Al Nafoorah in Jumeirah Emirates Towers, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai - Restaurant Reviews

Al Nafoorah

The Emirates Towers restaurant is flying the flag with its lofty standards of Lebanese food Discuss this article

Picture 1 of 2

When Al Nafoorah opened in 2001, it huddled at the base of Dubai’s tallest building. Back in those sepia-tinged days you could practically herd goats on Sheikh Zayed Road without inconveniencing the traffic, so it’s fair to say things have changed a bit since then.

Today, the Emirates Towers have been eclipsed by the lurching Burj Dubai (which will soon overtake Peter Crouch as the world’s loftiest free-standing structure) but its flagship Lebanese restaurant still stands tall. So we were rather keen to see whether it remains head and shoulders above most of the competition.

Reverberating through Al Nafoorah’s dark wooden panelling, brass fixtures and moody monochrome photography came the husky tones of Fayrouz, Lebanon’s ‘poet of the voice’, who once famously vowed never to sing for a private audience, not even a king.

Just as well then, that the restaurant was buzzing and packed with people, none of whom, incidentally, appeared to be wearing crowns or brandishing bejewelled sceptres. We joined them in selecting choice olives and ripping warm flatbreads as we scanned the menus.

The mezze arrived with a flourish. First a spry and spirited tabbouleh full of lemony zest, then a plate of batata hara teeming with potato chips sautéed with a fragrant mélange of herbs and spices. The soft and creamy zataar-sprinkled cheese of the shanklish was hastily grouped with the salad and potatoes and bundled home with fluffy flaps of flatbread.

So far so good, but the slightly stodgy pastry of the meat sambousek overwhelmed the flavour and texture of the minced lamb filling. However, the true high point of the evening was yet to come.

Kibbe nayeh is a speciality dish of raw minced lamb, ground and pounded with bulgur wheat, onion and spices, and served with a drizzle of olive oil and fresh mint to make a creamy pillow of red-raw meaty goodness. If the meat isn’t fresh, the dish wilts and resembles zombie flesh.

Likewise, the lamb needs to be of a particularly high quality for the texture to be right and the natural flavours to flood out. When it works, it works like a lucid dream, and when it doesn’t, it’s like eating three-day old road kill mixed in with a bucket of sawdust.

The kibbe nayeh here was as close to perfect as you can get without personally slaughtering one of Little Bo Peep’s finest at your table. So although the mixed grill that followed was perfectly adequate, with its tender chunks of chicken and lamb, we concluded that sometimes meat is best left untainted by fire.

And it was with similar simplicity that two plates of clotted cream were drizzled with honey and sprinkled with cracked pistachio nuts at the table, and placed next to a selection of sweet, moist and crumbly baklava. We finished off the devilishly unhealthy yet irresistible ashta bil asal with strong cups of coffee and firm resolutions to return, often. And why not? After all these years, Al Nafoorah continues to fly the flag for Lebanese cuisine higher than most.

The bill (for two)
2x Evian Dhs32
Meat sambousek Dhs25
Shanklish Dhs30
TaboulehDhs28
Batata hara Dhs27
Kebbe nayeh Dhs40
Mixed grill Dhs60
Espresso Dhs18
Coffee Dhs22
Total (including service) Dhs282