Dubai’s Seven Best Lunch Cafes

A café for all occasions, popular among Emiratis, offers slightly Westernized yet classic Arabic food in a friendly atmosphere. It is one of the best options for a traditional Middle Eastern lunch. The à la carte menu is available from 10 am to 2 am, and virtually any dish, including meze and desserts, can be shared between two people. If you want something special, ask about the dish of the day. Advance booking is recommended.

This place is our favorite. It is a contemporary Japanese cuisine restaurant located in Jumeirah’s ambient fishing harbor and is one of the city’s trendiest and most popular venues for creative Asian food. On weekends and weekday evenings, it’s practically impossible to get in without an advance booking. However, on weekdays during daytime, you can get a table near the water or inside, near the open kitchen. The best options for lunch include the Hamachi carpaccio, Wagyu A5 beef carpaccio with truffles, 72-hour lamb ribs, and signature sushi and hand rolls.

Dubai has just a few Portuguese restaurants, but most of them are exemplary in terms of ambiance and food quality, attracting visitors to return. Lana Lusa is one of the most popular and stable establishments that resembles an authentic Lisbon café and offers homestyle comfort food. From Monday to Thursday, between noon and 3 pm, you can order a pre-made lunch set that includes a starter, a main dish, and a dessert of your choice. The à la carte menu is available from noon until closing, featuring highlights such as the Prego sandwich with beef and mustard, fried octopus, and pastel de nata pastry.

A family café that specializes in Arabic cuisine and authentic Middle Eastern hospitality, it is the best place in the neighborhood for an unhurried lunch in a home-like setting. Managed by popular Jordanian TV personality Eva Halasa and her two daughters, the restaurant occupies two floors of a pleasant villa in Jumeirah. With its own bakery, the café’s pastry counter is not to be missed. Over its two years of operation, it has garnered a record number of rave reviews from the local media. As a result, you can find it in the majority of local guides to Dubai’s prominent breakfast and lunch spots. The menu offers meze, salads, traditional baked goods, and classic dolma.

If there ever was a guide to Dubai’s most successful pastry shops and cafes founded by self-taught Emirati residents, the project of Hind Al Mulla would have neither peers nor competitors. By the early 2020s, the amateur bakery, which was opened 10 years ago by a young arts school graduate had transformed into one of Dubai’s most popular chains. It now has nine branches, where you can enjoy a lunch of fish tacos or Thai salad with beef, and take home the incomparable chocolate-and-pistachio knafeh or a box of artisanal doughnuts you previously ordered.

A Balkan cuisine bistro that captures the attention of every local culinary guide. It’s full of light and space, but almost always bustling with guests. There is also a large terrace with a panoramic view of the city and a well-thought-out menu that offers main regional hits such as Shopska salata, pleskavica, and Bosnian klepe dumplings, as well as intriguing interpretations of Balkan classics, like a corn tapenade or vegetarian moussaka with zucchini and legumes. Perfect homemade pastries and good coffee are an added bonus.

A trendy city café and bar that simultaneously promotes hedonism and healthy eating, this establishment is the brainchild of the local celebrity, New Zealand-born chef Jesse Blake. His culinary projects regularly feature in the prominent international restaurant guides. Visit this place for lunch if you want to enjoy both the food and the ambiance. Onda is one of Dubai’s most beautiful new cafes, boasting a truly original menu and the city’s best healthy cocktails. A combination that deserves to be tasted at least once is the salad with tomatoes and nectarines, a sando with spicy tuna, and a banana shake with matcha.