The Best Places to Eat and Do in the United Arab Emirates

The open kitchen runs on live fire and the DJ runs loud, which sets the mood at this contemporary Japanese restaurant inside Emirates Palace. Ross Shonhan built his name around Warayaki, a technique where burning straw briefly kisses the ingredients, and the tableside prep keeps things theatrical. Sake, bespoke cocktails, and a terrace when the Gulf air cooperates round out an evening that leans more spectacle than silence.

Graffiti covers the walls, neon lights the bar, and the staff arrive in punk jackets with a friendliness that defuses all the attitude. Dabiz Muñoz, the Madrid chef behind DiverXO, dreamed up this loud, open-plan street food restaurant where the counter seats overlooking the kitchen are the ones to grab. The menu pulls from Europe, Asia, and South America in equal measure, and the molten white chocolate lava cake is not an afterthought.

Tucked onto a mezzanine in Dubai Mall's Chinatown quarter and easy to miss from the main flow, Tang Town is a dimly lit Cantonese restaurant where the mood runs deliberately low and unhurried. The menu leans into prime ingredients, pairing Peking duck with caviar and Wagyu across a broad spread of Cantonese and Sichuan dishes. Come evening, the small centre stage hosts Chinese dance performances, which is either exactly your thing or quietly charming either way.

You enter through the back door of another restaurant, which is either a red flag or a very good sign. Inside, a U-shaped wooden counter seats twelve around an open kitchen, where the chef runs a kaiseki-style omakase, eight or twelve courses of modern Japanese cooking shaped around a monthly theme. The room runs on conversation between guests and the team, making it feel less like dinner service and more like a very controlled dinner party.

A marina view at the quieter end of Al Qana sets the tone for this relaxed Mediterranean restaurant, where the music is good enough that dinner stretches longer than planned. The kitchen travels the full coastline: burrata, croquettes, raw dishes, wood-fired pizza, pasta, and meats from the Josper oven. It's the kind of place that doesn't try too hard, which in Abu Dhabi counts for something.

A curtain in a DIFC tower opens onto something closer to a New York brasserie than anything the neighborhood usually attempts. Inside, the space splits into two restaurants, Rockpool and The Salon, one built around an actual indoor pool, the other a grand open-kitchen dining room. Both run the same menu of seafood, steaks, and pasta, plus a traditional Sunday lunch for those who want the full commitment.

A British brasserie on Bluewaters Island where the menu runs from Scotch egg to beef Wellington, with the odd Dubai flourish, like a Welsh rarebit finished with truffle, keeping things from getting too homesick-sincere. The upper floor has a proper bar counter and cocktails named after London postcodes. Sunday roast draws the kind of families who have decided, collectively, that this is their place now.

The robata grill is the anchor here, sending skewers and smoke through a sleek, sunken dining room inside The Galleria on Al Maryah Island. Zuma is a global izakaya chain done at a register that reads more cocktail-bar-meets-fine-dining than casual Japanese, so dress accordingly. The menu splits between raw preparations and robata, holding to the format that made the brand a reliable draw for the expense-account crowd on three continents.

Twenty-four floors up inside One Za'abeel, this specialty coffee shop trades Dubai's street-level bustle for a calm room with a skyline framing every table. The pour-over program gets the most attention, and the cold brew is serious enough to slow you down. It draws a mix of remote workers and people who simply wanted an excuse to be this high up with a good cup.

A specialty coffee shop on Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard, close enough to the Burj Khalifa that tourists drift in looking slightly overwhelmed by Dubai and leave looking slightly more caffeinated. The room is modern and calm, the kind of place where laptops outnumber conversations. Pour-overs and lattes are taken seriously here, and fresh pastries round things out for anyone settling in for the afternoon.

Warm wood, minimal fuss, and the kind of quiet that makes you stay longer than planned. Around The Block is a specialty coffee shop in Al Wasl where the cold brew and flat whites are made with ethically sourced beans and a fair amount of care. It draws the laptop crowd as much as the catch-up crowd, which tells you something about the seating and the wifi.

A minimalist coffee shop tucked inside the Wadi Alamardi mall, Cross Coffee draws the laptop crowd and the genuinely unhurried in equal measure. The pour-over and cold brew are the ones to order. It's a calm room by Dubai mall standards, which is either an achievement or a miracle depending on the day.

A coffee shop tucked inside Dubai Mall that somehow manages to feel calm, which is no small feat given the mall's general ambition to be a city-state. Luna leans into specialty beans, with pour-overs and lattes that actually make you slow down. The Burj Khalifa fills the window, so the scenery does its part too. Laptop crowd mixes with shoppers who needed a break from buying things.

The walls are lined with family photos, the celebrities among them suggesting this Persian kebab spot near Al Fahidi has been feeding the right people for a long time. An old-school institution, it runs on marinated mutton, chicken, and tenderloin served over saffron rice, and the portions are generous in a way that feels almost confrontational. Communal tables, no ceremony, and prices that make you look twice at the bill.

You walk in through a tiny vinyl record shop, which sets the tone perfectly. Honeycomb Hi-Fi is a Japanese small-plates-and-cocktail bar tucked inside a hotel, all wooden paneling, midcentury chairs, and Ojas speakers doing serious work. The menu runs wagyu katsu sliders and lamb gyozas, while the bar turns out highballs with the kind of theatrical flair that makes the people around you briefly stop talking.

The wood-fired tacos here come two bites each, and the kitchen turns out around 800 of them a day, which tells you something about how seriously this beachside taco spot takes itself. Chef Shaw Lash brought a deep fluency in Mexican techniques and sourcing to Dubai, and the menu follows traditional styles she refined working in Mexican kitchens across the world. Casual, affordable, and a short walk from the beach.

Palestinian comfort food served in an old villa on Al Wasl Road, with metal platters hitting the table minutes after you order. This is the Al Manara location, the one people actually argue about, and it runs from breakfast until 1 a.m. The menu is carb-forward and unapologetically so: manakeesh, hummus, musakhan chicken rolls, grilled haloumi. Come hungry and early, or you'll be waiting in the overflow shed wondering where the evening went.

A whitewashed Greek taverna hidden in a car park basement off Sheikh Zayed Road, which sounds like a warning but lands closer to a discovery. The room runs to terra-cotta tones and an intimate, down-to-earth feel, and the menu covers the expected ground of tzatziki and souvlaki before slow-cooked suckling lamb and charred octopus make a stronger case for staying. It fills up fast at peak hours, so book ahead.

Phyllo-wrapped pies are the whole point here, made with enough butter to register on a seismograph, at this bright cafe tucked into Alserkal Avenue's arts-district sprawl. The maroon-and-stainless interior is cheerful without trying too hard, and the menu runs hearty and a little unexpected, with wagyu pastrami phyllo and pink pickled onions sitting alongside brunch pies loaded with salmon and trout caviar. The elderflower matcha is the kind of thing you order ironically and then reorder.

Lobster rolls and oysters by the dozen pull most of the weight here, but the truffle pizzas have their loyalists too. The Maine is a brasserie-style bar and grill tucked into a DoubleTree, which undersells it: the bar runs loud and the room fills fast with people who came for a drink and stayed for dinner. The concept has since spread to Ibiza and Mayfair, which tells you something about the formula.

A restored Jumeirah villa turned into a family restaurant by a Jordanian mother and her two daughters, each handling a different corner of the operation. The sourdough uses only flour, water, and salt, which tells you something about where they stand on shortcuts. The rooms feel like someone's home because, in spirit, they are. It's the kind of place that makes restraint look easy.

A food hall perched at the foot of the Burj Khalifa, with the Dubai Fountains performing outside and cheerful pandemonium performing inside. Time Out's editors curated the vendors, so you get a credible mix of homegrown spots rather than the usual airport-court suspects. Tourists fill most of the seats, but the food holds up, and the drinks are among the more affordable you'll find anywhere in this city.

Hanwoo beef, Korea's most prized native cattle breed, is the whole reason this upscale Korean barbecue restaurant exists at the St. Regis on the Palm. It's the only spot in Dubai serving it, flown in directly from Korea and cooked over tableside charcoal grills with the kind of calm precision that makes theatre feel unnecessary. Warm wood, soft light, composed service. It landed at number 28 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which for a Korean barbecue concept is a statement.

A coffee shop sitting right on Jumeirah Fishing Harbour, where the view does a fair amount of the heavy lifting. BRIX leans into minimalist interiors and pour-overs, the kind of place where the laptop crowd settles in for hours without anyone making pointed eye contact. Pastries come along for the ride. It's quiet enough to get something done, which is probably why the Asian Coffee Map called it one of Dubai's better spots for working remotely.

A specialty coffee roastery tucked into an Al Quoz warehouse, where the industrial bones of the space, exposed ducts and raw concrete, do most of the decorating. The team roasts in-house, so the room smells like the product before you order it. Quiet enough that people bring laptops and actual books, which is rarer than it sounds in Dubai. Pour-overs and cold brew are the moves here.