Discovering Emirati Flavors: The Expat’s Culinary Guide to the UAE

Published on May 5, 2026 and written by Cyril Jarnias

Settling in the United Arab Emirates means entering a country where you can eat almost everything that exists on the planet… except, often, what Emirati grandmothers cook. Between five-star hotel brunches, rooftop sushi, and gourmet burgers, local cuisine easily takes a back seat. For an expat, the real discovery begins there: in a plate of machboos perfumed with dried lime, in a steaming bowl of harees served during Ramadan, or in a cup of gahwa accompanied by a few dates.

Good to know:

This guide offers an itinerary for discovering local gastronomy in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, incorporating essential cultural references for an authentic dining experience.

Understanding Emirati Cuisine: An Identity Between Desert, Sea, and Spice Routes

The cuisine of the United Arab Emirates is the product of three worlds long intertwined: that of the Bedouins of the desert, the fishermen of the Arabian-Persian Gulf coast, and the oasis farmers centered around the date palm. For centuries, the diet was dictated by what the climate and trade allowed: camel’s milk, goat or lamb meat, dried or salted fish, dates in all forms, wheat, and later rice imported from India and Persia.

Tip:

Emirati cuisine is marked by ancient trade routes, incorporating Persian, Indian, Omani, Saudi, African, and Levantine influences. It is structured by the major Middle Eastern spices like cardamom, saffron, turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, coriander, thyme, and dried black lime (loomi). Contrary to popular belief, it is generally not very spicy, favoring aromas over the heat of chili.

Before the arrival of oil, the diet remained mainly simple, nourishing and often cooked in a single pot, practical for nomadic life. The country’s ultra-rapid transformation from the 1960s onward, massive urbanization, and the influx of expats profoundly altered eating habits. The rise of fast food, international buffets, and sugary drinks accompanied the increase in obesity and diabetes, widely documented by health studies. Paradoxically, it was just as everyday cuisine was becoming Westernized that “Emirati cuisine” began to be codified and valued as a heritage to preserve, through specialized restaurants, festivals, and cooking schools.

Good to know:

What is often called ‘Arabic cuisine’ on menus is actually Levantine cuisine (Lebanese, Syrian, etc.). Authentic Emirati cuisine stands out with spiced rice dishes, stews perfumed with dried lime, cardamom, and saffron, and uses less olive oil than mezze.

Key Ingredients to Know to ‘Read’ an Emirati Menu

Walking into a local restaurant without any bearings can be disorienting. Understanding a few pillars of Emirati cuisine helps decode the menus.

Example:

The diet relies on grains like wheat, turned into breads (regag, khameer) or porridges (harees), and rice, central in festive dishes like machboos. Animal proteins include meats (lamb, chicken) for everyday and camel meat for special occasions. The sea provides a wide variety of fish (hamour, kingfish) and seafood (shrimp, calamari), used notably in dishes like jesheed made from small shark.

On the vegetable side, traditional cuisine accommodates easily grown or preserved vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, zucchini, okra, potatoes, onions, garlic. The date palm remains the historic pillar: dates are eaten fresh, dried, as syrup (dibs), as paste incorporated into cakes, or as a drink.

Attention:

The cuisine uses a wide variety of common spices like turmeric, cinnamon, or dried black lime (loomi). Each family often customizes its own house blend, bezar, with recipes varying from one household to another.

Dairy products round out the picture: milk and yogurt (laban), local cheeses like chami, ghee (clarified butter) used to enrich festive dishes. Finally, there is frequent use of rose water and orange blossom water in desserts, adding a characteristic floral note.

An important point for the expat: pork is absent from traditional cuisine for religious reasons, and when sold, it is in clearly marked sections of certain hotels or supermarkets. Alcohol, for its part, is limited to hotels, clubs, and licensed restaurants, and is forbidden in the emirate of Sharjah.

The Classics You Absolutely Must Try

To concretely enter local cuisine, it is best to identify a few iconic dishes. Many of them are associated with key moments of social life: Ramadan, Eid, weddings, or large family gatherings.

Emirati Breakfasts: Sweets, Breads, and Eggs

In the morning, in a traditional home, one often finds a trio of breads and sweet-savory preparations that will surprise a Western palate.

Balaleet is the most puzzling example for an expat used to toast: fine vermicelli cooked with sugar, cardamom, and saffron, sometimes a dash of rose water, then topped with a thin omelet. The result is sweet, spicy, and slightly savory. It is served at breakfast, but also at dawn during Eid or for iftar during Ramadan.

Another must-try is chabab (or chebab), a thick pancake flavored with cardamom and saffron, pan-fried until golden, and eaten with date syrup, honey, and salty cheese like chami. It is an excellent entry point for children or less adventurous adults.

Khameer, a puffy round bread, slightly sweetened by the addition of date paste and spiced with cardamom, saffron, and fennel, works well for both breakfast and snacks. It is often served hot, split and filled with cheese or butter.

Finally, regag (or raqaq) bread embodies simplicity: an ultra-thin, crispy sheet cooked on a hot griddle, which can be filled with cheese, eggs, syrup, or even chips for a very popular street version.

Example:

Many specialized restaurants now offer complete breakfast platters ‘Emirati style.’ These platters allow you to discover local specialties such as balaleet (sweet-savory noodles), chabab (saffron-scented pancakes), khameer (sweet bread), eggs with tomato (shakshouka or beid wa tomat), labneh (fresh cheese), hummus, all accompanied by karak chai, a spiced and creamy tea typical of the region.

Main Courses: Fragrant Rice, Stews, and Braised Meats

At the heart of the Emirati table are complete dishes rich in rice, meat, or fish, designed to be shared.

Machboos, sometimes spelled majboos or machbous, is often presented as one of the national dishes. It is rice cooked in a spiced broth (cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric, loomi, saffron), topped with pieces of chicken, lamb, or fish. The presence of dried lime gives it a very recognizable tangy flavor.

Khuzi (or ghuzi, ouzi) is the most spectacular version: a slowly roasted lamb or goat kid, served on a huge mountain of saffron rice, sprinkled with almonds, pine nuts, and sometimes raisins. It is the dish for weddings, big celebrations, and Eid. For an expat, tasting a real khuzi shared from a central platter, possibly sitting on a carpet, is a strong cultural experience.

Harees (or hareeth) offers a radical contrast: cracked wheat and meat (chicken, lamb, or goat) are cooked together for hours until they become a very smooth, almost textureless cream, enriched with ghee and perfumed with cinnamon and cardamom. This dish, inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, is inseparable from Ramadan and major celebrations.

Combines a meat and vegetable stew with pieces of regag bread soaked in the broth. Considered a local version of ‘bread in sauce,’ it is prepared with potatoes, zucchini, carrots, okra, and chicken or lamb. It is a particularly popular dish for iftar, as it is nourishing without being too heavy.

Thareed (thereed, farid)

Finally, saloona serves as a base for countless variations: a stew of tomato, onion, garlic, and vegetables, to which chicken, lamb, beef, or fish is added. At home, it is an everyday dish, served with rice or bread.

The following table summarizes a few iconic savory dishes and their cultural role, useful for knowing what to look for at restaurants or in cooking classes.

Sweets and Desserts: Dates, Toasted Flour, and Doughnuts

It is impossible to mention Emirati cuisine without talking about what is eaten with coffee, at the end of a meal or during Ramadan evenings.

The absolute star remains luqaimat: small yeast dough balls, scented with saffron and cardamom, fried until crispy-chewy, then drizzled with date syrup or honey and sprinkled with sesame. During Ramadan, they flood the markets and street stalls. For an expat, this is often the first local dessert you fall in love with.

Khabeesa (or khabis) illustrates another side: flour or semolina lightly toasted, worked with ghee, sugar, cardamom, saffron, sometimes rose water, and topped with dried fruits. The result has a texture between cream and moist crumble, very filling.

Batheetha, meanwhile, starts from date paste mixed with flour or semolina and spices (cardamom, ginger), shaped into bite-sized pieces often served with Arabic coffee.

Dates: A Fruit of a Thousand Variations

Discover the different ways to eat and use dates, from the most famous varieties to their gourmet transformations.

A Versatile Fruit

Dates serve as dessert, snack, or gift, adapting to many consumption moments.

Famous Varieties

Among the most well-known varieties: Medjool, Khalas, Dabbas, Ajwa, and Deglet Nour.

Simple and Stuffed Tastings

They are eaten plain or stuffed, for example with nuts or candied orange peel.

Gourmet Transformations

Dates are also chocolate-coated, turned into jams, syrups, or balsamic vinegars.

Beverages: Between Ritual Coffee, Indian Tea, and Fermented Milk

Beverages complete the taste and cultural picture.

Gahwa (or qahwa) is the absolute emblem of hospitality. This very light coffee, often golden rather than black, made from lightly roasted beans, is perfumed with cardamom and saffron, sometimes clove or rose water. It is prepared in a series of dallah (large, bulbous coffee pots) of different sizes and served in tiny handleless cups, finjan. Traditionally, the server, called muqahwi, fills the cup only one-third full, using the right hand, and continues to refill until the guest gently shakes their cup to indicate they have had enough.

Karak chai, meanwhile, tells the story of exchanges with the Indian subcontinent. It is a strongly brewed black tea, cooked with milk (often sweetened condensed milk), sugar, cardamom, and sometimes saffron. Today, it is sold as much in trendy cafes as in small neighborhood shops, and pairs well with a piece of regag or karak cake.

Laban, a drink made from beaten yogurt, slightly salted, is an excellent ally against the heat and frequently accompanies meals. There are also plenty of fresh fruit juices — watermelon, mango, guava, papaya, sugarcane, tamarind — as well as traditional drinks associated with Ramadan like jellab (a mix of grape and date molasses, rose water, pine nuts) or qamar al-din (apricot nectar).

Where to Eat Emirati Food as an Expat

In a country saturated with international restaurants, the crucial question is: where to find real local cuisine, not just a shawarma skewer labeled ‘Arabic’?

Finding Your Way in Dubai: From Heritage Houses to Malls

In Dubai, several addresses come up regularly when it comes to Emirati cuisine.

Al Fanar Restaurant & Café has made it its mission to recreate the atmosphere of the 1960s, with decorations of old alleyways, lanterns, and traditional utensils. You can eat machboos, harees, saloona, balaleet, luqaimat, or seafood platters, for an average budget of around 80 AED per person (excluding drinks) at its mall branches. One of its locations is listed in the Michelin Guide, indicating its perceived quality. The chain has several sites, notably at Dubai Festival City Mall (Canal Walk) and soon in Jumeirah Town Centre.

Arabian Tea House, opened in the late 1990s, is a pioneer in staging Emirati cuisine in a ‘family home’ setting. Its shaded courtyard in Al Fahidi, in the heart of the historic Bur Dubai district, attracts both tourists and residents. It offers Emirati breakfast platters, balaleet, regag, fouls, chabab, thareed, machboos, as well as a wide selection of teas and juices.

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Al Khayma Heritage Restaurant offers a cooking class dedicated to expats to learn how to prepare three traditional Emirati dishes.

Other establishments play the ‘modern local’ card. Logma, at Dubai Mall and other neighborhoods like Boxpark, offers revisits of machboos, ‘logma fries’, date or karak desserts, in a contemporary setting. Mama Tani, in Jumeirah, has built its menu around khameer bread with various toppings, while places like The Majlis, at the Souk of Dubai Mall, feature camel milk in drinks like ‘camelccino’ and chocolates by Al Nassma.

The table below gives an overview of a few iconic addresses in Dubai and what an expat can discover there.

Beyond these establishments, neighborhoods like Souk Al Seef along the Creek, City Walk, or the Deira souks offer a concentration of interesting cafes and small restaurants where you can snack on regag, luqaimat, or enjoy a karak while watching the hustle and bustle.

Exploring Abu Dhabi: From Traditional Houses to Michelin-Starred Tables

In Abu Dhabi, the local cuisine scene has also become structured, with a mix of popular restaurants and Michelin-recognized addresses.

Good to know:

Al Mrzab Traditional Restaurant, on Airport Road, is a family establishment awarded a Bib Gourmand, offering local cuisine (machboos, mandi) in a majlis setting. Meylas, on Al Muneera waterfront, reinterprets Emirati cuisine (balaleet, thereed, luqaimat) in a beach cafe setting, ideal for a brunch.

Higher up the range, Erth, located in the historic Al Hosn district, illustrates how contemporary chefs revisit culinary heritage. This Michelin-starred table works with local products and presents classics like harees, machboos, or Gulf fish in highly crafted plates. For a gastronomy-loving expat, it is a concrete example of what ‘high-end Emirati cuisine’ can mean.

Al Fanar also has a branch at Yas Mall, decorated like an old village, where you can find most of the great classics. Other places like Qasr Al Hosn or the House of Artisans sometimes offer cultural meals or teas combining Arabic coffee, dates, and simple dishes served in a museum or heritage setting.

Street Food, Markets, and Immersive Experiences

To feel the popular dimension of local cuisine, nothing beats markets and street food. In Abu Dhabi, the fish market at Mina port and the surrounding shops allow you to choose a local fish (hamour, sea bream, kingfish) and have it grilled the traditional way (samak mashwi). Fruit and vegetable markets, like those in Mina or Al Ain, display a profusion of dates, herbs, spices, and seasonal produce.

During Ramadan, street food festivals animate historic neighborhoods: stalls of luqaimat, regag, juices, kiosks offering harees and thareed for iftar. In Dubai, events like the Ramadan Street Food Festival or the night markets organized in places like Al Seef or the Dubai Shopping Festival literally transform certain areas into huge open-air canteens.

Prices generally remain affordable: you can eat for 30 to 50 AED in small shops or stalls, including a drink, provided you choose clean places where food is made to order.

Participating Rather Than Consuming: Cooking Classes and Cultural Experiences

A particularly enriching way for an expat to embrace local cuisine is to put on an apron rather than just sitting down at a restaurant.

Example:

In Dubai, Al Khayma Heritage House offers an immersive workshop for foreign visitors. After a traditional welcome with perfumes, dates, and coffee, a guided tour of the house explains local history. Then, an Emirati chef teaches the preparation of typical dishes: regag bread, chicken machboos, and luqaimat. The goal is for participants to leave with reproducible recipes and an understanding of the stories and symbols associated with each dish.

Beyond Al Khayma, the range of cooking classes in Dubai is very wide, even if not all are focused on local cuisine. Schools like Top Chef Cooking Studio in Jumeirah — founded by Nadira Benaissa —, Culinary Boutique, or the International Centre for Culinary Arts (ICCA) offer themed workshops. Some programs, like the ‘Healthy Cooking Classes in Dubai,’ explicitly include revisited Emirati specialties (machboos, thareed, madrouba) from a health perspective. Prices generally range from 200 to 600 AED per person for 2 to 3 hours, including ingredients and tasting.

Tip:

To discover Emirati culture from the inside, specialized operators like Hi DMC offer tailor-made experiences, such as private cooking classes in a traditional house or meetings with a local family. At the same time, peer-to-peer experience platforms offer shared meals around ‘home-cooked Emirati cuisine.’ These unique moments are often hosted by people who share childhood memories while serving typical dishes like harees or thareed.

For an expat, this type of workshop offers a double benefit: breaking down the barrier between ‘restaurant cuisine’ and ‘family cuisine’, and understanding from within the place of food in social life, beyond mere taste pleasure.

The Coffee-and-Dates Ritual: The Silent Language of Hospitality

To grasp Emirati culinary culture, it is essential to look at a gesture that everyone ends up experiencing sooner or later in the UAE: the offering of a cup of gahwa and a few dates.

In Bedouin tradition, offering coffee and dates to a passing visitor in the desert was not just politeness, but a moral obligation, a shared duty of survival. Even today, a visit is considered incomplete if the host has not offered at least coffee — even if a full meal has been served.

Good to know:

Gahwa, the traditional coffee of the Emirates, is characterized by its light color due to light roasting. Its preparation follows a precise ritual: Arabica beans are lightly roasted in a tawa (iron pan), stirred with a mehmas (stick), cooled in a mebrada (wicker net), and then ground in a brass mortar. The drink is then boiled in a large khamara (coffee pot) before being transferred into increasingly smaller dallah, up to the mezalah, a serving pot often decorated.

The service follows a precise protocol: the server holds the coffee pot in the left hand and the cups in the right hand, pours a small amount into the first cup to taste it (ensure quality), then serves the most important or oldest person first. One always offers and receives with the right hand. The coffee is refilled until the guest gently shakes their finjan to indicate they no longer wish to be served. Not accepting at least one cup, without a valid reason, can be seen as a sign of disrespect.

several thousand

The price per kilo that dates can reach at the Liwa Date Festival auctions in the UAE.

To experience this ritual in depth, expats can visit places like the Coffee Museum and the historic Al Fahidi district in Dubai, the Sharjah Heritage Area, or cultural centers like the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding (SMCCU), which regularly organize explanatory sessions around Arabic coffee and the majlis.

Eating Local While Respecting the Codes: Some Guidelines for Expats

Beyond the menu, how you behave at the table and during a shared meal matters a great deal in the UAE. For an expat, adopting a few simple reflexes is enough to show respect for the local culture.

Punctuality is appreciated, but for a meal at someone’s home, arriving five to fifteen minutes late is often better received than arriving early and surprising the host’s preparations. Before entering a traditional house or majlis, one generally removes their shoes.

Good to know:

The traditional greeting is ‘As-salamu alaykum.’ For handshakes, it is customary to shake hands with men, but to wait for a woman to initiate the gesture; a hand on the heart accompanied by a smile is a common alternative. When sitting on floor cushions, it is acceptable to signal any physical discomfort.

At the table or around the central platter, use the right hand for eating, passing dishes, and taking a glass. Utensils are of course available in restaurants, and no one expects expats to eat rice with their hands if they don’t feel comfortable. But in a more intimate setting, following the group’s lead — taking food from the area in front of you on the shared platter — shows a willingness to integrate.

Good to know:

It is polite to wait for the oldest person or the host to start eating. To avoid seeming still hungry, it is sometimes better to leave a small amount on your plate rather than emptying it completely. The meal traditionally extends into a moment of conversation over mint tea, coffee (gahwa), or during a circulation of incense (oud or bakhour) for perfuming.

In restaurants, the codes are more relaxed, but modest dress is still appreciated, especially in historic neighborhoods or very family-oriented establishments: covered shoulders, avoid overly short shorts, particularly for women.

Festivals, Events, and Culinary Calendar: Enjoying the Food Scene as an Expat

Beyond restaurants, local gastronomy is showcased through a multitude of events that punctuate the year. Some are more industry-oriented, like Gulfood, a vast global food trade show held between the Dubai World Trade Centre and Expo City, while others are directly aimed at the general public.

Example:

Foodie expats can enjoy the big culinary festival Taste of Dubai. This event, held over a weekend, gathers stalls from renowned restaurants offering tasting-sized dishes, with vegetarian and child-friendly options. The festival also includes cooking classes led by famous chefs, concerts, and an artisan market.

The Dubai Food Festival, spread across the emirate, offers a broader program: gastronomy weeks, special menus in hundreds of restaurants, pop-up markets, culinary competitions, and highlights of local cuisines.

Good to know:

Abu Dhabi offers several events to discover its culinary scene. The Taste of Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Food Festival, and the Michelin Guide festival highlight Emirati cuisine as well as Levantine, Indian, and Asian influences. The Sheikh Zayed Festival, in Al Wathba, offers a broader experience with traditional food stalls, shows, and historical reenactments, and runs for several months.

Religious festivals are probably the most intense gastronomic moments. During Ramadan, iftars (the meal breaking the fast) are an opportunity to discover harees, thareed, saloona, luqaimat, and lentil soup in very varied contexts: luxury hotel tents, mosque buffets, family tables. The night markets and street food festivals set up for the occasion are also a fantastic playground for a curious expat, provided the codes are respected (no eating in public before the break of the fast, respectful clothing, sober attitude).

Local Cuisine and Health: Between Nourishing Tradition and New Challenges

Traditional Emirati dishes were designed to support an active life in a harsh environment: long days in the sun, desert or sea work. They are naturally rich in complex carbohydrates (wheat, rice, dates), animal proteins, and lipids from ghee. In that ancient context, they played an essential energy-supplying role.

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Over 20% of young people’s daily caloric intake comes from snacking.

Emirati health authorities have since launched several initiatives to encourage a more balanced diet: school programs, campaigns promoting physical activity, nutritional guidelines. In this movement, many Emirati chefs and entrepreneurs are working to revisit their childhood recipes in lighter versions: less ghee, more vegetables, better portion control. ‘Healthy’ cooking classes in Dubai, for example, include vegetable-rich machboos, legume-based thareed, or less sweet date syrup desserts.

Tip:

For an expat, it is possible to enjoy local cuisine while maintaining health. Just adopt a few habits: control rice portions, prefer stewed dishes over fried ones, share desserts, and take advantage of the variety of vegetables in soups, salads, mezze, and sides.

Practical Tips for Taming Local Gastronomy in Daily Life

Settling permanently in the UAE offers the luxury of time: that of exploring gradually, rather than trying to taste everything in two weeks. For an expat to truly benefit from this culinary heritage, a few concrete ideas can guide the first months.

Example:

To immerse yourself in the local food culture, you can set simple goals: try one new local dish per week, alternate between heritage restaurants (like Arabian Tea House, Al Fanar, Al Mrzab, Meylas) and small popular eateries, take a cooking class after settling in, book an iftar in a cultural venue during Ramadan, or have a gastronomic experience at a Michelin-starred restaurant like Erth, which reinterprets traditions.

Getting guidance from locals — colleagues, neighbors, friends — is an additional key. Many Emiratis are proud of their culinary heritage and delighted to explain the difference between machboos and mandi, between khabeesa and batheetha, or to show how to shape luqaimat by hand. Several platforms also offer guided ‘food tours’ through the historic districts of Dubai or Abu Dhabi, combining stories, tastings, and walks in the souks.

Tip:

To incorporate Emirati flavors into your daily life, get the essential ingredients: typical spices like bezar, loomi, cardamom, and saffron from the souks, quality dates from specialists (e.g., Bateel), as well as a dallah and Arabic coffee. Complete with an Emirati recipe book or a local cooking class. Thus, dishes like Sunday balaleet, evening karak chai, or Friday homemade machboos can become familiar rituals.

Discovering local gastronomy in the UAE then no longer boils down to ‘tasting a typical dish’, but rather to learning a language: that of spices, gestures of hospitality, generosity at the table, and the stories shared over a platter of fragrant rice. For an expat, it is probably one of the most direct doors to an intimate understanding of the country that welcomes you.

Cyril Jarnias

Cyril Jarnias is an independent expert in international wealth management with over 20 years of experience. As an expatriate himself, he is dedicated to helping individuals and business leaders build, protect, and pass on their wealth with complete peace of mind.

On his website, cyriljarnias.com, he shares his expertise on international real estate, offshore company formation, and expatriation.

Thanks to his expertise, he offers sound advice to optimize his clients' wealth management. Cyril Jarnias is also recognized for his appearances in many prestigious media outlets such as BFM Business, les Français de l’étranger, Le Figaro, Les Echos, and Mieux vivre votre argent, where he shares his knowledge and know-how in wealth management.

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