Dubai Dining & Entertainment
A Cosmopolitan Flavour
Dubai’s cosmopolitan flavour is matched by the city’s many restaurants and entertainment venues, which provide a truly international array of choices for the visitor.
Hotels offer a remarkably diverse range of food and beverage outlets, partly because they serve not only their own guests but also attract large numbers of local residents. Their restaurants cover everything from coffee shops to fine dining and speciality outlets and the standard of service is on a par with the best in the world. The night-life is equally varied, with many bars, pubs, discos and nightclubs open until the small hours.
Outside the hotels, small eating places are to be found in all parts of the city including Deira, Bur Dubai, Satwa and Jumeirah.
While restaurants located outside hotel and club premises are not permitted to serve alcohol, all are air-conditioned, clean and are often culinary adventures in their own right.
Middle East Cuisine
Dubai is an excellent place to sample all types of Gulf and Middle Eastern cuisine, including Iranian, Moroccan and Lebanese.
Arabian food makes up an important part of most buffet spreads. Specialities include:
- Hoummus: a dip made from chick-peas and sesame seeds.
- Tabbouleh: chopped parsley, mint and crushed wheat.
- Ghuzi: a whole roast lamb on a bed of rice mixed with nuts.
- Wara enab: vine leaves stuffed with rice.
- Koussa mahshi: stuffed courgettes.
Local dishes include:
- Matchbous: spiced lamb with rice.
- Hareis: a rich delicacy of slow-cooked wheat and tender lamb.
- Seafood served with specially seasoned rice. Naturally, dates are a feature of any Arabian meal.
Delicious regional desserts include:
- Umm Ali (literally ‘Mother of Ali’): a type of bread pudding.
- Esh asaraya (meaning ‘bread of the harem’): a sweet kind of cheesecake with a cream topping.
- Mehalabiya: a pudding sprinkled with rosewater and pistachios.
- Visitors especially enjoy fresh fish from the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean — lobster, cigale, crab, hammour, shrimp, tuna, kingfish, pomfret and red snapper.
A traditional Middle Eastern snack is the shawarma — grilled shavings of lamb or chicken, mixed with salad and rolled inside a pocket of Arabic bread — that is sold in many small outlets around the city.
There are also numerous juice bars where visitors can buy a fresh juice cocktail or a mango milkshake.
International Cuisine
Standards of international cuisine in Dubai are high and the choice is wide. Top class European restaurants in the city’s hotels range from French to Italian, Swiss to Mediterranean, Spanish to Greek and British to German.
Asia is equally well represented with many fine Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Filipino and Korean restaurants, as well as numerous outlets featuring cuisine from the Asian Subcontinent.
International theme restaurants such as TGI Friday’s, Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Café and Henry J Bean’s have all opened, while Fashion Café was due to open as Destination Dubai went to press.
There are also several other American and Mexican restaurants in the city, while international fast food chains are represented by such names as McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Pizza Inn, Round Table Pizza, Pizza Corner, Harry Ramsden’s, Burger King, Shakey’s, Wimpy, Dunkin’ Donuts and Hardee’s.
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