Established 2020 · Dubai, UAE
Dubai's Most Trusted Restaurant Critics
We've eaten at over 500 Dubai restaurants — anonymously, on our own bill — so you can skip the bad ones and go straight to the great ones.
It started with a problem every Dubai resident knows: you want to find a great restaurant, but every list is the same recycled picks, often written by people who haven't visited in months — or ever. The "best restaurants" articles were sponsored. The review aggregators were full of fake reviews. Nobody was doing the work.
So in 2020, a group of journalists, food critics, and longtime Dubai residents decided to build the guide we actually wanted to read. We started eating out five nights a week. We visited restaurants anonymously, paid our own bills, and wrote down exactly what we thought. No PR dinners. No complimentary meals. No affiliate rankings disguised as editorial.
Six years later, Where To Eat Dubai has become the guide that over half a million Dubai residents and visitors trust every month. We've reviewed more than 500 restaurants — from the hidden Iranian grill in Bur Dubai that's been there for 45 years, to the Michelin-chasing tasting menus in DIFC. We've documented this city's extraordinary food scene in a way nobody else has.
"Dubai has one of the most exciting, diverse, and underrated food scenes in the world. Our job is to help people find it."
The Dubai food scene is unlike anywhere else on earth. You can eat extraordinary Keralan seafood at lunch, knock-out Palestinian maqlouba for dinner, and end the night with Japanese omakase — all within a five-kilometre radius. It's a city where old Deira cafeterias and new $300-a-head tasting menus exist side by side, and where the best meal you'll ever have might cost 20 AED or 2,000 AED.
Our job is to help you find it all — whatever your budget, wherever you are, whatever you're craving.
We visit every restaurant at least twice, always anonymously, always paying our own bill. Our editors never accept complimentary meals, hosted press dinners, or gifts from restaurants. We have never and will never sell a spot on any of our lists.
Our reviews cover: food quality and consistency, value for money, service, atmosphere, location and ease of getting there, and the honest answer to "would we go back?" We score restaurants on a 10-point scale across these dimensions.
When a restaurant declines, we update our review. When a restaurant closes, we archive the review and note the closure. We don't pretend that restaurants are static — Dubai's dining scene moves fast, and we move with it.
Three food critics start writing honest reviews. No budget, no sponsors — just notebooks and dinner bills.
We hit our first major milestone and launch The Dubai Fork newsletter — 500 subscribers in week one.
We systematically map every Dubai neighbourhood, covering Deira to Dubai Hills.
The Dubai Fork becomes one of the city's most-read food newsletters.
We expand the team and launch cuisine and budget guides covering every corner of the city.
Dubai's most comprehensive independent restaurant guide. Still paying our own bills.
Every reviewer visits restaurants anonymously, without announcing their identity. We never accept invitations to PR dinners or hosted press meals. Every review is based on the experience a regular customer would have.
Our editors pay their own bills at every restaurant they review. We never accept complimentary meals, gifts, discounts, or any form of payment from restaurants. Our reviews cannot be bought — at any price.
We visit every restaurant a minimum of twice before publishing a review. Consistency matters. A single brilliant night can happen anywhere — we want to know if it happens every night.
Our reviews score restaurants on food, service, atmosphere, value, and location. We write about what didn't work as clearly as what did. A 9/10 means exceptional; an honest 6/10 helps readers make better choices.
Dubai's restaurant scene moves fast. We revisit restaurants quarterly and update our reviews when menus, chefs, or quality changes significantly. All reviews display when they were last updated.
From a 15 AED cafeteria in Deira to a Dhs 2,000 tasting menu in DIFC — we cover the full spectrum. Every neighbourhood, every cuisine, every budget. Dubai's food scene has no hierarchy here.
Where To Eat Dubai is founded and led by Fredrik Filipsson — a long-term Dubai resident, business executive, and obsessive restaurant-goer. Our contributing writers are experienced long-term Dubai residents who eat out across the city every week.
Seven years in Dubai. Knows every shortcut from JBR to Al Quoz and the best place to eat at every stop. Grew up in a family of cooks and never stopped eating. Specialises in Middle Eastern, Lebanese, and street food.
Former hospitality professional turned food writer. Covers Dubai's international cuisine scene with deep knowledge of Asian, European, and South American food. Has eaten in 35 countries.
A decade in Dubai's food industry. Knows what value actually means across every price point. Has found incredible meals in every corner of Dubai — including a life-changing biryani in Deira for AED 22.
We hear about a restaurant through reader tips, industry sources, or our own exploration. If it sounds interesting, it goes on the list. We receive hundreds of tips every month.
An editor books under a pseudonym, arrives without announcing their identity, orders broadly across the menu, and takes detailed notes throughout the meal.
We return, often at a different time of day or week, to verify consistency. A restaurant that's brilliant on a quiet Tuesday might be a mess on a busy Friday. We want to know both.
The editor writes the review. A second editor reads it for accuracy and fairness. We fact-check prices, opening hours, and contact details. Then it's published — with an update date that we honour.
We find restaurants through reader tips, industry sources, our own neighbourhood exploration, and monitoring Dubai's constantly-evolving food scene. We prioritise restaurants that are genuinely good over those with marketing budgets. A hidden Iranian grill in Deira gets the same consideration as a celebrity-chef venue in DIFC.
Our editorial rankings and reviews are 100% independent and are never for sale. We do offer clearly-labelled advertising and partnership opportunities for brands that want to reach our audience — but these appear in designated advertising spaces and never influence our editorial content. If a restaurant is on our Best Of list, it's because our editors put it there. Full stop.
We publish new reviews and articles every week. Existing reviews are re-visited and updated whenever a restaurant changes chef, menu, ownership, or quality. Our top lists are reviewed quarterly. Every page shows a "Last Updated" date so you always know how fresh the information is. Dubai's restaurant scene moves extremely fast — we try to move with it.
Use our Suggest a Restaurant form. Tell us the name, location, cuisine, and why you think we should visit. We read every submission. Some of our best discoveries have come from reader tips — the Al Ustad Special Kabab review, now one of our most-read pieces, came from a reader email in 2021.
You can't book a review — that's how we keep the process honest. But you can use the Suggest a Restaurant form to bring a new opening to our attention. We visit when we choose to, anonymously. If your food is good, we'll find you eventually. The best restaurants tend to generate enough buzz that we hear about them quickly.
We work with select brands on advertising placements, sponsored content (clearly labelled), and partnerships that genuinely serve our readers. For advertising enquiries, use our contact form and select "Partnership" or "Advertising" as the subject. Our audience is 500,000+ monthly readers who are actively looking for places to eat and spend money in Dubai.
Start with our area guides, browse by cuisine, or check this week's new openings. Or let us come to your inbox — The Dubai Fork newsletter, every Thursday, free.
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