. However, you’re fed so well in the morning, a protein bar throughout the day should suffice if you want to save a bit of money. We probably saved a couple hundred bucks by doing that. We just wanted to save a bit of money, and this allowed us to spend more time in the water.

The Dining Room

This is the main restaurant on the island. You can find the current breakfast menu here, the lunch menu here, and the dinner menu here. It has a beautiful view of the main pool and beach area, and you can eat outside when it’s nice outside. I would call this the main “hub” of the island. We got quite goofy around this area.

We ate here for breakfast every morning, and we ate here for dinner about half the time.

Breakfast consisted of an extensive buffet, as well as a menu which you can order off of.

If you aren’t a Globalist, you can easily get full off of the breakfast buffet, and I don’t think it’s necessary to order anything off the menu.

See below for pictures of the buffet. I highly recommend the large assortment of pastries. They obviously baked the croissants on site, and I ate at least two everyday. I also enjoyed the large assortment of fresh fruit and the different hot dishes they had.

You can also get a cold brew with various syrups from the buffet. (I made my first rose syrup cold brew there.) They even had a make-your-own cocktail station with a rotating recipe to make for yourself (think tequila sunrise, bloody mary, etc.). All of this is included with the buffet.

Finally (and I didn’t get a picture of it), at points throughout the morning, someone came through and offered a special Maldivian dish that I looked forward to everyday. It was fresh tuna and Maldivian chiles wrapped in a Maldivian flatbread. There was something about that piece of bread that just had my mouth watering when I saw them coming around with it. It was delicious!

Dinner was also quite good. I enjoyed getting the various curries throughout our stay.

Additionally, we were there during the Chinese New Year. They had set up a stage by the Dining Room and had flown in singers to sing every evening. They did a mixture of (what I’m assuming are) traditional Chinese acoustic songs and some popular American songs (they loved Ed Sheeran). I wouldn’t expect this on most stays, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Globalist Breakfast at The Dining Room

As you can tell from the pictures above, the breakfast buffet is quite extensive. You get full access to that. Also, as per the World of Hyatt terms & conditions, you also get a coffee and a juice. I don’t remember if they said this was only supposed to be just a pot of coffee. However, in practice, whatever I ordered (including the French press and the “Local Inspiration”) was taken off of our bill. All of this should be expected.

I mentioned earlier that we didn’t really eat lunch because we were so full from breakfast. Where the Park Hyatt Maldives goes above and beyond is that you also get to eat an additional two items off of the set menu FOR FREE. For example, one morning, I got the full buffet, the breakfast steak, and something off of the Asian menu. It was so much food!

My personal favorites were the Granola popsicle and the Chinese “chow mein” egg noodles with chicken. The Maldivian omelet and congee were both good as well. My wife loved the all tropical smoothie bowl and the smashed avocado.

The Island Grill

This is a traditional wood-fired grill that is in between the Dining Room and the path to the overwater villas. However, it is surrounded by jungle. You feel like you are in the jungle (maybe not even on the island). It is also the only restaurant where the floor is made of sand, which was a fun touch. We ate here one night and would recommend it.

You can find the current menu here. I forgot to get pictures, but we started out with the wagyu toast (yum), and I had the pork belly. Service was a bit slower here, but I think that was primarily due cooking everything over a wood fire and just to increase the ambiance. We had a lovely time eating here.

Koi at The Drift

This is the Japanese sushi restaurant that is off the pathway of the overwater villas. It’s in between the base overwater villas and the sunset overwater pool villas, so you’ll walk a bit on the dock to get there. You can find the full menu here.

In my brilliance, I AGAIN forgot to get pictures, but we started off with the papaya tataki (highly recommend) and then shared 4 different sushi rolls.

Each sushi roll contained at least 6 pieces, so we had 12 pieces each between us. The sushi kitchen is open air, so it was cool to watch them put together our dinner. They put a lot of care into creating the sushi, and it was again delicious.

For dessert, we had the yuzu panna cotta, which was great. We definitely left full.

Park Hyatt Maldives Food & Drink at The Bar

This is the hangout place throughout the day. Located right next to the main pool (and a stone’s throw from the Dining Room), this is the main bar area and where we had our Globalist happy hour each evening. This area also extends briefly onto the beach with a few little huts, but you’ll need to let the bartender know you’re sitting down there so they know to come serve you. You can find the food menu here (I don’t have access to the drink menu or the Globalist happy hour menu).

To be frank, we didn’t really eat here outside of the Globalist happy hour. We did get pretty hungry one day and ordered a pizza. It was pretty good for a Maldivian pizza! We had no problem eating it up. The view made it even better!

Globalist Happy Hour

If you hold top-tier status with Hyatt, you are invited to a Globalist happy hour every evening between 5 and 7. Each night, they had a different set of canapes (an “appetizer,” “entree,” and “dessert”), as well as an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink off of their Globalist happy hour menu.

It was a great little snack, and it actually was pretty substantial. One night, they had delicious mini-chicken wraps that really hit the spot. I also looked forward to the little dessert that came with it.

In terms of drinks, I tried to be varied throughout our stay. The Maldives is a dry country, so alcohol is banned outside of the resorts. The cocktails weren’t my favorite, but, given that it’s a dry country with workers who probably don’t really drink (I am making assumptions), the drinks actually weren’t half-bad. I also had a milkshake one night, as that was on the menu. It was more milk than ice cream. Would I get it again? Probably. Would it be my first choice? No. Stick the actual cocktails and mocktails, you’ll be more than satisfied.

I also enjoyed the happy hour because we got to meet fellow Globalists. We met a couple who live in San Francisco. One is an engineer for Apple, and the other runs a non-profit. We ended up talking for well over an hour, as they got there the day before we left. If you are reading, hello!

Park Hyatt Maldives Food & Drink Conclusion

As you can see, there are a variety of eateries set up around the island. Thankfully, you have a wide variety of food and drinks to choose from. For a weeklong stay, I don’t think you’d get bored with the Park Hyatt Maldives food, but some people may find it difficult to not be able to eat somewhere that isn’t associated with the resort. However, I really enjoyed the Park Hyatt Maldives food!

What do you think about eating in a remote place like the Maldives? Is this something that you would do?

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