Al Areesh

Arabic food including some Emirati dishes 1 Reviews

Al Areesh at the Al Boom Tourist Village does claim to serve some genuinely local dishes. A long, low wooden restaurant, slightly reminiscent of a Viking cabin and dominated by a central table in the shape of a longboat, Al Areesh offers a Dhs50 buffet every evening from 7pm. When we visited, only three Emirati dishes were on offer, one of which was marked ‘chicken vindaloo’. Of the other two, one was ayshu laham, a variation on the khouzi theme – a whole lamb, buried under a sea of rice and lentils. The other dish, hariss, was a mixture of ground lamb and wheat and had the appearance of green
porridge. We wouldn’t recommend this.

The rest of the buffet was fine if not remarkable – a wide range of dishes from all over the world, along with some sugary desserts and Umm Ali, the Egyptian-style bread and butter pudding. Perhaps like Britain, where it is almost impossible to find a good example of genuinely local cuisine, Dubai’s cosmopolitan nature has edged out the possibility of a successful local meal beyond the confines of someone’s house.

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