Zaina Restaurant, Dubai - Minutes to understand, but a lifetime to master

Dubai has a lot of exotic places you can go for meals inspired by all corners of the globe. While it is nice to have choice like that, it's always best to sample the 'local cuisine', since usually the local food offers the best, most lovingly prepared, perfect reproductions of age old dishes made by people who have probably been making it all their lives. You wont see words like 'fusion' or 'interpretation' on menus in these places; in fact sometimes you are lucky to see a menu at all, let alone a menu in our precious little English language.

Zaina Restaurant goes one step further, maintaining the traditional setting in their restaurant, as well as serving up wonderful, slow cooked lumps of various animals for customers with carnivorous cravings.

Our 'table' was a lovely red rug in a cosy corner, complete with enormous velvet cushions and a plastic drop sheet to contain the mess that would inevitably result. We ordered a camel shwarma to begin with, which was heavily seasoned and satisfyingly greasy (add another animal to my have-eaten list).
For the main we ordered a 2-person portion of the Meat Madbi, which is quite an amazing, yet simple dish. Whole goats are roughly seasoned and cooked and for hours and hours in a giant rotisserie which has a bed of hot coals and low gas flames on the walls of the oven. Huge chunks of the carcass are then lopped off with the absolutely zero precision and thrown atop a mountain of fragrant biryani rice, which itself has been slowly prepared with whole spices like cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and peppercorns dotted throughout.

It was all delivered to our rug in a delicious heap, accompanied by side salads, soups and sauces. I was getting full just looking at the spectacle.

Cheap cutlery comes along with the meal, but you might as well have been given a straw for all the good they could do. I can eat spaghetti bolognaise with chopsticks, but eating ribs and knuckles with a spoon and fork is beyond me altogether. Luckily, we love eating with our hands, so we dove right in and enjoyed as much as we could before admitting defeat. The meat was moist, and not over seasoned, which let the perfume of the slow cooked flesh really stand out. The rice was fluffy, and not clumpy. Bad rice is hard to find in this part of the world, and this was no exception.

RECOMMENDED

These hard working, traditional joints are still doing what they have always done, and usually doing it quite well, supporting the ideas that practice makes perfect, and that some things never change; And with food this good.. this effortlessly amazing, why would you ever want it to do any differently? If it ain't broke, eat it.

The Bill (for 2):



1 x Camel Shwarma - Dhs 25 
2 x Meat Madbi - Dhs 80
1 x Large Water - Dhs 2 
TOTAL: Dhs 107 (Approx US$29)


Restaurant Address: Al Wasl Rd, Jumeirah (across the road from Safa Park), Dubai, UAE