Chefs in Dubai Are Putting Regional Flavors Back on the Menu

05.11.2024 - 21:03 / cntraveler.com / Gordon Ramsay / Massimo Bottura

Inside Boca, a breezy, biophilic tapas restaurant in the heart of Dubai's Financial District, the after-work crowd is drinking at the bar. Downstairs, I've joined friends for dinner in the private dining room located in the restaurant's wine cellar. Many bottles in the collection are from Morocco, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. We start with oysters harvested from Dibba Bay in Fujairah, the easternmost of the United Arab Emirates, on the Gulf of Oman. Opened a decade ago, Boca has become a pioneer in using ingredients sourced from across all seven emirates. The oysters share a menu with only-in-the-Emirates ingredients like khansour, a mountain plant often used in salads, and kingfish from the Arabian Gulf, served ceviche-style. Technically, Boca is a Spanish restaurant, but its Dubai roots and commitment to local ingredients make it uniquely Emirati.

The Museum of the Future

Boca’s desert plant and cherry tomato salad

Not long ago Boca's approach was atypical for Dubai. Since 2001, when Gordon Ramsay flew in to raise the curtain on Verre, inside the Hilton Dubai Creek, the city's culinary circuit has been dominated by celebrity chefs opening glitzy restaurants inside equally glitzy hotels. In the years to follow, Michel Rostang, Nobu Matsuhisa, and Massimo Bottura all lent their names to restaurants in the UAE, creating a food scene with an international reputation for glamor, excess, and exorbitant prices. Certainly the restaurants were buzzy—Ramsay's caramelized apple tarte Tatin, served straight from the oven in a copper pan, would sell out each night. But the names and concepts were all imports, detached from anything truly local. For years this meant that Dubai's only real dining options were big-name, white-tablecloth restaurants or unassuming eateries in neighborhoods without skyscraper hotels, which served shawarmas, pani puri, and cheese-laden manakeesh.

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 ambitions. With the COVID pandemic prompting a desire to support local restaurants, the last few years have seen the rapid growth of a high-quality homegrown restaurant scene.

The Australian café Tom & Serg

The Jumeirah district

Take Boca. It's the brainchild of Omar Shihab, a Dubai-born-and-bred Jordanian national who has become one of the UAE's leading sustainability champions, working with local and international government bodies. “It didn't matter what cuisine we served,” he says. “We wanted to feature quality ingredients we could get locally.” This mindset is shared by Shaw Lash, a jovial Texan with a