Flavours of Arabia to the fore at Al Nafoorah

As the month of Ramadan draws to a close, it’s your last chance to take advantage of the heaving iftar buffets laid on by hotels and restaurants across the city.

For a lot of people, Arabic food begins with hummus and mouttabel and ends with Umm Ali. But as the well-chosen buffet at Jumeirah Emirates Towers’ Al Nafoorah Majlis shows, there’s plenty in between – besides kebabs, that is.

Arriving a few minutes ahead of time, we were quickly greeted and seated, leaving us a few minutes to place our drinks and soup orders before the call for prayer signalled that we could bite into the dates sitting on the table in front of us.

We got off to a fine start with the drinks, traditional laban (buttermilk) or hallab, a refreshing red syrupy concoction of dates, raisins and rose water with whole pine nuts.

But the soups fared rather worse. My lentil soup was clean, hearty fare, but my partner’s cream of chicken soup was so insipid I swapped with her instead.

Well ready for our starters, we headed off to the buffet in the centre of the room. And while it isn’t the vulgar spread we’re so accustomed to her in the UAE, there is nevertheless a fair amount of variety.

We sampled a selection of starters and can happily report that the moutabbel was rich and creamy, while the babaghanoush was a lovely, tangy blend of delights.

Both are aubergine-based dishes and are sometimes considered interchangeable, but here each was given a clean, distinct identity all its own.

My friend, a visiting tourist who was eating shankliesh for the first time, couldn’t get enough of the heady mix of spice and cheese that is characteristic of this aged, dried cheese and later insisted I buy some for her to take back home.

The other notable starter, common enough in Lebanon but a relative rarity here in Dubai, was the kibbeh nayef, a raw tartare of lamb and bulghur wheat that I’m told follows a labour-intensive recipe.

In taste and texture it’s both close to and very different from steak tartare, less spicy but more strongly flavoured, especially with some of the white onions it is served with.

Don’t let the idea of raw meat put you off, if you don’t actually know what it is, you’re more than likely to think it’s a sort of pate that’s perfect with some of the warm bread the staff bring over repeatedly.

Now ready to move on to our mains, we headed back to the buffet and came back with plates laden with classic Arabian dishes, including, of course, the ubiquitous mixed grills.

The lamb majboos, a biryani-style dish with the rice and the meat cooked separately, was a definite winner, wholesome and packed with flavour.

Next to it was a biryani that was more strongly spiced, but remained a regional version of the Indian classic, toned down and rather less complex in its construction of flavour.

A fish fanatic, I piled my plate with hammour hara, a grilled local fish with the classic tomato sauce, but having just tucked into a superlative execution of the dish the previous week, I was unimpressed by the dry, chewy fish – this was the biggest disappointment, but it was more than made up for by two other dishes.

One of which, oddly enough, was chicken stew – a dish most might be tempted to walk past when eating out, but one that was excellently executed, the chicken moist and succulent with vegetables that were still firm and retained their own identities within the dish.

If you’ve spent all day fasting – as I hadn’t – I’d imagine this would be the sort of thing you’d want: a warm, comforting dish that puts everything right. The other star, I felt, was the kibbeh bil laham, the classic fried balls of lamb and crushed wheat in a yoghurt gravy.

These were tender and juicy, but when you bit into them, offered up a fresh batch of flavours, onions and pine most prominently.

A separate dessert table groaned under the weight of Umm Ali, mouhallabieh, baklava and other delights, but for us the finest had to be the aish al soraya, a Middle Eastern bread and butter pudding. And while that sounds terribly stodgy, it is actually creamy, crumbly and nutty, lightly sprinkled with rose water – or at least that’s how these chaps do it.

At this point, tradition dictates you sit back and puff away at a shisha and look at Yusra channelling Dr Temperance Brennan on the telly. If I didn’t have an interview to run to, we might well have stayed.

Iftar at Al Nafoorah Ramadan Majlis is priced at Dh180 per person and is served from sunset to 8.30 pm.

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