Special Ostadi
Once seated, plates of yoghurt, cucumber and a garden’s worth of herbs will be whisked to the table alongside flatbread 3 Reviews
From Time Out Dubai Eating Out 2007
This longstanding Iranian family-run restaurant has been the hectic, bustling and charming breadwinner for three generations of the same clan. Finding a restaurant that has been in the hands of more than one generation of a family must be a first in Dubai, although it seems that not much has changed since Ostadi first opened its doors in 1978. This is a good thing.
Once seated, plates of yoghurt, cucumber and a garden’s worth of herbs will be whisked to the table alongside flatbread. A rich viscous lentil soup comes next, redolent with chunks of warm vegetables and a hearty meaty seam running through it. As you eat, take in nearly forty years’ worth of paraphernalia covering the walls. Look down and the glass-topped tables imprison a small fortune’s worth of foreign notes and coins – keep an eye out for Saddam-era Iraqi tender.
Ostadi may not do an awful lot, but what they do do – kebabs – they do with gloriously transparent excellence. The mixed grills of chicken marinated in saffron, chunks of thyme-scented mutton and goat, are dragged off piping hot skewers into fragrant, steaming rounds of bread brought in from a bakery across the road. Each hunk of quiveringly tender flesh is a chargrilled joy to shovel, wantonly slathered in yoghurt and cucumber and wrapped into a morsel.
It’s a hedonistic gastronomic experience when all the pomp of cutlery and presentation has been thrown by the wayside to make room for pure, unadulterated glorious food. Special Ostadi lives up to its name.
By Time Out Dubai Staff- Previous reviews
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Time Out reviews restaurants anonymously and pays for meals. Of course, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or independence of user reviews.
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