Restaurants

Erth — the name means “legacy” — sits within the Al Hosn cultural site, between Qasr Al Hosn and the Cultural Foundation, and opened in January 2023. Its interiors are by the UAE-based BONE Studio, which kept the building’s original concrete skeleton and finished a thickened, raised floor in natural clay, carving majlis-style seating out of it. The open kitchen is a volume of acid-washed steel and natural-cut travertine; furniture is by regional designers including Aljoud Lootah, Khalid Shafar, Zuleya, TORU and Bahraini–Danish.

MICHELIN’s inspectors describe cooking that is modern but anchored in Emirati flavours, cookware and produce from farms across the Emirates, and include Erth among the city’s restaurants with the most beautiful interiors.

Hakkasan occupies some 16,000 square feet of Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental: a restaurant, bar and lounge and four private dining rooms, divided by carved wooden screens and latticing that recall the brand’s London flagship. The space is by Gilles & Boissier, Hakkasan’s long-time design partners. The main dining room is built as a wooden cage, wrapped in backlit blue glass held in a stainless-steel frame; embroidered furniture and marbled Chinese forms complete the room.

The MICHELIN Guide notes that the room is kept deliberately dark, so the blue and red light plays across the latticework, and praises Cantonese classics such as Peking duck and the Saturday dim sum.

Talea opened at Emirates Palace in March 2022 as chef Antonio Guida’s first restaurant outside Italy. Its cooking is “cucina di famiglia” — family-style Italian — and MICHELIN’s inspectors single out the linguine all’astice and the Miele e Polline, made with honey from the hotel grounds.

The room is spacious and bold: two-toned columns and walls hung with art inspired by Italian landscapes, high vaulted ceilings with bulbous, dandelion-like chandeliers, and, in MICHELIN’s words, hues of blue, white, grey and yellow that reflect the colours of Italy’s southern coast. Outside, a terrace looks out to the sea.

Almayass brings together Lebanese and Armenian cooking with Mediterranean influences; the original was founded in Beirut in 1996. The Abu Dhabi branch, on Level 1 of The Galleria, was designed by the interior architect Delphine Gebran around the pomegranate: the main seating area resembles an open pomegranate with its seeds removed.

MICHELIN describes soft salmon-coloured walls and warm light, with the pomegranate recurring in the wallpaper, table settings, lighting, furniture and plants, and lists the restaurant among the city’s most beautiful interiors. The circular booths are the prized seats; the inspectors suggest an Itch salad, then Meshwi Shekaf.

Beirut Sur Mer sits on Soul Beach in Saadiyat’s cultural district, managed by MBT, with an open kitchen turning out Lebanese classics from mezze to mashawi. The interiors appear in the portfolio of the design firm WA International.

MICHELIN calls it a garden oasis by the sea: diners sit beneath vine leaves and grape chandeliers hung from a high ceiling, with floral motifs on the chairs and walls. By day, light comes through floor-to-ceiling windows; in the evening, the beachfront terrace takes over. The inspectors recommend it for refuelling after a visit to the nearby Louvre Abu Dhabi, and note generous portions at reasonable prices.