An airy, biophilic tapas restaurant inside Boca, in the heart of the city dubaiAfter-work crowd drinking at a bar in ‘s Financial District. I met my friends for dinner downstairs in the private dining room in the restaurant’s wine cellar. Many bottles in the collection MoroccoLebanon and elsewhere in the world Middle East and North Africa. We start with oysters collected from Dibba Bay in Fujairah, the easternmost point in the world. United Arab Emiratesin the bay Oman. opened ten years ago Boca was a pioneer in using materials sourced from all seven emirates. Oysters share a menu that includes ingredients found only in the United Arab Emirates, such as hansur, a mountain herb often used in salads, and kingfish from the Persian Gulf, served ceviche-style. Technically Boca Spanish but its roots in Dubai and commitment to local ingredients make it uniquely Emirati.

Museum of the Future

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Boca’s desert herb and cherry tomato salad

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Until recently, Boca’s approach was unusual for Dubai. Since 2001, when Gordon Ramsay flew to raise the curtain on Verre, Hilton Dubai CreekThe city’s culinary scene is dominated by celebrity chefs who open swanky restaurants inside equally swanky hotels. In the years that followed, Michel Rostang, Nobu Matsuhisa and Massimo Bottura lent their names to restaurants in the UAE, creating a food scene with an international reputation for ostentation, excess and exorbitant prices. Certainly the restaurants were very busy; Ramsay’s Tatin, a caramelized apple tarte served straight out of the oven and in a copper pan, was sold out every night. But the names and concepts were all imported and disconnected from anything truly local. For years, this meant that Dubai’s only real food and drink options were famous, white-tablecloth restaurants or modest restaurants serving shawarmas, pani puri and cheese-laden manakeesh, located in neighborhoods devoid of skyscraper hotels.

Now there is a third way. Chefs and restaurateurs from the UAE and around the world recognized a gap in the market that would allow them to showcase regional ingredients while pursuing their own culinary passions. The last few years have seen the high-quality local restaurant scene grow rapidly, with the COVID pandemic sparking a desire to support local restaurants.

Australian cafe Tom & Serg

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Jumeirah area

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Take Boca. It is the brainchild of Dubai-born Jordanian citizen Omar Shihab, who has become one of the UAE’s leading sustainability champions by working with local and international government bodies. “It didn’t matter what cuisine we served,” he says. “We wanted to highlight the quality ingredients we can get locally.” This mentality is shared by Shaw Lash, a cheerful Texan. Mexican The chef moved to Dubai eight years ago. At the end of 2022, she and her Dutch Syrian husband, Tarek Islam, Lila Taqueria It’s on Jumeirah Beach Road, right next to a small shop serving more local fare like shawarma. They followed with them Lila Molino + Cafe On the popular Alserkal Boulevard, a warehouse complex. “There wasn’t as much home-grown, chef-driven food as there is now, so I always thought Dubai had potential for the kind of Mexican food that I do,” says Lash. He and his team grow most of their ingredients and work with local farmers to source the tomatoes, tomatoes, peppers, zucchinis and more that spice up their plates. He and his team also make their own tortillas fresh every morning. Lila Taqueria’s mainstay is a local red snapper served in two pieces with guajillo chile paste and cilantro.

Migi Afurong, chef de partie of Kooya Filipino Eatery

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Tom & Serg’s Buddha Bowl with tofu and kimchi

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Further inland, a plethora of international cuisine can now be found, including Peruvian hole-in-the-wall, among the modest maze of Jumeirah Lakes Towers (JLT), a cluster of skyscrapers rising from a series of artificial lakes. Fusion Ceviche and Greek tavern Mythos Kouzina & Grill. This is also where Palestinian chef Salam Daqqaq opened his cozy Levantine restaurant in 2017. Feed MaryIt means “house of mother Mary” in Arabic. International praise from Turkey Michelin Guide And The 50 Best Restaurants in the World encouraged him to expand the next door. He opened a more upscale restaurant last summer Virgin Mary Across town, in the luxury Jumeirah complex at Wasl 51. Its most important piece is a sufretna, a common dining table for 20 people. The star of the menu is habra Geceh, a silky pate-like dish of shredded raw beef mixed with spices. It’s the perfect texture to spread on freshly baked saj flatbread. These are such places; flashy hotel restaurants– that’s what many of us Dubai natives started looking for during the pandemic. Not all of them have liquor licenses like the big ticket spots, but they sure have heaps of spirit.

Coastal view from Arabian Fish House

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Molokhia bel zeit, jute mallow dish with lemon caviar from Sufret Maryam

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What Serbian restaurateur Stasha Toncev brings to the table is soul. He moved to Dubai to work in 2010. Armani Restaurant and then Hakkasanbut it found its way when it launched in 2018 21 grams. The original location of the small 25-seat Balkan bistro was in the residential Umm Suqeim district, steps away from a popular public beach, in the shadow of the iconic sail-shaped restaurant. Burj Al Arab hotel. Once I was 21 grams dilated, I would usually finish my weekends with a walk on the beach at sunset and a casual dinner there. Four years later, when lockdown restrictions were lifted, Toncev transferred the venue to a larger space nearby. He and head chef Milan Jurkovic serve up what he describes as “honest, healthy soul food inspired by the mountains, pastures and seas of the Balkan peninsula, prepared with centuries-old recipes, modern cuisine and seasonal ingredients.” It’s busy on weekends, so a no-reservations policy means queuing for a table and all-day breakfast dishes like scrambled eggs with tomato, pepper and onion sauce with beef chorizo ​​and soft cow cheese, a favorite of Emiratis and expats alike.

Texan chef Shaw Lash, owner of Lila Taqueria and Lilo Molino + Café

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21 gram kitchen

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Head to see Tom Arnel to get a taste of breakfast from someone who knows a thing or two about brunch and coffee. Australian Having previously worked at various Michelin star hotspots such as Arzak, Native is adept at growing local businesses in Dubai. Over more than a dozen years, he has opened 12 Dubai-specific restaurant brands in a total of 22 locations. In the first Australian cafe, Tom and SergIn Al Quoz, a neighborhood known for its warehouses, daily lines prove that a great menu will be popular no matter where. “Australia has a great cafe culture with gourmet food for breakfast and lunch,” he says, “And I thought I would bring that to the UAE because at the time it was full of franchises and international food brands. Very mechanical food that I didn’t like.” The expat community has gotten over it. My multicultural foodie friends and I were more than happy to line up for Arnel’s pop-up Rule the Roast deal, which features 150-day aged Angus rib eye steak and Western Australian leg of lamb, complete with all the trimmings. The raucous atmosphere only added to the fun.

Beach, JBR

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Chefs Mahmoud Alqam and Salam Daqqaq at Sufret Maryam

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But no conversation about the new wave of home-grown global cuisine in Dubai would be complete without mentioning Filipino food, which until recently has been underrepresented in the city despite its large local population. That has changed with the 2022 opening of JP Anglo, a globe-trotting chef and social media star who moved to Dubai four years ago. Kooya Filipino Restaurant Following a series of successful pop-up dinners during the pandemic. The menu in its charming bistro, Philippines‘ special casseroles and deep-fried dishes, always served with dipping sauce. He makes generous use of sour ingredients such as vinegar and calamansi, a lime native to the country. One of Kooya’s bestsellers is chicken inasal, a dish originating from Anglo’s hometown of Bacolod. Grilled and marinated with coconut vinegar, lemongrass and garlic, the dish is served with papaya salad and garlic rice. For a sweet ending, order the peanut-covered butter “sandwich.” “I would like to be one of the Filipino chefs who will help elevate our cuisine and hopefully one day bring it to the level of other cuisines like Chinese,” says Anglo. ThaiAnd Indian.”

The counter at Lila Molino + Café

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A dish of spring rolls and brisket at Kooya Filipino Eatery

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There’s one cuisine that’s chronically underrepresented in Dubai: Emirati food. Few visitors to Dubai seek out dishes like machboos, a special blend of spicy chicken rice, because Emirati cuisine outside the home is relatively rare. Sahar Parham Al Awadhi is trying to change this. Poster boy of Emirati chefs wins inaugural best pastry chef award The World’s Top 50 Middle East and North Africa He received the award in 2022, becoming the first Emirati chef to work at Burj Al Arab. He is a consultant gerbouopened in November As one of the most important new dining destinations of the year in Dubai. The restaurant, whose name means “welcome to our humble home”, is a modern Emirati restaurant located in a building renovated in 1987. Located in Nad Al Sheba, near the city’s famous race track, the hotel is surrounded by historic blunderbuss trees, symbols of Emirati culture. The menu includes makboos with local chicken and tomato chutney, and other Emirati dishes intertwined with the Indian, Levantine and Mediterranean flavors Sahar experienced while growing up in this relatively young country.

“There is always a misconception that only Emiratis should cook and pioneer Emirati food,” he says. “I disagree. Especially when we see Indians cooking Japanese And Singaporeans cooking Italian. “Everyone should cook what they are passionate about.”