The Best Places in the United Arab Emirates

Olive trees in cobalt pots, blue-and-white stripes, and enough snowy linen to make you forget you're on a man-made island in Dubai. Alici is a Southern Italian seafood restaurant that leans hard into Amalfi coast aesthetics, with sustainably caught Mediterranean fish and a crudo selection that sets the tempo. The terrace at sunset, with mega yachts catching the last of the light, does most of the selling.

Three floors of tropical greenery in the middle of DIFC, where the Amazon rainforest aesthetic gets taken very seriously and the bar keeps pace with the dining room. The Latin American menu wanders from sushi to grilled meats, which sounds chaotic but tracks with the Amazon basin's many communities. First-floor tables face the open kitchen; the panoramic terrace is the move for a cocktail before or after.

The white jackets on the waiters are the tell: this is a Cipriani, which means the whole operation traces back to Harry's Bar in Venice and carries itself accordingly. It's a full-service Italian restaurant in the DIFC, serving pasta, risotto, carpaccio, and veal Milanese to a crowd that likes its la dolce vita with a side of expense account. The Bellini, naturally, is on the list.

The pisco bar alone draws a crowd before anyone touches the ceviche menu. This Peruvian restaurant and bar sits inside the Four Seasons' outdoor Restaurant Village, where the room runs loud and candlelit and nobody seems to be eating alone. The kitchen works the Nikkei angle hard, with ceviches in several directions and a sweetcorn meringue pavlova that sounds odd until it doesn't. Cocktail credentials are no afterthought; the bar team placed among the regional top ten in the Spirited Awards.

The glass-brick DJ booth is the first clue that this is not your average hotel bar. Electric Pawn Shop is a neon-lit, music-forward cocktail bar on the ground floor of the H Dubai, dressed up in stainless steel, exposed brick, and a vague dystopian fog. The menu leans Asian-Mediterranean, but the real reason to come is the sound system, which takes itself very seriously, as it should.

A Battle of the Burgers competition win prompted this husband-and-wife team to pivot from supper club to counter-service burger spot, which is either brave or completely logical depending on how good the burgers are. Eleven Green lands closer to a sleek casual diner than anything fast food, with green banquettes, polished wood, and booths lit low enough to feel like a choice. A Discovery on The 50 list.

The baobab-inspired ceiling shifts color above zebra-print cushions and a crystal-encrusted champagne bar, and that's before anyone's opened a menu. Flamingo Room by tashas is a full-on restaurant and bar that leans hard into the spectacle, though the kitchen earns its share of the attention too. Crab and lobster croquettes and a salmon Wellington make a reasonable case that the food isn't just set dressing. The phones come out early and often here.

A 26-seat Peruvian restaurant tucked into JLT where ceviche is more or less the whole point. The chef built her approach around recipes from home, kept simple and original, and the fish arrives with the kind of acidity that makes you understand why Peru considers the dish a national treasure. The team checks your spice tolerance before you order, which is either hospitality or a warning, depending on how you answer.

Part café, part restaurant, part gallery, part library, Maisan15 sits in Al Barsha doing several things at once and pulling off all of them. Prints by David Shrigley and Dan Witz hang on walls where the art is also for sale, and the kitchen sends out a Levantine-leaning menu in a room that smells of coffee and good intentions. A Discovery on The 50 list for Dubai.

The dough ferments for 48 hours before it ever sees the oven, which tells you how seriously this Neapolitan-style pizzeria inside Dar Wasl Mall takes what is, at its heart, a very simple thing. Moon Slice built its reputation on inventive topping combinations and an interior made for photographs, and the room still draws a crowd happy to play along. A casual, affordable slice of Naples via Al Wasl Road.

The glass-and-wood steakhouse inside the Four Seasons where Nusret Gökçe, better known as Salt Bae, built his empire on beef and a single viral moment. The theatrics are very much part of the offer, but behind the internet fame is a family of butchers going back generations. Come for a proper splurge on a steak cut tableside, and expect a room that takes both the meat and the moment quite seriously.

The Barcelona original put cocktails inside a fridge; this ninth-floor outpost swapped the fridge for a circus. A cocktail bar inside the Five Luxe JBR, Paradiso Dubai goes big on spectacle: candy stripes, circus motifs, and drinks that arrive as set pieces, one served inside a miniature steam engine under sesame foam, another glowing green thanks to riboflavin and something billed as an electric liqueur. A named spot on The 50 Discovery list.

A sign on the glass front asks, "Ciao Jumeirah, fancy some pasta?" and sixteen seats fill up at noon and again at night, which answers that question. This tiny pasta restaurant on Jumeirah Beach Road was started by a former designer with a genuine obsession with Italian technique, and the classics arrive with small, smart twists that don't overshadow the thing itself. The 50 Discovery list picked it up.

The name promises Shanghai, but the menu wanders the whole continent, from Cantonese dumplings to a dedicated sushi and sashimi section. This is a pan-Asian restaurant done with Art Deco bones and a prohibition-era sense of theater, moody enough that the rosy lighting flatters everyone at the table. The banana tree terrace and zodiac cocktails keep things flirtatious. A place where the second date is equally plausible as the tenth anniversary.

The tagline is "food you love to eat," which sounds like something plastered on a cafeteria tray until the food arrives and you stop reading signs. This casual eatery in Mercato Mall pulls from French technique, Peruvian brightness, and Korean heat without planting a flag in any of them. The chef cooked at Ducasse and Momofuku, and the menu reads like what happens when someone absorbs all of that and then just cooks what they want.

Menus arrive as faux passports, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe here. This casual all-day restaurant in Dubai Mall leans hard into fusion, pairing Middle Eastern ingredients with global formats: wagyu kebab in bao, French omelette spiced with za'atar, a fatteh bar at dinner. The breakfast side skews playful to a fault, but the lunch and dinner menu settles into something more grounded.

The pasta is made from scratch, the cheese made in-house, and the herbs cut from a kitchen garden steps from the stove. This Italian restaurant at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental channels what its founding chef calls family-style cooking, with a protégé running the kitchen day to day. The room leans formal, the ethos homey, which is a tension the cooking navigates rather well without making a fuss about it.

Dinner here begins at the pass, where the team hands you the first course before you've even found your seat. Trèsind Studio is a tasting-menu restaurant inside Dubai's VOCO Hotel, built around chef Himanshu Saini's deeply personal take on Indian cooking, vegetable-forward and technically dazzling without losing the thread back to the subcontinent. It earned a spot on The 50 Discovery list, which tracks where serious eaters are paying attention.

Large bay windows frame the canal and gardens at this bright, spacious Indian restaurant inside Jumeirah Al Qasr. Chef Ritu Dalmia's menu roams the subcontinent, pulling regional classics into a contemporary register alongside dishes that lean more fusion. The room is pretty and the service genuinely warm, which in a resort of this scale feels less like a given than it should.

A sun-bleached palette of oatmeal and natural stone sets the tone at this Greek restaurant in DIFC, where the chef draws on childhood summers along the Greek coast. The food follows that same unhurried logic, mezze spreads of hot, cold, and raw dishes meant for a table of friends with nowhere to be. It reads less like Dubai doing Greece and more like Greece forgetting to leave.

The steaks are the reason to lean in at this beach club restaurant, bar, and all-hours hangout on J1 Beach. The menu roams from sashimi to robata skewers to pasta, built for sharing, and the staff are worth listening to on portion sizes before you order half the menu by accident. Cocktails carry you from aperitif through to whenever the night decides to end.

The soaring ceiling and contemporary chandeliers inside the Shangri-La set the tone for Nicolas Isnard's French dining room, where the menu splits between classical French cooking and dishes shaped by the chef's travels. Two tasting menus trace those two directions, and the à la carte follows the same logic. The portions are generous, the flavours direct, and the kitchen isn't shy about a Grand Cru dark chocolate pear for dessert.

A seafood restaurant built around a working fishing harbour, where the day's catch sits on ice near the entrance so you can pick what ends up on your plate. The team behind 3Fils partnered with a Turkish fisherman to open this rustic spot, and the menu leans into that provenance, running from Norwegian salmon and turbot to locally caught hamour when the boats cooperate. Tahini baklava closes things out in a way nobody argues with.

A DJ booth and a live band on Saturday nights set the tone at this American brasserie inside the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, where the menu leans into classics, beef Wellington for the table, steaks, lobster bisque, and a tart Tatin that earns its place on the bill. The room runs loud and glamorous in the way only a Broadway theme can justify, and the service keeps pace without breaking a sweat.

The glowing geometric room at this Indian fine dining restaurant in DIFC sets the tone before a single plate arrives. The kitchen works from a deep respect for India's culinary traditions and then does something playful and a little theatrical with them, including tableside preparation. Tamarind chutney ice cream and tom yum rasam in the same meal are either provocative or delightful, which probably depends on your mood.

Perched high in the Four Seasons on Al Maryah Island, Coya is a Peruvian restaurant that folds Japanese and Chinese inflections into its Latin American framework, a combination that sounds like a dare and mostly lands. Ceviche, tacos, and skewers are built to circle the table, while the mains run toward grilled lobster and wagyu. A 16-course tasting menu is there for the committed, a set lunch for the sensible.

A giant red dragonfly hovers over the dining room, and the dark wood ceiling panels were fitted by craftsmen who came over from China specifically for the job. This contemporary Japanese restaurant on the Marasi waterfront swings wide, covering sushi, maki, dim sum, and noodles, with pan-Asian detours along the way. Lunch draws a quieter crowd; dinner tips into cocktail bar energy with the volume to match.

Azulejo tiles hand-painted in the Portuguese tradition line the walls of this Lebanese seafood restaurant inside the Rosewood on Al Maryah Island, which feels like an odd combination until you're sitting with water views in every direction and a mezze spread arriving from all sides. Stop at the seafood counter on the way in, because that's where the evening's direction gets decided. The menu is built for sharing, with the kind of vibrant, balanced dishes that make ordering feel like a group project.

Camel leather chairs and banquette seating fill a heritage building in Nad Al Sheba, where this Emirati restaurant treats local culture as the whole point rather than the backdrop. The menu runs through mezze, chicken machboos, salads, and sandwiches, all built for sharing, and the fwala tray reframes high tea as an Emirati affair. The team is warm in the way that makes you stay longer than planned.

A Sakura tree anchors the middle of the dining room, which tells you this Lebanese restaurant in The Galleria mall is going for something a little more theatrical than your average shawarma stop. The space leans into colour hard, with floral chairs and pink-flower vines throughout. Dishes are built for sharing and come in generous portions. Save space for the kunafa, which earns its own sentence here.

A wishing tree wrapped in red ribbons anchors the dining room at this Silk Road-themed Chinese restaurant in DIFC, where the menu travels from Northern China through Xinjiang and into fiery Sichuan territory, because the chef happens to be from there. Lanterns string the terrace, lunch skews corporate, and dinner loosens up considerably. The flaming whole Peking duck is the move for anyone marking an occasion.

Fishing rods double as pendant lights here, which tells you everything about the commitment to the bit. This Lebanese seafood restaurant on Palm Jumeirah's waterfront is owned by working fishermen, so the catch on your plate arrived recently and not via a middleman with a refrigerated truck. Fish murals, nautical stripes, and a patio that looks straight out at the Arabian Gulf complete the picture.

Martín Berasategui named this 18th-floor Basque restaurant after his eldest granddaughter, which is either charming or a lot of pressure for the kid. The room runs dark and brasserie-grand, with an open kitchen where everything moves over fire and charcoal. The terrace looks straight out at Downtown Dubai, and the Basque cheesecake has a following of its own. Dress like you mean it.

Dry-aged cuts sit on display in glass cabinets as you walk in, which tells you most of what you need to know about Leña. It's a grilled meats and fish restaurant on The Palm, the Dubai outpost of Spanish chef Dani García, where the black-and-orange room is meant to evoke charcoal embers. Croquetas come in tempura rather than breadcrumbs, the signature burger makes an appearance mid-meal, and dessert rolls out on a trolley. Grab the terrace when the weather cooperates.

A contemporary restaurant tucked into Dubai's Al Barari neighborhood, where most of the cooking happens over open flames, a wood-fired oven, or the rotisserie. The room is light wood and concrete, kept spare enough that the food does the talking. The chef duo behind it runs a tasting menu that moves through global culinary traditions, land, sea, and air getting roughly equal billing. A Michelin Selected Restaurant.

A seat on the terrace puts the Burj Khalifa directly overhead, which is either romantic or completely distracting depending on your company. Inside, this Chinese restaurant splits between a Regency-style parlour and a darker, club-like library room. The classic menu runs from dim sum to sweet and sour chicken, and a set tasting menu exists for anyone who'd rather not negotiate. The team is charming and happy to guide you through it.