I’ve Watched Dubai’s Food Scene Evolve Over the Past Decade. It’s Never Been Better.

Around 200 nationalities call Dubai home: The city’s dining scene has always reflected that multicultural makeup, with cafeterias, canteens and low-key restaurants serving everything from Egyptian seafood to Nepali momos, Persian grills, and Indian thalis. But when I first moved here 11 years ago, high-end dining felt largely limited to imported concepts, outposts from big-name international chefs, and fine-dining restaurants within luxury hotels. In the years since, there has been something of a culinary renaissance here, thanks to incredibly talented homegrown chefs who’ve opened restaurants that stand alongside—and often compete with—the big global names. They’ve built communities of food lovers, earned well-deserved plaudits, and even picked up Michelin stars along the way.

Today, the dining scene in Dubai is filled with innovation, creativity, and an appreciation for culture, heritage, and authenticity. Here are some of our favorite restaurants and food heroes making the city’s culinary diversity more accessible and exciting than ever.

Arabian Tea House

My first stop whenever I have friends and family visiting me in Dubai is Arabian Tea House. And it never disappoints. There are a couple of branches, but my favorite is in the Jumeirah 2 neighborhood, connected to the ruins of a 1,000-year-old caravansary at the Jumeirah Archaeological Site and surrounded by clouds of pink bougainvillea.

It’s open all day, but the breakfasts here are extraordinary: huge sharing trays loaded with little dishes of falafel, tahini, labneh, cheese, bean stew, crispy halloumi, and more. It’s all accompanied by sesame-topped flat bread hot from the tandoor (sometimes in the shape of a heart, if they take a particular shine to you). Whenever it looks like you’re about to finish one, another miraculously appears.

Breakfast is best accompanied by a pot of sweet spiced milky karak tea or a fresh lime-and-mint smoothie. Staff walk round the restaurant perfuming the air with frankincense smoke at regular intervals, and it’s one of the loveliest introductions you can have to the city.

Canvas Gelato

Ice cream–making didn’t come naturally to Canvas Gelato founder Ahmad Al Marri. “I always wondered why nobody in Dubai was making gelato or ice cream from scratch, so I decided to experiment at home with a few recipe books,” he says. One five-day course in Dubai and an advanced gelato course in Bologna, Italy, later, he launched his Canvas Gelato company in 2017.

There is no brick-and-mortar shop, but you can taste Al Marri’s gelato at a number of restaurants around Dubai (including Mirzam, Kinoya, and Milk bakery), and you can also order pints for delivery, even to hotels (via Canvas’s website or Instagram).

The menu features flavors such as Arabic coffee and karak chai and biscuits, but Al Marri also enjoys experimenting with unusual combinations, looking outside the dessert realm for ideas. “If a flavor combination works in a salad, there’s no reason it shouldn’t work in another dish,” he says. French duck-fat caramels inspired one of his quirkier recipes, an ice cream infused with caramel made from smoked beef tallow and candied beef bacon. “Some of our unusual flavors work really well,” says Al Marri. “Others are more of a learning opportunity, to say the least.”

Gerbou

Emirati cuisine has long been underrepresented on the Dubai dining scene, but restaurant Gerbou, opened in early 2025 in a former 1980s-era community center and connected to a collection of art studios, aims to change that. The restaurant’s menu of traditional favorites and contemporary takes on local dishes cleverly combines modernity with a sense of nostalgia.

Try the harees, a porridge-like dish made from cracked wheat and lamb, and the chicken margooga, a comforting, rustic spiced stew, for classic flavors. The dessert menu is a great introduction to popular Emirati sweets. The chebab cheesecake is based on an Emirati breakfast pancake, with added saffron and cardamom biscuits, whipped white chocolate, and local date syrup; the Emirati aseeda is a classic dessert made from organic Abu Dhabi pumpkins, rosewater, saffron, and cardamom, offering a real taste of a local home.

Jun’s

“Growing up in North America to immigrant parents, I lived in a dual world,” says chef Kelvin Cheung, who spent his childhood in the kitchens of his father’s Hong Kong–style Cantonese restaurants in Toronto and Chicago. As a result, the dishes at Jun’s have roots in North American Asian food, a cuisine Cheung says uses easy-to-source ingredients and nontraditional flavor combinations.

At Downtown Dubai restaurant Jun’s, the third-generation chef serves dishes such as heirloom carrots with smoked labneh, a vegetarian homage to the bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese that his mother fell in love with after immigrating to North America. Another is lobster pani puri with fragrant Macanese curry. “Macanese curry is a staple of Hong Kong café culture and was one of our family favorites to bring back a taste of home,” he says. Become a regular, and the fortune cookie at the end of your meal might have a personalized message inside.

Kinoya

When recounting the story of how she brought her restaurant to life, chef Neha Mishra of Kinoya tells me that she “thinks in noodles and broth”—and Dubai diners can be grateful she does. Kinoya is a homegrown success story that has expanded to London’s luxury department store Harrods. But its origins are humble, beginning as a private supper club that evolved into a full-blown restaurant in 2021.

Mishra attributes Kinoya’s popularity to no corners being cut: Chicken-based broth is made from locally sourced ingredients, and vegetables come from local farms. There’s much for non-meat-eaters to celebrate here, and the umami-packed vegetarian ramen is a favorite. Mishra developed Kinoya’s vegetarian ramen after her youngest son was born. “I was working 16-hour days to open my London restaurants, and my body was depleted. All I wanted was a bowl that would make me feel nourished, so I made the vegetarian ramen recipe. It’s made from the heart, like all our bowls are,” she says.

Lento

“Not a burger joint” is how Emirati chef Faisal Naser describes Lento. His burgers are excellent, and his Thursdays-only fish burger—made with battered local hamour and served with a side of minted mushy peas—has become local legend. But he’s keen to showcase other dishes inspired by the food he grew up eating in the UAE, like his masala omelet paratha roll and falafel served in sourdough pita with battered potatoes and fermented chili sauce.

“Dubai’s food scene is all about passion, innovation, and a commitment to quality,” says Naser. All three are in abundant evidence in his friendly restaurant on Dubai’s Al Wasl Road, a thoroughfare that cuts through the residential Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim neighborhoods, where you’ll find many of the city’s favorite homegrown restaurants and cafés.

Middle Child

Located in a converted warehouse in Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue creative district, Middle Child seems to be everyone’s current crush, combining a light-filled casual restaurant with a gourmet grocery and bookstore. The menu is small but works well when one of you might be in the mood for a light lunch and the other a big comforting dish of pasta, in this case a pappardelle bolognese with beef ragu slow-cooked for five hours.

Opened one year ago by Beirut-born former Google employee Lynn Hazim, the cheery, light-filled restaurant feels like a burst of sunshine, as do the genuinely friendly service and the comforting food. The labneh yuzukosho dip is best scooped up with chunks of focaccia, the celery and date salad light and refreshing with a satisfying crunch of caramelized walnuts, and the big plate of hand-cut, house-made fries goes well with everything.

Vegetarians take note: There’s often an off-menu porcini mushroom tagliatelle available. It’s a flavor-packed joy, and a welcome addition to those of us who have long side-eyed our neighbor’s pappardelle, wishing there was a nonmeat option on the menu. Save space for dessert, too. The classic cheesecake is perfectly balanced, and the roasted rice soft serve alone is worth the trip.

Mirzam

There’s a sense of magic in Mirzam’s factory, boutique, and café in the industrial Al Quoz neighborhood. It’s where premium cocoa beans are turned into chocolate in an almost alchemical process. Mirzam’s bars, truffles, pralines, and caramels follow secret family recipes and are made from ingredients valued by Arabian spice traders and locally grown produce. “Our Tamr Truffles are made with UAE-grown dates, quinoa, and olive oil, allowing us to use under-sized local dates, which are becoming more common due to climate change,” Mirzam chief chocolate officer Kathy Johnston says. The result is a plant-based caramel filling, gently spiced with ginger, fennel, and pomegranate. To celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2026, Mirzam is launching a new collection of chocolate coins embossed with designs inspired by the ancient trade routes, currencies, and dhows that appear in the brand’s heritage-based storytelling.

Orfali Bros

Orfali Bros is only five years old, yet has had a huge impact on Dubai’s homegrown dining scene. Run by Syrian brothers Mohamad, Wassim, and Omar Orfali, the restaurant was originally intended as a culinary space where, according to Mohamad, “We break the rules but respect tradition.”

It’s a recipe that resonates, and the restaurant is often booked weeks in advance. After the opening of Three Bros, a new, more casual restaurant a few steps away (home to à la carte selections including the now-legendary OB cheeseburger), Orfali Bros has recently moved to a degustation format, with three tasting menus: Aromas of Aleppo, the OG Menu, and the Voyage Menu.

The OG Menu features favorites from the restaurant’s early days, including the corn bomb, a complex, two-bite morsel packed with the rich sweetness of corn kernels and crispy strands of fried corn silk, topped with Parmigiano–Reggiano and huitlacoche, and a spicy bulghur salad with shiso and Aleppo chili paste.

Opt for the Voyage Menu for a journey through complex yet delicate dishes, like savory baklava with caviar, crème fraîche, and Aleppo pistachio, and the sweet-meets-umami king crab with caramelized onions, brown butter, and garum.

“The cuisine reflects our personal experiences, emotions, and memories,” Mohammad Orfali says. The food has clearly captured international attention: The restaurant received a well-deserved Michelin star in 2024.

Sufret Maryam

Born in Palestine and raised in Jordan, Salam Daqqaq has a deft touch with Levantine cuisine. Her menu at Sufret Maryam is a mix of bold flavors and delicate execution, resulting in dishes created with love and designed to be shared.

An evolution of her original restaurant Bait Maryam, a homey setting with floral armchairs and shelves lined with knickknacks, Sufret Maryam is a sleeker, more elevated venue in Wasl 51, a high-end foodie strip mall in the Jumeirah 1 neighborhood, home to several other excellent restaurants including Orfali Bros (see below).

Classic dishes feature all the flavors of their home-style origins, but are presented in more contemporary ways. Soft, pillowy flatbread with dough fermented for 48 hours arrives hot from the wood-fired oven, topped with cloves of sweet, sticky garlic confit. Baba ghanoush, usually served as a dip, comes in smoky chunks with ruby-red pomegranate seeds, edible flowers, and micro-greens. Shish barak dumplings, made from Daqqaq’s mother’s recipe, are silky pockets of juicy meat, drizzled with mint and garlic yogurt, and crunchy pine nuts. And molokhia (jute mallow leaves usually prepared as a stew across the region), is reimagined here in a dish that’s lighter, less bitter, and zhuzhed up with crispy garlic chips and lemon caviar.

Trèsind Studio

If you’re going to spend heavily on one tasting menu in Dubai, make it chef Himanshu Saini’s at Trèsind Studio. One of only two restaurants with three Michelin stars in Dubai, Trèsind Studio strikes a perfect equilibrium of serving extraordinary cuisine with a humble friendliness that’s refreshing for a restaurant that’s received such an accolade.

Menus take diners on a journey through different regions of India, from coasts to mountains and everything in between. Each dish—featuring ingredients like tangerine flowers, curry leaf vinaigrette and baby corn caviar—is as delicate as it is delicious, made with love by a team who care deeply about what they’re doing. Dining here is very special indeed, with flavor combinations that are complex yet beautifully balanced. It almost feels as if there’s magic at work in the kitchen.

This article was originally published in 2025 and most recently updated on September 25, 2026, with current information.

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