SimplyAbuDhabi X

I t is often a very surprising fact for visitors to the United Arab Emirates, that there are very few restaurants that actually serve Emirati food. The UAE is so cosmopolitan that you could eat specialty food hailing from a different corner of the globe every night of the week for a month – from Italian to Chinese, Indian to English fish & chips – there is everything you could want, except for Emirati cuisine, which is a distinct rarity. The reasons for this are bound up with the amount of expats in the UAE and providing this population with a wide variety of choice, together with cultural influences and the fact that most Emirati cuisine has traditionally been served within the home. Another reason, according to Ali Ebdowa, or "Chef Ali" as he is respectfully known, is that “there are no Emirati chefs”. Chef Ali works at the first and arguably the best Emirati restaurant in the UAE – Mezlai in the Emirates Palace. Here you can enjoy the cuisine of the UAE that dates back thousands of years. It includes lots of spices, various uses of sheep’s meat and camel’s milk in a great variety of dishes. It’s the kind of food Bedouin tribes ate back when the city was not yet shining out from the desert sands. We enter the restaurant on the ground floor of the palace, next to the Sayad restaurant, and after a pre-sit down welcome drink we are kindly led to a table that has a spectacular view over the palace. The waiters and management were the epitome of warm and friendly service – formal without being sniffy, genuinely interested and talkative but without being over familiar. To drink we decided to stay with a very authentic experience and so ordered Laban, or camel’s milk, that was flavoured with mint and salt for myself, and with peanut butter for Arnie. We had to admit they were unusual at first and our Western palates were not used to the texture and taste combination, but we soon got used to it and enjoyed finishing them off. For my starter I chose an eggplant salad as I wanted to taste the fire-grilled desert mushrooms that were served with tomatoes, capsicums, mozzarella cheese and olive oil dressing. The mushrooms were meaty and full of flavour and were very well matched with the subtlety of the creamy mozzarella. Arnie chose homemade fresh Emirati bread called ‘Rgag’. This is traditionally prepared in three flavours – cheese, zaatar (thyme) or egg, but as Arnie was having trouble deciding which one to have, the waiter kindly brought a piece of each flavour for us to sample. For my main meal I wanted to be adventurous and so I selected the ‘Jasheed’ dish, which is made up of boiled shark that’s braised with tomatoes, onions and spices and served with white rice, dihn khanina and chilli tomato salsa. It was the first time I had ever tried shark, and although it was interesting, I don’t think I need to eat it again any time soon. The preparation and presentation was excellent though, it was just that the meat was not to my personal preference. Arnie chose the Lamb shoulder ‘Medfoun’, which is UAE raised lamb marinated and roasted following old traditions. Medfoun describes a traditional Emirati way of slow cooking meat wrapped in banana leaves in an earthen hole. Essentially, the chef replicates the custom of having a deep hole in the ground as an oven, recreating the process in the kitchen and leaving the meat to tenderise for hours before serving. 6 4 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I