Shawarma, Machboos and the Friday Brunch: Eating in the UAE With Kids

The UAE has restaurants from every country on earth and children can eat pizza every night if they want. They should not, because the local food is easy and the brunch is an institution.

Shawarma is the everyday meal. Chicken or lamb from a spit, in a flatbread with garlic sauce and pickles, from a cafeteria window for a few dirhams. Every neighborhood has one with a queue at ten at night. Kids eat them in the car.

Machboos is the Emirati dish, spiced rice with chicken or lamb, cooked with dried lime, like a biryani’s gentler cousin. Harees is wheat and meat cooked to a porridge. Luqaimat are the fried dough balls in date syrup and the dessert every child eats by the bowl. Find them at an Emirati restaurant in the old quarter or on the menu at the desert camp.

The brunch

The brunch is a Saturday thing since the weekend moved. Hotels lay out every cuisine at once, with a kids’ zone, entertainers, a pool, and a package price that includes drinks for the adults. It runs from noon to four and it is a whole day out for a family. Book a week ahead and pick one with a kids’ club so the parents get an hour.

The Arabic breakfast is worth one morning. Foul, hummus, labneh, olives, flatbread, halloumi, eggs with tomato, and tea with mint. The Lebanese and Syrian restaurants do the best mezze in the region, and a table of small plates is the way to feed a family with mixed tastes.

Dates are the gift. Medjool, Khalas, stuffed with almonds, dipped in chocolate, from the date shops in the malls. Karak chai, the sweet cardamom milk tea, from a cafeteria for a dirham. Fresh juice from every corner, and a camel milk chocolate bar for the story.

Planning UAE with kids? Start with the full UAE family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.