Drive past Address Montgomerie on a Friday evening this month and you will find cars stacked along the entrance, string lights strung over a covered lawn, and a giant screen throwing highlights across a garden that was never meant to be permanent. Ask anyone at the bar what happened to the clubhouse everyone has been talking about since last autumn, and you will get some version of the same answer: still coming.
If you live in Emirates Hills, you have probably followed this story without meaning to. Phileas Fogg's, the family-friendly pub that had been part of Address Montgomerie for years, closed in October 2025. The hotel's own statement at the time pointed to a court order tied to unresolved operational and financial issues at the outlet, a detail confirmed by Caterer Middle East. Within weeks, Solutions Group, the hospitality operator behind Lock, Stock & Barrel, Ula, Wavehouse and Asia Asia, announced it had taken over the space and would reopen it as something bigger: The Hills Club, a country club concept with a sports bar, restaurant, a dedicated glasshouse event space, an outdoor lawn, and a kids' arcade. The target was Q2 2026.
Q2 ended in June. It is now the middle of August, and the venue's own site still describes The Hills Club as a construction site, with the interim pop-up, The Garden Project, carrying the space through the delay. That gap between what was promised and what has actually opened is the thing worth knowing if you live inside the gates and have been waiting to make a dinner reservation.
What The Hills Club Was Supposed to Be
The pitch, as Solutions Group described it to trade press and later to Cosmopolitan Middle East and What's On, was a genuine neighborhood fixture rather than another Dubai concept restaurant. Breakfast after school drop-off, lunch with friends, a pint after a round of golf, dinner with the whole family, all under one roof with wood finishes and greenery blurring the line between indoors and outdoors. Reporting at the time noted whispers of an in-house padel club joining the mix.
That ambition matters because of who is behind it. Solutions Group's existing portfolio runs from Lock, Stock & Barrel's live music nights to Asia Asia's brunch crowds, concepts built on repeat visits rather than one-off buzz. A country club version of that formula, sitting inside Emirates Hills itself rather than requiring a drive to Dubai Marina or JBR, would genuinely change where residents spend a Saturday. It is also why the delay stings a little more than a typical soft-opening slip. People were planning around a spring date that came and went.
The Garden, Not the Clubhouse
What is actually running right now is The Garden Project, and it has evolved since its winter debut. When it launched, it was pitched as a seasonal pop-up, a marketplace by day and a bar by night, built to hold the space while construction continued through the cooler months. Six months on, with Dubai deep into summer heat, the operator has covered and air-conditioned the garden rather than closing it down, keeping it open daily with live music, food from Freedom Pizza, and sport on a giant screen.
The programming has kept pace with the calendar too. The Rugby Championship, the annual Southern Hemisphere tournament that runs across August and into autumn, is airing on those screens round by round for the length of the competition, alongside the kind of quiz nights and DJ sets that were part of the original pitch. It reads less like a placeholder and more like a venue that has decided to make itself useful while it waits.
None of this is the glasshouse or the arcade. It is a garden with a roof and a screen, standing in for a clubhouse that has now missed its own announced quarter. For residents, the practical takeaway is simple: if you are planning around The Hills Club actually opening, there is no confirmed date beyond "coming," and the operator's own language on this has not changed in months.
The Established Option Two Minutes Away
While the Montgomerie side of Emirates Hills works through its transition, the neighborhood's other golf club has kept its full lineup running without interruption. Emirates Golf Club, which borders Emirates Hills along with the Montgomerie course, has four settled outlets that residents have relied on for years:
- Carine, a French Mediterranean restaurant on the first floor of the clubhouse, curated by Chef Izu Ani, with breakfast added on weekends and separate lunch and dinner hours through the week
- Jones the Grocer, the Australian deli and café concept open to members and non-members, known locally for its all-day breakfast menu and grab-and-go counter
- Spike Bar, the club's sports bar with sixteen screens plus a three-meter terrace screen, daily happy hour, and a Sunday roast that has become a fixture of its own
- BŌTA Cafe and Roseleaf Café, the club's more casual bakery and snack outlets for anyone stopping in outside a full meal
None of this is new, and that is the point. While the Montgomerie side sorts out its clubhouse, Emirates Golf Club's dining bench has not moved, and it sits close enough that choosing between the two is a matter of which side of the community you are already on.
What This Means If You Are Planning Around It
The honest read is that Emirates Hills currently has two golf clubs on its border and one clubhouse in limbo. If you are hosting out-of-town guests this month, or simply deciding where to watch the next round of rugby, Carine and Spike Bar are open on their normal schedules tonight. The Garden Project is open too, air-conditioned now and running its full summer program, but it is still standing in for a bigger venue that has not yet materialized on the timeline its own operator announced.
Nobody outside Solutions Group has a firm date for when that changes. What is worth watching is whether the covered, air-conditioned format of the garden becomes a longer-term fixture in its own right, or whether it disappears the moment the glasshouse next door is finally ready. Either way, the neighborhood's actual dining picture this August is more layered than a single headline opening would suggest, and knowing which venue is running on which timeline is the difference between a wasted trip and a good evening.
For anyone weighing a longer-term move into this part of Dubai, changes like this, new operators, delayed openings, shifting amenities around an established community, are exactly the kind of detail that does not show up on a listing page. Leigh Williamson tracks these shifts across Emirates Hills and Dubai's other prime enclaves as part of ongoing client advisory. Let's connect if you would like a clearer picture of what is actually happening on the ground here.
