Al Nafoorah

When your daily diet typically consists of runny supermarket hummos, watery tabbouleh and towel-dry vine leaves, it’s easy to start feeling ambivalent about the region’s dominant cuisine. Discuss this article

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When your daily diet typically consists of runny supermarket hummos, watery tabbouleh and towel-dry vine leaves, it’s easy to start feeling ambivalent about the region’s dominant cuisine. Luckily, the occasional visit to a restaurant like Al Nafoorah reminds the falafel-fatigued just how unique and fantastic Lebanese food can be.

Nafoorah’s take on dining is very straightforward; fresh, simple ingredients prepared with clarity and flair. The Emirates Towers restaurant takes full advantage of the natural flavours of the vegetable staples (chickpeas, aubergine, artichoke etc), and combines these with excellent olive oil, fresh-as- heck meats, and perhaps the best Lebanese bread in Dubai — soft, warm, thin and rectangular slices of freshly-baked markouk. Freebie olives are zesty and whole (rather than bitter and ruptured) and the accompanying almonds are gorgeously sweet. The hummos is light to the point of vapour and the mutabbal is sharply-flavoured and crunched up by baubles of pomegranate. Better still, the zaatar salad — blades of thyme with onion, tomato and splashes of olive oil — squeezes its way sublimely into warm pitta with spinach and onion and scrapings of warmly boiled artichoke. The kibbeh are succulent and moist, the sojuk (lamb sausages) sweet and juicy, and the mains include the best grilled hammour in Dubai and some note-perfect kebabs.

The daft overpricing of the Lebanese wine (the cheapest bottle is well over Dhs200) and the fact that you don’t get free vegetables on arrival or free dessert as you once did, are minor gripes because, seated on the terrace directly under the Emirates Towers, eating such excellent food, it’s easy to see why Nafoorah remains one of the most popular Arabian restaurants in town.

• Previous reviews
  • 30 March,2009- reviewed by Time Out Dubai staff
  • 26 March,2008- reviewed by Jeremy Lawrence
  • 11 February,2008- reviewed by James Brennan
  • 12 March,2007- reviewed by Time Out Dubai Staff
  • 21 February,2007- reviewed by Time Out Dubai Staff
  • 21 December,2005- reviewed by Matthew Lee
  • 01 October,2004- reviewed by Matthew Lee
  • 01 August,2002- reviewed by Carolyn Robb
  • 01 July,2002- reviewed by Carolyn Robb

Time Out reviews restaurants anonymously and pays for meals. Of course, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or independence of user reviews.