Dubai Guide

Dubai Food Guide

It’s almost impossible not to eat well in Dubai, whatever your budget. If you’ve got cash to burn, the city offers a superb spread of top-quality restaurants (including an ever-increasing number of places run under the auspices of various international celebrity chefs, with gourmet food served up in some of its most magical locations. There are also plenty of good cheap eats to be had too, from cheap and cheerful curry houses to the plentiful shwarma stands and kebab cafes. Dubai is a particularly fine place to sample the many different types of Middle Eastern (A.K.A. “Lebanese”) cuisine, with restaurants across the city offering varying takes on the classic dishes of the region, usually featuring a big range of classic mezze and succulent grilled meats, sometimes with a good selection of shisha (waterpipes) on the side.

As you’d expect given Dubai’s cosmopolitan makeup, a huge variety of other international cuisines are also represented. Italian, Iranian, Thai, Japanese and Chinese are all popular and Indian food is particularly good, with inexpensive but often surprisingly excellent curry houses scattered all over the city center catering to Dubai’s largest subcontinental population. Note that only hotel restaurants and a very small number of mall-based establishments have alcohol licenses. You won’t find booze at independent restaurants and cafes.

Friday Brunch

The Dubai Friday Brunch is a highlight of the weekly social calendar among the city’s Western expat community – a bit like the British Sunday lunch, only with a lot more booze. Restaurants across the city open for brunch around noon, often with all-you-can-eat (and sometimes drink) offers which attract crowds of partying expats letting off steam at the end of the long working week. Check out Time Out Dubai (www.timeoutdubai.com) for the latest offers.

Drinking

You won’t got thirsty in Dubai and the huge number of drinking holes tucked away all over the city attests to the extraordinary degree to which this Muslim city has accommodated Western tastes. The best bars encapsulate Dubai at its most beguiling and opulent, whether your taste is for lounging on cushions in al fresco Arabian-themed venues or sipping champagne in cool, contemporary cocktail bars. Superlative views are often thrown in for good measure, whether from a perch atop one of the city’s tallest skyscrapers or at one of its many waterfront venues, some of which offer sweeping coastal or Creekside panoramas. Most larger hotels also have English-style pubs, with obligatory faux-wooden décor and banks of TVs showing the latest sporting events – a lot less stylish than the city’s bars, but usually a bit cheaper.

Not surprisingly, boozing in Dubai comes at a price, thanks to high government taxes. A pint of beer will usually set you back around 30-35dh in a pub (more in a bar, assuming draught beer’s available, which it often isn’t), a glass of wine around 40dh and a basic cocktail around 50dh. Costs in the city’s pubs can be cut (slightly) by looking out for happy hours and special promotions. Most bars open at 6 or 7pm and stay open till around 1-3am; pubs generally open around noon until 2an; some places stop serving alcohol between 2 and 4pm (although they may stay open for food and soft drinks). Most of the city’s more upmarket drinking holes accept reservations (phone numbers for relevant places are listed), although the more club-style DJ bars often require a minimum spend in return for booking you a table. Smarter bars usually have some kind of dress code – don’t be surprised if you get turned away if you rock up in shorts and T-shirt.

Although Dubai is extremely liberal (at least compared to the rest of the region) in its provision of alcohol, be aware that any form of public drunkenness is strongly frowned upon and may even get you arrested, particularly if accompanied by any form of lewd behavior, which can be taken to include even fairly innocuous acts like kissing in public. The city also has a zero-tolerance policy towards drinking and driving – worth remembering if you get behind the wheel on the morning after a heavy night, since even the faintest trace of alcohol in your system is likely to land you in jail.

Alcohol

Alcohol is only served in hotel restaurants, bars and pubs, along with a small number of mall-based restaurants. It’s not served in independent restaurants and isn’t available over the counter in any shop or supermarket in the city, although visitors are allowed to bring up to four liters of alcohol (or two 24-can cases of beer) with them duty-free when entering the country. The only exception of this is if you’re a resident expat in possession of an official liquor license, in which case you can buy alcohol from one of the city’s two authorized retailers. In addition, note that alcohol is not served anywhere until after sundown during Ramadan.

Ladies’ Night

Ladies’ nights are something of a Dubai institution. These are basically an attempt to drum up custom during the quieter midweek evenings – they’re usually held on Wednesday, Thursday or most commonly, Tuesday nights – with various places around the city offering all sorts of deals to women, ranging from a couple of free cocktails up to complimentary champagne all night. Just be aware that where ladies lead, would-be amorous blokes inevitably follow. Pick up a copy of Time Out Dubai for the latest listings.

Nightlife, Entertainment and the Arts

Like pretty much everywhere else in the Gulf, Dubai only really gets going in the cooler evening and nighttime hours. As dusk falls, the streets light up in a blaze of neon and the pavements begin to fill up with a cosmopolitan crowd of Emiratis, Arabs, Westerners, Indians and Filipinos. The city’s vibrant nightlife takes many forms. Western expats and tourists tend to make for the city’s restaurants, bars and clubs, while locals and expat Arabs can be found relaxing in the city’s myriad shisha cafes. Souks and shopping malls across the city fill up with crowds of consumers from all walks of Dubai society – most remain remarkably busy right up to when they close around midnight; bars and clubs meanwhile kick on until the small hours.

Dubai has a reasonably busy clubbing scene, driven by a mix of Western expats and tourists along with the city’s large expat Arab (particularly Lebanese) community. Music tends to be a fairly mainstream selection of house, hip-hop, and R&B (perhaps with a splash of Arabic pop), although a healthy number of visiting international DJs help keep things fresh. The emphasis at more upmarket places still tends to be on posing and pouting – expect to see lots of beautiful young things from Beirut or Bombay quaffing champagne and inspecting their makeup – although there’s more fashion-free and egalitarian clubbing to be had at places like Zinc and N’dulge  In terms of cultural diversions, there’s significantly less on offer. Dubai is widely derided as the city that culture forgot – and in many ways the stereotype is rich deserved. The city has five-star hotels, luxury spas, celebrity chefs and shopping malls aplenty, but only lacked even a single proper theatre (and a poor one at that). Even now, the city’s musical life is largely limited to Filipino cover bands and the occasional big-name visiting rock act.

Things are, however, changing – albeit slowly. Dubai now hosts a decent range of cultural festivals, including good film and jazz events, while the emergence of alternative venues like The Fridge and DUCTAC suggests that even Dubai is finally realizing the size of the hole in its own head. In addition, the long-awaited opening of the new Dubai Opera House will hopefully provide a massive shot in the arm for the city’s moribund performing arts scene. Where Dubai has scored a major success, however, is in establishing itself as the Gulf’s art capital, boasting a remarkable number of independent galleries, many set up by expats from around the Arab world and showcase a healthy spread of cutting-edge work by a range of international artists.

Clubs

Club venues come and go on an annual basis, so it’s worth checking the listings in Time Out Dubai or visiting www.platinumlist.net to find out what’s new and happening. Entrance charges generally vary depending on who’s playing; entrance is sometimes free (the earlier you arrive the better your chances, especially if you’re young, well dressed, attractive and most crucially-female); blokes can expect to pay 50-100dh. Unfortunately, quite a few places (including several high-profile venues) suffer from truly lousy service -with Neanderthal bouncers, officious waiters and pushy bartenders as standard. Note too that most places also have a couples-only policy (which may or may not be enforced depending on how busy they are) – in general it’s also worth dressing to impress or prepare to be turned away. Quite a few bars have regular live DJs and a club-like ambience later on at night, particularly if there’s a special event on.

Shisha Cafes

For an authentic Arabian alternative to the pub, club or bar, nothing beats a visit to one of Dubai’s shisha cafes. These are the places where local Emiratis and expat Arabs tend to head when they want to kick back, lounging around over endless cups of coffee while puffing away on a shisha (also known as a waterpipe), filling the air with aromatic clouds of perfumed smoke – far more fragrant your average smoke-filled pub. Many of Dubai’s restaurants also do a good line in shisha and the best places will have twenty or more varieties to choose from, with all sorts of fruit-scented flavors, plus a house special or two.

Cinema

Dubai is well equipped with a string of modern multiplexes serving up all the latest Hollywood blockbusters, plus a few Bollywood flicks and the occasional Arabic film – although screenings of alternative and arthouse cinema are rare outside the excellent Dubai International Film Festival. It’s worth bearing in mind that the authorities censor any scenes featuring nudity, sex, drugs and homosexuality, as well as anything of a sensitive religious or political nature. Tickets cost around 35-50dh, while some cinemas have also introduced so called “Gold” class screenings in their smaller auditoriums (tickets around 100dh) complete with luxurious reclining seats and personal table service.

Art Galleries

Art galleries have positively mushroomed over Dubai during the last few years, For comprehensive listings, check out www.artinthecity.co.uk, which also covers galleries in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. The (unlikely) hub of the city’s art scene is undoubtedly the rundown industrial area of Al Quoz, off Sheikh Zayed Road, whose low rents have attracted a string of gallery owners from across the Arab world. There’s also a cluster of more upmarket galleries in the Gate Village at the DIFC. The city hosts two big annual arts festivals in mid-March, when Art Dubai and the SIKKA Art Festival hit town.