Dubai’s best plates to light that spark
Ah – the date night. Over the years, the Serb and I have been on hundreds of date nights. Date nights evolve and take on different reasons and purposes, depending on where you are in life. Let’s break it down, for all those in the back – hopefully there is something there for all of you out there navigating the tricky world of dating.
The Meeting
Let’s start with the first date – you’re young, (or not) you’re looking to impress but not to the detriment of your bank balance. You’re expecting to go halves on the bill, (it is 2026) but willing to pay for all of it if needed. More importantly, the restaurant needs to give you stable ground. First dates contain plenty of hazards already, so the food, service and bill shouldn’t add any more. You want somewhere reliable, lively enough to fill the occasional silence, casual enough to remove ceremony and good enough to demonstrate that you have standards.
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I suggest places like Pitfire Pizza, which is the cool independent choice. It’s good enough to demonstrate taste, but casual enough that you haven’t made a statement. And those amazing garlic knots kill any end of date expectations! Pickl is also great. It’s fun, reliable and makes a point of how little theatre a first date actually needs. I also like Din Tai Fung – serious food, great energy, and it feels like a proper restaurant without unnecessary ceremony.
The first date is basically asking, “Are you normal, safe and interesting enough that I want to see you again?”
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The Second Date
Second dates are important. They ask the question, is there actually something here? For that you need somewhere with personality. Second dates benefit from atmosphere. A busy room, a good soundtrack, people around you having fun. It gives the date something to feed off and so, you can take a bigger swing here – a venue with a point of view, a great bar, an unusual cuisine – somewhere that reveals a little about your taste.
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But you also want somewhere with enough intimacy to talk properly, not necessarily romantic, but warmer, quieter, closer. You want somewhere you can linger if you want, but likewise, take a sharp exit, if needed. And you still want something low key – stay away from tasting menus and white tablecloths. This could be anything from KIMA, an intimate, energetic neighbourhood restaurant where you can have a quick bite or settle in for the evening, to Maine Business Bay, with the slick, polished and seductive experience of a New England brasserie. But equally valid is somewhere like The Guild – bold, confident, fire cooking in one of my favourite dining rooms in the city.
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The Happily Ever After
Third, fourth and fifth dates is all about your places and their places. You start exchanging favourites, almost like making each other mixtapes. The restaurant becomes less important as a piece of dating strategy and more important because of what it reveals about the person choosing it. Your favourite restaurants show your taste, memory, nostalgia, habits, perhaps even the version of yourself you want someone else to understand. Taking someone to a restaurant you’ve loved for years is a small act of intimacy. You’re saying: this matters to me, and I want to share it with you. Which makes recommendations slightly ridiculous, because your favourite place should really be yours. However, I’d choose places with genuine affection around them, a strong sense of character, the kind of restaurant you return to often, and at least one dish you immediately want someone else to try.
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For me, I was absolutely delighted to introduce The Serb to Orfali Bros, Itadaku and Kinoya; three restaurants I’ve become genuinely attached to, built around people, craft and food with a real sense of identity.
After this stage, you eventually stop taking each other to your places and start discovering our places. These are the places you discover together. This part of the dating arc is where you build memories together and find places that somehow become part of your story as a couple. What matters is that you experience it at the same time, you form opinions together or share a terrible dessert that you still laugh about years after. That is how you create restaurants that become your place.
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As for the restaurant recommendations themselves, I’d look for places that offer discovery, character, a little spontaneity, memorable food and genuine repeat potential. Window in Alserkal Avenue was great for this, as is Taqueria El Primo by Chef Jon Collins and Girl and the Goose, which has become one of my most recommended restaurants. All three have become our restaurants, places the Serb and I discovered and fell in love with together.
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And, by now, you should be married, and your date night changes significantly. The restaurant’s job is to help you temporarily escape everything you subsequently built together. Life comes at you pretty fast, and date nights are more likely to be lunches, stolen between school and ECA runs or whatever else has taken ownership of the social calendar. Neighbourhood Food Hall works for variety, authenticity and fun; Common Grounds gives us proper grown-up food while remaining wonderfully tolerant of children; and every now and then, you call a babysitter, put on some decent clothes and disappear to somewhere like Chez Wam for a properly grown-up night of food, drinks, music and escapism.
So, whether you’re on your first date, your third, or your five-hundredth, the rules are basically the same: eat somewhere good, talk to each other, and try not to spend the whole evening looking at your phone.
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FoodSheikh is a Dubai-based food writer and critic known for sharp, ethnographic observations of restaurant culture. He decodes how cities eat, linking chefs, dishes, and urban behavior. His writing blends anthropology, curiosity, and cultural critique, spotlighting the role of gastronomy in shaping identity, memory, and place.
