The Best Restaurants in Dubai, by the Record

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Asian Coffee Map Dubai Coffee Guide for Travelers

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.

1. World's 101 Best #28 · World's Best Steak Restaurants