Middle Eastern Feast: Culinary Tour Of Dubai – In a city renowned for its world-class restaurants, it’s ironic that Middle Eastern cuisine can be the hardest to find when visiting Dubai. This guided walk, which might include a small number of other visitors, offers an inside view of the local cuisine and gives you a chance to sample the nuances of different countries’ foods.
Guided by a local expert, you’ll also get an introduction to Middle Eastern culinary traditions, including an introduction to coffee drinking etiquette and how to choose between different gradients of saffron, the most expensive spice in the world.
Middle Eastern Feast: Culinary Tour Of Dubai
From creamy, garlicky hummus to baklava dripping with golden honey and topped with sweet nuts, spend an evening sampling the best dishes at a handful of the city’s most overlooked restaurants. Your guide will choose the meals as well as the eateries, which are all clustered around Al Rigga, an important street in the Deira district. Along the way, you’ll also hear personal anecdotes from your guide as you learn more about the city’s culture.
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You will make your own way to the meeting point to join this group walk, which is limited to just six participants. The tour takes place in the evening and includes enough food to be considered a full meal by most people. You will cover about 2.8 km (1.7 miles), with many stops along the way to rest and cool off.
The route varies to ensure you visit the best eateries available at that moment, but will include at least five different stops. You will have the opportunity to try a wide range of different foods, most likely including dishes influenced by Palestinian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Iraqi and Iranian cuisine. Tours often start with stuffed herb falafels served with hummus, fried eggplant and cauliflower.
From there, you might try a Palestinian and Jordanian pastry filled with creamy sweet cheese that contrasts with the crunchy noodles and pistachios sprinkled on top. Your tour will definitely include a coffee shop where you can sip cardamom-scented coffee, known locally as gahwa, accompanied by a pressed date cookie and baklava. Your guide will share the subtle nuances of traditional coffee-drinking rituals in the region, and how they differ around the Middle East.
The main course of the evening is often Lebanese smoked fish served with lentil soup, followed by samovar tea. You might end the evening with a tour of an Iranian shop that offers delicious ingredients and sweets. Here, you will be introduced to the different grades of saffron while sampling an ice cream that has been infused with the subtle scent of the wildly expensive spice. Along the way, you will be able to purchase items such as rose water, pistachios, baklava and saffron.
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Covering all seven continents, The World Your Way shows you how you can see the world with us. It features travel ideas from our specialists alongside hand-picked stays and experiences, and showcases our approach to creating meaningful travel experiences. The salty smell of fish fills my nostrils and the bustle of the traders and buyers invades my ears. Outside the latest catch is auctioned off. It is so fresh that the fish are still wriggling. Your senses come alive at the Dubai fish market, the colorful and hectic starting point of this Dubai food tour with Arva Ahmed, co-founder of Frying Pan Adventures, the food tour specialists.
There is no end of great things to do in Dubai, but top of my list was a food tour. I first heard about Arva and her food tours when I interviewed a journalist, Matthew Teller, about sustainable tourism in the Middle East. He used Frying Pan Adventures as an example of the type of independently run tour, providing insight into local culture, that tourists should support. Since then I have longed to meet Arva and join her on a tour of the city’s old town. So I had high expectations and was more than a little excited at the prospect of the Food Lover’s Early Morning March last month.
The tour started early in the morning with a look around the fish market where we are greeted with smiles and smells, although the latter really wasn’t as overwhelming as I expected. Arva wants to show us everything as she explains which fish are sustainable and which are overfished and should be avoided.
As we go from the fishmongers to the butchers, Arva warns us that the next part of the tour is not for the faint of heart. She is not wrong. We see things guaranteed to turn the sanitized stomach of supermarket shopping of the middle westerners. In fact the sight of a skinned camel’s head, with its eyes staring and tongue lolling out, as it oozed out slowly sliding down the counter, is enough to put even me off my breakfast… well, almost.
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At the fruit and vegetable market, refreshment comes in the form of a coconut, a welcome drink as we pass colorful fruit creations, trays piled high with succulent, shiny dates and stacks of delicious looking honeypots full of nuts. .
From the markets, a short ride takes us to the stream, where we catch an abra, motorized Middle Eastern wooden boat; a chance to see the city from a different point of view.
We continue on foot through the textile juice where around the next corner we are transported to India as a hidden alley takes us behind a Hindu temple. We pass stalls selling fragrant strands of jasmine to pin in your hair and vibrant marigold garlands and other colorful offerings to the Gods. Stepping out into the full glare of the sun I find myself at an Islamic mosque. The two religions seem comfortable as neighbors.
Back at the waterfront there are tummies hungry for breakfast and we stop at what is now my favorite Dubai eatery, the Creekside Café. In a simple setting they offer a fabulous menu of fusion cuisine inspired by local ingredients and Emirati culinary traditions. I opt for French Toast, which may not sound particularly exciting but it’s outstanding – the perfect mix of textures and flavors – strawberries, blackberries and pomegranate seeds, with house-made smoked date jam and whipped cream on Arabic coffee cream French toast served with a pot of tart pomegranate syrup aside – great.
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In addition to a much-needed caffeine fix in the form of a cappuccino, I also enjoy a cheerful glass of rose iced tea, made from the beloved Middle Eastern ingredient, rosebuds. It is a deliciously refreshing drink.
Another ten minute ride in an abra brings us back to the Deira bank of the Creek where we each try a pot of Irani Faluda, frozen sugar syrup crushed and mixed with rice noodles and rose water. While not something I’ve set out to try again, it’s certainly refreshing and welcome as the sun rises higher in the sky.
With Arva at the helm we meander through the Spice Juice as she explains the uses of many herbs and spices in the Middle East, both culinary and medicinal. Incense is burned at some of the stalls. It mixes with the aroma of spices and envelops us in its sweet aroma. Arva’s enthusiasm and passion shines through as she gives many helpful tips such as how to distinguish real saffron from fake. Quality saffron is dark red in colour, as shown below, and when left in cold water for a few minutes, does not lose any of its color unlike the fake which will fade.
While you can visit the Spicy Juice on your own quite easily, without a guide like Arva your experience will be in shades of gray rather than the vibrant technicolor that her knowledge provides.
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Next stop, an interesting little museum where we learn about coffee at its best and try the best Turkish coffee I have ever tasted. I usually find these small cups of the black drink too strong, but this had a much milder and delicate taste that changed my opinion of black coffee.
The last stop is at a roadside eatery serving kababs (or kebabs as we know them). We all tuck into juicy pieces of chicken or lamb served with either salad greens and yogurt wrapped in local flat bread or served with rice. A social meal follows, which we couldn’t finish despite our best efforts, ending with a pot of Omani halwa, a sweet dessert made with caramelized sugar, saffron, nuts and rose water, from the shop next door. A great end to a wonderful morning learning about and sampling the edible delights of Dubai; a wonderful opportunity to see the city through the eyes of a local.
As regular readers will know, I firmly believe in knowing a country and its people through its food. Wherever I am in the world, I love to hunt down independently run, small-group food tours to gain a unique insight into the local culture. Dubai is no exception. The cuisine here is a rich blend of Middle Eastern traditions, as well as Indian, European and a myriad of other global influences reflecting the diversity of Dubai’s citizens, only 10% of whom are Emiratis.
The Coffee Museum is open every day, except Fridays 9am-5pm and is located in the historic Al Fahidi quarter.
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Disclosure: I visited Dubai as a guest of Dubai Tourism and The Ritz-Carlton Dubai. During my place on this food tour with Frying Pan Adventures
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