S5, E55: Dubai Food Tips From the Chefs Who Know It Best

In episode 3 of Unpacked’s Dubai series, guest host Nicola Chilton pulls up a seat at the table to meet two chefs who are building a homegrown Dubai food scene. Kathy Johnston, chief chocolate officer at Mirzam, explains how Dubai’s spice-trade history inspires the bean-to-bar chocolate she makes in Al Quoz, from Alphonso mango bars to the best-selling Emirati collection. Then Mohammad Orfali, the Syrian-born chef behind Michelin-starred Orfali Bros. Bistro, talks about breaking the rules with “freedom of cooking,” what Dubai cuisine means, and the local farms changing how chefs cook.

Topics discussed in this episode

• How Dubai’s spice-trade history inspired Mirzam, Dubai’s first bean-to-bar chocolate maker
• The Mirzam Maps and Monsters collection, and the sea-monster stories that spice traders told
• Locally grown ingredients in Emirati chocolate: honey, dates, date sugar, strawberries, and raspberries from vertical farms
• Emirati desserts, including aseeda, ragag, and halwa, and the history of Emirati cuisine
• Where to eat in Dubai: Orfali Bros. Bistro, Middle Child, Lila Taqueria, and Khadak
• Chef Mohammad Orfali on opening Orfali Bros. Bistro in 2021 and why Dubai cuisine is “freedom of cooking”
• Why Dubai’s local farms and imported ingredients make the city a paradise for chefs, and where the food scene is headed

Frequently asked questions

What is Mirzam?

Mirzam is a Dubai-born, bean-to-bar chocolate maker founded in 2016. Its factory in Al Quoz includes a cafe and boutique, and its recipes are inspired by the spice trade routes that passed through Dubai Creek. According to Kathy Johnston, the name comes from one of the stars traders used to navigate by.

What Emirati flavors does Mirzam chocolate use?

The Emirati collection, wrapped by local artist Saeed Almadani, is Mirzam’s best-selling range. Each bar reflects an Emirati dessert, including aseeda (pumpkin) and ragag, a thin, crispy bread. Another favorite is the Date and Fennel bar, made with locally grown dates and fennel seeds inside a thin 62 percent dark chocolate shell.

What is Dubai cuisine?

Chef Mohammad Orfali calls it “freedom of cooking": food that reflects the mix of immigrants who live in the city, where dishes should be delicious no matter where they come from.

Can you grow food in Dubai?

Yes. Dubai’s chefs increasingly buy from local farms, including vertical farms. Mohammad Orfali says most farms produce from about November until April, and that fresh local cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, corn, turnip, and kale taste noticeably different from imported produce.

Which Dubai restaurants do the guests recommend?

Kathy Johnston recommends Orfali Bros. Bistro, Middle Child at Alserkal Avenue, Lila Taqueria, and Khadak. Orfali Bros. Bistro holds a Michelin star and ranks among the Middle East and North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants.

People, places, and resources in this episode

• Nicola Chilton’s author page on Afar
• 9 Exciting Food Experiences in Dubai—Afar
• The 9 Best New Restaurants in Dubai—Afar
• Beyond the Skyscrapers and Supercars: How to Spend 4 Days in the Dubai Locals Love—Afar
• A Perfect Day in Dubai, According to Locals—Afar
• Dubai Travel Tips From a Longtime Resident and a Native Emirati Chef—Unpacked by Afar
• Mirzam Chocolate Makers
• Orfali Bros. Bistro—Middle East and North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants
• Middle Child
• Lila Taqueria
• Khadak

Full transcript

Nicola Chilton: This is Unpacked by Afar. And I’m your guest host, Nicola Chilton. I’m here for episode 3 of our 4 episode series on Dubai, a place I’ve called home for more than a decade. Today, we’re pulling up a seat at the table. Dubai has long been known for its celebrity chefs and global concepts, and you can still splash out on a fabulous tasting menu by an international big name. But in recent years, a more homegrown food scene has cropped up. Here. Chefs who have made Dubai their home are bringing their own cultures to the plate. In this episode, we’ll meet 2 of the city’s favorite food heroes.

My first guest today is Kathy Johnston, the chief chocolate officer at Mirzam. One of my favorite home grown Dubai businesses and possibly one of my favorite people in Dubai. Mirzam makes bean to bar chocolate in a factory in the Al Quoz district, with ingredients sourced along the Old Arabian spice trade routes. The factory includes a cafe and a boutique, and every recipe is deeply rooted in the culture of the UAE and founded in really intriguing stories.

Kathy, welcome to Unpacked. Thank you for joining us.

Kathy Johnston: Thank you for having me.

Nicola: You have a job that basically sounds like somebody made it up in their dreams. Like, who else in the world is a chief chocolate officer? I don’t know if anyone else exists, but you are involved in everything from production to recipes to storytelling to packaging for this brilliant Dubai born chocolate company called Mirzam. And I genuinely believe this is one of the best loved local brands. So please tell give us an introduction to Mirzam.

Kathy: So it’s my 10th birthday in a few days. So we started in 2016, and the whole premise of the business was to create a food gift that people could take away with them from Dubai. That was a world class quality product, on par with the best chocolate makers around the world, and really, truly represented the stories of our home in the UAE. So it started with looking into how we could connect chocolate and give it a sense of place here in Emirati history. So we looked at the spice route and spice trade. There is thousands of years of evidence of travelers coming through this region, long before it was called Dubai, long before the UAE was here bringing spices from all over the world, traveling usually by sea, arriving here by sea, following the stars for navigation.

Mirzam is the name of one of those stars, and then trading them with people who would take them up to Europe. And, you know, I tried to give. Always a couple of examples to really explain the weight of that story. You wouldn’t have tiramisu in Italy if coffee beans hadn’t found their way there. You wouldn’t have chillies in India if the chillies didn’t find their way there. And these things happened because of the spice trading history that came through this little creekside town we call home.

Nicola: It’s such a fascinating story, and one that I think a lot of people are actually unaware of. What I always love about what you’re doing at Mirzam is the way you’re integrating those stories into the products. So you make everything from bean to bar in your chocolate factory in Al Quoz, which is the industrial part of Dubai. Tell me a little bit more about some of those stories. I’ve always been fascinated by your Sea Monsters collection.

Kathy: We do have a Maps and Monsters collection. They’re really fun because the Arab traders. And if you spend any time in this region, I think one thing everyone goes away with is, you know, falling in love with a sense of storytelling. We don’t have long histories of being able to print books or record stories. So that verbal storytelling and the monsters were this part of storytelling, that the spice traders would sail back into the creek and tell their customers they’d been attacked by monsters, or had to overcome a monster of some sort to be able to gather up the spices that they had on the back of their dhow. And so we did a collection that was dedicated to this story of monsters.

Nicola: Fascinating stories. And I always love how you you go out and you speak to cultural researchers and archaeologists and you get into the nerdiness of it. And I think that’s a really beautiful thing.

Kathy: Yeah, I think it’s one of my favorite things. Like I grew up in Dubai. I’ve been here my whole life. I’m so proud of everything that Dubai has been able to achieve and the wonderful fun. You know, totally cosmopolitan and all the best ways that the city has has grown into. This is a very real place with real people and real stories. And I treasure that we get to meet people from all over the world all the time and through chocolate, even more so. Everybody is excited to try chocolate, and we get cacao beans from India. And there’s a very long and interesting trading history between the UAE and India. So we make a collection of recipes inspired by the monsoon trade, because this was when Dubai would be able to get Alphonso mangoes, for example, was at that time of year that the wind was strong enough to blow the dhows back from India to Dubai. And so Alphonso mangoes were this special treat. And it’s really close to a lot of older generations hearts here. That was the fruit that they had. So we make a mango chocolate bar and each one has about 6 freeze dried Alphonso mangoes in it. And recently, with the improvements in agricultural technology in the UAE, we’ve been able to get more and more ingredients that are being grown locally. In the early days of the company, I would never have been able to make a recipe with strawberries or raspberries, and now they are being grown in these very fantastic, very environmentally friendly vertical farms and similar things here. So we have a collection called made from the UAE, which highlights the ingredients that we’ve been able to get locally.

Nicola: And what are you currently sourcing locally?

Kathy: We get lots of locally grown honey. This Emirati honey has a fantastic local industry that’s growing. We get a really beautiful wildflower honey from the mountains nearby. Then we are buying a lot of UAE grown dates. The UAE, even though, you know there’s palm trees on an awful lot of marketing collateral, we actually are one of the smaller date producing countries in the world. And we grow really specific varieties of dates and not often at commercial quantities or qualities. We also get date sugar, which is made from the dates that are too small and date paste. We can get locally as well. Raspberries, strawberries, and then a lot of the stories that we tell.

Nicola: So you spent pretty much all of your life here. You grew up here. You must have seen things evolve and grow and change. How do you think you’ve grown and evolved and changed with Dubai?

Kathy: You know, finding food and manufacturing really changed my life. There was a time when Dubai was growing very, very fast in 2006, 2007, and I didn’t feel like I was able to get that connection to land that was really important to me. And now working more with food in 2 food areas where the connection to the farmer is really important. You can’t get great chocolate that has no flavoring or interventions. If the farmer hasn’t been able to grow great cocoa pods and harvest and ferment properly. Every time I get to spend time on a farm, I just like. I remember why I do this.

Nicola: So in the second half of this episode, we’re going to be speaking with a mutual friend of ours, Mohammad Orfali, who has been really key in the evolution of Dubai’s homegrown restaurant scene. Who else do you think is doing really interesting things in the city in terms of food and beverage? And for someone who’s maybe coming to Dubai for the first time?

Kathy: I mean, Mohammad Orfali and his his brothers are doing exceptional work, and I think it’s some of the best food in the world. So definitely if you can get a reservation, don’t miss out on going there. Um, Middle Child at Alserkal Avenue, run by Lynn Hazim. She has this beautiful story of growing up in Lebanon where the produce and the farming is just, it’s one of the, the great agricultural bowls of the world. She makes very delicious, cozy food. So don’t miss out on going there. I also love all of the work that Shaw from Lila Taqueria is doing. I think she is probably the chef in Dubai who is most connected to using locally grown ingredients and being true to nature, and I also would make sure not to miss out on learning more about the international cuisine that has a really beautiful history that, you know, grew along with Dubai’s size over the years, especially Indian food, South Indian food. That connection that the UAE has with India is exceptional. So I would go to Khadak, which is run by 2 chefs that I just I admire so much how creative their ingredients are, their recipes. They do a lot of work with all sorts of different local farms and local chefs and make fantastic food.

Nicola: So this is another question that I wanted to ask you because you have a range of chocolate bars, the Emirati range. So that’s obviously deeply rooted in Emirati cuisine. I’d like to know about that. And also a little bit about Emirati cuisine itself, because it’s very underrepresented here. We’re going to be speaking with another friend, Sahar, brilliant Emirati chef. She’s got she’s on another episode of, um, of Unpacked. She’ll be telling us more about that. But tell me a bit about this, the Emirati collection and why it was important to you to create that.

Kathy: I think I was surprised after we launched it, that it became our best selling range, and it’s still our best selling collection of chocolate bars. It’s wrapped by a local artist, Saeed Almadani, and each one of the recipes reflect a different Emirati dessert. So we have aseeda, the pumpkin pie, halwa cabeza. And ragag. Ragag is not always technically a dessert. It can also be a savory. But we know we take the crushed pieces of ragag bread, which is sort of an overcooked crepe. It’s very crispy, thin pieces of bread, and we mix them up with milk chocolate. But you know, I’ve been here my whole life and researching these desserts still taught me things. So, you know, I knew about halwa, I’d eaten a lot of halwa, but.

Nicola: Tell us a little bit about halwa. For some of our listeners who may not ever have had the opportunity to try it.

Kathy: There’s no other way to describe it except for a hot, mushy jelly with all of the spices and nuts in the kitchen that you could find. It’s a little bit hard to find to get the fresh, hot halwa that’s been made in these enormous cooking copper bowls that take families hours and hours and hours to heat up and make. It’s this warm dessert when you get it fresh that you’re just tasting a different thing every time you have a spoonful of it. And it’s very true to the nature, I think, of how cuisine developed here. Very little grows here. So spices were really important because they had the shelf life. They could travel the distance they were coming through here. They helped preserve food. They helped it taste better. If it hadn’t quite lasted. It was these spices that families really protect their special recipes for the spices they put into their coffee, the spices they put into their saloona, which is a stew.

But it was, you know, there was a very small community here, so there wasn’t a lot of food history. There was no written cookbooks. There was nothing being written and handed down. The Emirati cuisine is something that’s very batch made at home. So translating that into things that other people could eat and cook in a much smaller way was very, very difficult. And I think it’s taken a lot of time and special efforts from chefs like Chef Sahar to translate those dishes into things that are easier to enjoy as an individual person sitting in a restaurant, because they’re really challenging to make an individual portion of these things that were cooked over the fireplace for the whole family, for the, you know, last 300 years.

Nicola: For someone who’s going to come to Dubai and going to come and visit you at the chocolate factory? What’s one thing that they should take away with them?

Kathy: The date and.

Nicola: The date and fennel bar. Tell me more.

Kathy: Date and Fennel Bar is from one of our original collections. It’s one of the monsters. It’s based on an old family recipe of Muslims owners who are an Emirati brother and sister, and we get locally grown dates. We smush them up with fennel seeds into a really thin paste, and the chocolate bar is half a centimeter thin. 62 percent dark chocolate. So it’s in a 2 ingredient, very thin chocolate shell has this 2 ingredient filling of locally grown dates and fennel. And it’s this aniseed. Surprising. Sweet. Absolutely addictive. Totally strange, but amazing recipe.

Nicola: It sounds like something everyone has to try.

Kathy: Absolutely.

Nicola: And that brings us to the end of our conversation with the brilliant Kathy Johnston. After the break, we’ll be back with a chef who has created some of Dubai’s most loved and most exciting neighborhood restaurants.

Welcome back. My next guest is Mohammad Orfali, one of the most highly respected chefs in town. Born in Aleppo in Syria, Mohammad opened Orfali Bros. Bistro with his 2 brothers in 2021. It quickly became one of the city’s favorite dining spots, not only for its culinary creativity, but also for its exceptionally tasty food that saw it awarded a Michelin star in 2024. He joins me today in our Dubai studio. Mohammad, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Mohammad Orfali: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Nicola: I’m really excited to have you here with us because I’ve been a big fan of your food ever since I first discovered it. Thank you. And one of the things that I want to chat about with you today is how this very dynamic international city has found its home grown soul. And I think that you’ve been quite instrumental in that. So are you ready to tell us a little bit about the Orfali hero’s journey?

Mohammad: It’s a long journey. So we opened the door for the first day. I still remember it like, you know, 14 of March 2021.

Nicola: We’re still a bit COVID.

Mohammad: Yes.

Nicola: Yeah.

Mohammad: Whereas, you know, face mask, social distance should be like about 2 meters between each tables.

Nicola: I remember Orfali Bros became kind of instantly popular. I think the community really embraced it really quickly. Did that surprise you?

Mohammad: I knew there was gonna something happen.

Nicola: I think one of the things that Orfali Bros. Brought to the city was this confidence in the home grown and I’ve. I’ve lived in Dubai for 11 years, and I remember when I first came here, if you wanted to go for a really great dinner or fine dining, generally you were going to an imported concept. You had a lot of big name chefs who had their outposts here, and I feel that what you did with Orfali was really like the first wave of this amazing new homegrown movement.

Mohammad: There are so many. We’re not we’re we’re not the first, but we are the first people, uh, let’s say more closer to the community. We’re close. Um, as much as we can because we are in the street, we’re not in the big environment. We’re not in the IFC or under the hotel. So we’re like very independent neighborhood concept. You know, it’s like, and then we have the freedom. So the style of cooking is a freedom of cooking, you know, Representing everyone in the city. Um, everyone. Everyone told me before, the opening is not going to be something or.

Nicola: Your food concept wouldn’t work or what.

Mohammad: Not, not because they don’t believe in the on the location and the concept and the corner and the street and like, you know, like, what are you doing is wrong? It’s like, I don’t think those can be, can be work. And then, um, everyone telling me it’s okay, acknowledge you did a mistake, but I believe in what I’m doing. I believe in my food. I believe in my concept. I believe in the idea. It’s going to be different. So when we say we’re breaking the rules, we’re breaking the rules. The in everything, the the style of the music, the service, the food, the, the type of the menu, you know, the illustration of the menu, um, the category of the menu, how we serving the food on the table is like, no one does that before. Like, you know, serving course by course, even they call it casual. But for me, it wasn’t casual, was more into pastrami. And, uh, that was, uh, missing in the city, like where we decide to not put anything on the menu that, you know, exists anywhere. So the menu should be, you know, very, very, very us. The first 3 weeks was challenging for me to understand what people didn’t want. Because, look, if you open something in Dubai, it’s going to be very confusing. The palate is different. Like, you know, the diversity that we have between the community, it can be taking you left and right, you know, are you catering your, your, you know, restaurant to be for Western expats, for Levant Arabs or it’s going to be for local or it’s going to be for all of them. So like all of them, they’re gonna eat burger. So we decide the first 3 weeks we don’t have a burger. So after 3 weeks, I decide to add a burger.

Nicola: And that burger became quite legendary.

Mohammad: It is. But in the beginning wasn’t like that. Also, it was very cheffy burger like, you know, very, uh, fermented mushroom ketchup and people eating it like they look at me. I wish if I eating that, you know, beef patty with cheeseburger as a cheeseburger, not with that much mix. And I listened to people after, I think 6 weeks, I turned it to be a cheeseburger. Just classic cheeseburger. And everyone was like, wow, crazy. This is amazing. So that’s why it’s always like that. Like, you know, sometimes when I invite people to try the new menu and I taken, they’re like, you know, honest feedback. They confuse me too. Because where people, they like things, People that don’t like other things, people they like most things I don’t know. It’s like. So we decide to do the things very genuine, close to the people. And then first we have to believe, is that going to be, you know, the menu on the menu, we like it or not. If we personally, we like it, we add it. So that’s why we call it freedom of cooking the food that we love to eat.

Nicola: I still remember your first menu and how diverse it was. And it was, yeah, for sure. But it because we hadn’t had anything like that before, it was really surprising and kind of exciting. I’ve seen you describe your cuisine as Dubai cuisine, and I wanted to ask you about that. So what makes it a Dubai cuisine and why is that different from what you’d find in any other major international city?

Mohammad: Dubai cuisine is, uh, look, I, I grew up in Syria, and then I moved here in 2006 and, the Dubai influenced me a lot with, you know, different cuisine that we have in the city because of the diversity of the mix that we have, uh, in the community. And then and then the variety of restaurants that we have. So my palate get developed here differently. You know, it’s not the same palate that I came with when I was in Syria, and I call it Dubai cuisine, because it’s representing the mix of immigrant that we have in the city. It’s showing the mix, showing the diversity, but more than than Dubai cuisine, freedom of cooking. So we decided to do the the things should be delicious no matter where they come from. Um, my menu right now called voyage is like, you know, voyage is a journey. Not only my journey. It’s my brother’s journey and the team journey.

Nicola: It seems to be working because this year you have all 3 of your restaurants are on the Middle East and North Africa 50 Best Restaurants list, which is an incredible achievement. Congratulations. Thank you. And you’ve held on to your Michelin star for Orfali Bros. So let’s just talk a little bit about the journey that got you here. So you and your brothers were born in Aleppo, in Syria, which is a city with an incredible culinary heritage, also a place that’s faced some extremely difficult challenges over the years. What brought you to Dubai, and how has that journey been to where you are today?

Mohammad: In the beginning I was here. Uh, I want to again international experience because I want to move to Europe and to learn some English because I don’t speak English and I want to be, I want to expose with other cultures, other people, you know. And then at least I can gain some communication skills if I want to go outside to go to Europe. So like, it can help me. And the plan was to stay here about 2 years and then to go to Europe. And I did that. But after 4 years. So I spent like almost, almost 4 years in Dubai and I went to Europe, I went to France. I didn’t find myself over there. It wasn’t me.

You know, I was shocked also when I went there, um, I was thinking about the food, like, you know, in my mind would be like something of the best of the best, but in reality, not everywhere. Um, you find good food in France, there is good produce, but also there is some commercial area touristic areas. And um, so when I went there, I didn’t find link between the past and the future. And I found myself more into Dubai. I was very happy in Dubai and ask myself why I’m doing here. I decided to back again to Dubai. So when I back again to Dubai, uh, I was lucky, you know, to move from, you know, big corporate group doing a lot of restaurants in the malls to, you know, media to TV. So, uh, it was also quite difficult for me. Like, you know, people didn’t understand. Chef. What, what I can do. The thing is, chef can do many things and then have to manage the studios and the kitchen in the studios and the way we work in the studio. But it changed me.

It shaped me because it let me look into the food with more details. Because working in TV, we have to reduce food and then the production hours is very expensive. So we have to cut the cost with the production hours. So you have to be very well prepared when it come to the food. So sometimes we make the recipe 3, 4 times to making it easy. On TV, you know, to finish it with 15 minutes. And that’s where I can see how we can prepare the food to the restaurant in a different way. But anyways, half of the menu or like let’s say more 70 percent of the menu, what we serve in or was from my cooking shows.

Nicola: How have you seen the culinary scene here change and evolve, and how much of that is down to all of the major efforts that are going into farming and agriculture and producing things locally?

Mohammad: Look, the flavor of the things is get change. Imagine you get cucumber from the farm to your restaurant within 1 day. Max. Maximum 1 day. Believe me, you will get flavor different when you get cucumber that fly all the way from somewhere else over than 100 miles, with different energy, with different pressure, and then come to you. But still, Dubai is a Paradise for so many chefs. I know so many, uh, you know, European chefs, they want to come to Dubai because they can get their ingredients easily. They can order things from from Japan and then deliver it within, you know, 2 days.

Nicola: We’re in a very fortunate strategic position here, right? Where things which is.

Mohammad: For me is why not if I have all this, you know, produce and good quality, why not gonna use them?

Nicola: Yeah.

Mohammad: Uh, the summer hard.

Nicola: The summer is hard.

Mohammad: It is, it is. And most of the farms they start producing from, let’s say November until like, you know, April Max. And then the rest of the time, like in the summer, I think you can use, you know, uh, other sources.

Nicola: I think it’s surprising for people to even think that we can grow anything here in Dubai. There’s the perception that it’s always hot. It’s a desert. Nothing grows here. But the reality is actually through a little bit different.

Mohammad: Now we have several videos. We use it on our social media whenever our guests visit us and they ask. We tell them this is local. This is like, are you sure you have something here? Is something grow up, grow up here. I said, of course. So we showed them the videos.

Nicola: What produce do you like to use that’s grown locally? What are your favorite local?

Mohammad: Many things to be honest. We use a lot of cucumbers because we pickling cucumbers, pickling cucumbers. When you get the cucumbers, you know it’s the crunch of the cucumbers change when it’s it’s more fresh, it’s more crunchy, you know what I mean? Uh, we use tomatoes, lettuce, sometimes corn, turnip, kale. Um, we don’t use much fish, but if we’re going to use fish, definitely. I want to go support local.

Nicola: So you’ve been very much a part of the evolution of Dubai’s food scene. So one one more question for you. Where do you think Dubai’s culinary scene will be in 5 years from now?

Mohammad: Look at that past 5 years. I look at now what’s going to happen. I believe there are so many things can happen in younger generation of chefs, uh, talent, uh, that can be different. I don’t know, to be honest. Dubai, it’s a city that has something really. And you have to, you know, to keep yourself updated. You have to keep yourself, you know, um, you have to match the city. You know, you can do something and you sleep on it. That’s it. It’s not going to work.

Nicola: What do you think that something is? What is that element that makes Dubai so intoxicating or so attractive?

Mohammad: It’s a smart city. Uh, very clever government. The community, everything. The culture, like the things in the city is like, you know, people like always, uh, adventurous. They want to do something different. You want to be like, you know, on top of the game, uh, if you don’t move, don’t, you know, motivate yourself. You don’t evolve. You’re not going to be you. You’re not going to be in Dubai.

Nicola: And that brings us to the end of this episode and our conversation with Mohammad. If all of that has got your appetite going, check out our show notes where we’ve linked out to both of these talented foodies and to my Afar stories about where to eat really well in Dubai.

Next week, we’re going to be busting one of Dubai’s biggest myths that it has no culture. We’ll be looking at just how false that preconception is, and taking a look at what the city’s creative community is getting up to with 2 brilliant guests. If you’d rather watch than listen, you can catch these conversations on YouTube, too. That link is in the show notes. I’m Nicola Chilton. Thank you so much for listening to Unpacked Dubai. See you next week.