Subs or Dubs
A stop in Dubai to punctuate a trip from London to South India.
The muggy slap that greets you whenever you exit an air-conditioned building reminded me of my overimagined emergence from a DTLA → K-Town subway ride; the instant search for a cooling solace. These are not places in which well-to-do types are supposed to interact with the material of the city - the transit and sidewalks are tools to contemplate and resent - never actually use. In Dubai you dial on FM 104.4 and groan to Kris Fade screeching about a new bottomless brunch while going from the “where’s that?” side of Maktoum Bridge to the longest/widest grid of hotels, cafeterias, condos, labour colonies, warehouse projects turned warehouse galleries - bifurcated by Sheikh Zayed Road, named for the founding father of the Emirates. A blue monopoly row if every entry was Wall Street.
There’s a weariness to seeing so many slick steel structures all at once, and none of them have any nicknames, the neighbourhoods don’t have acronyms - internationally an in-the-know type might talk about Jumeirah Beach Road and Al Serkal - a South London explorer might even mention Karama - but the city has reached a vast and unknowable scale for anyone.
I thought about going into ‘orijins’ while waiting for a meeting at the Dubai International Financial Centre, a new Barbican with haute chain restaurants and Alec Andons in the gallery windows. I got distracted by the sight of something called SPACES - subtitled ‘a contemplative eatery’, what would make a thoughtless eatery I wonder. Or maybe the word is ignorant or apathetic.
I always feel a bit embarrassed when I veer into nostalgia. The feeling that has birthed countless diasporic dialogues; maybe the only thing we create about. Nostalgia and longing as described by highly mobile, upwardly mobile, voluntary exiles feels a bit cloying - couldn’t you go back at any time // aren’t you here of your own accord?
We’re at Haidilao (literally: scooping the bottom of the ocean), the first one I’ve ever been to. Dubai Mall has a new Chinatown that promises ‘an authentic Asian Experience’ (as if we needed any more). I have a highly efficient and pleasant hotpot experience, nothing quite like the sticky Xiangbala which was deeply beloved for years, an AYCE for £20 (? including scallops). With a vaguely málà melody audible from Haymarket station onwards. HDL was smilier and ostensibly ‘happier’ than Xiao Wei Yang ever seems to be, including the one we went to countless times as a family on the Dubai Creek.
It was a little closer to the Harbin/Northern Chinese style restaurant that was also along the Creek, whose name I won’t pretend to accurately recall - but I do remember a tahdig-gy burnt ginger rice. I also hear there is Very Good Hotpot around Barsha (7 Sisters, the name not the tube stop) or International City - but the distance, immense heat and continued lack of much public transport makes it difficult to dip in and out of these places.
Spicy Food and Bubble Tea
Dagu Rice Noodle is a restaurant chain beloved across China for its hearty and fresh bowls of noodle soup. Now its first American branch just opened its door in Las Vegas.
SPICY AND NUMBING…
The intangible cultural heritage that is a Chinese hamburger
Not really sure
Dearly beloved in Singapore in the form of tongue tip, aisiyah, Yi Zun Beef Noodle…
To drive while spectating the autonomously developing outer rings - through a 50°C haze is to have a real Dubai interlude. To go somewhere where the food or coffee is solid - but the atmosphere has a simulated uncanniness of an AI still life. There’s something artificial about it - that the longer you stare at it the more you resent it - waiting for something more obviously evil to show itself on the surface - that viewers of all critical capacities can hate.
A matcha fizz, an LA-style espresso tonic is refreshing and slightly sedimented - not sure if the grade was ceremonial or gourmet (1004).
Preciously Trusting patrons walked around coolly greeting each other - touching their Bostons against each other to say ahlan. My ‘Rascal’ came - looking like a platonic ideal of a sando. A perfect imitation of a 2nd Ave Deli or a Katz or whatever piece of Americana this was supposed to be closest to. Places where the meat slicer never thought about how the layout of the vegetables stacked against the deli meats would look when photographed vertically at .5 on an iPhone 14 Pro before going on Threads. Someone comments ‘this is the best sando I’ve ever eaten’ and everyone agrees, after a lifetime of drudging through Hokkaido milk breads and bresaola, they’ve finally found it.
It’s not as expensive as I imagined, when I first saw it online, expensive enough to fund the ‘Ronnie Rascal’ poster (in the style of Scarface) or RASCALS (in the style of JAWS) - with Ronnie, presumably, in the open mouth of the shark.
'‘Very interesting idea…I like it…’ a woman says about what I’m not sure - in a Lebanese accent. A table with a pink Chanel Boy, a Goyard Mini in a lewd shade, three pairs of Hermes ‘H’ flats in different colours. A man in the background is wearing a giant Hublot.
Against the hum of old school hip-hop and Tory Lanez, I thought about the watermelon-lime Pinkberry with pistachio crunch - and the pleasures of the mainstream, I hadn’t yet read the Ice Cream Awards.
The t-shirt of the week in Dubai was a Shabab x Pacifism x Baby Palm Cakes graphic of a lurid rose cake sliced into thirds.
A flash-in-the-pan piece of 2000s core, juicy couture, Goodies core. Amusing and forgettable. Someone walks in with a Filling Pieces Terrycloth button-up. Another boy bag and two Hermes sandals (one man one woman, no relation seemingly) walk in and order Pastramis until they sell-out.
People are wearing Rascals merchandise inside the restaurant, Synechdoche Al Wasl. I see a red Cartier Santos, something shiny and Presidential, WoodWood and Teddy Santis branded NBs (the shoes not the identity - at least not in these parts). The olive tree above my head bears enough fruit for a bottle of Graza, even though i’m not sure if it’s real, i’m pretty sure it is. Someone who looks like Neha Mishra is sitting here, i’m wondering if she’s insubordinately looking after her newborn or having a life instead of opening up in Harrods, leaving us overdue for nasu dengaku and tori paitan. Early Hova played, let’s get this bread! he probably said.
Patrons seem much less paranoid when standing up to take a photo of their food - i’m not sure if its these peoples defiant apathy or a commonplace acceptance in this city - as though we shouldn’t be shy to be caught in such an act.
Dubai has a lot of, too many even, high concepts right now and seemingly little critical commentary around it. A couple of newish listening bars, a new high SES Asian opening every week, Nobu on the Beach and the biggest Nobu in the world - every chain, even ones that people didn’t ask for (WIMPY), some done very well, some quite poorly (no peanut candy at Oakberry in Dubai Mall). Some kind of Latin Asian fusion that didn’t seem nikkei, Texan churrascaria, a London-Punjabi delivered, - lots of middling food that would affirm to virtue-signalling globalists that their tepid take of Dubai as a Godless Paradise for the big-boobed consumerist, plutocrats, and generally devilish figures.
I’d been to the Waterfront A/C fish market on that Gold Souk-Mamzar stretch before, forgetting or never having known that it was open 24/7, closed from 10-11am for a wash. I imagine a used milk frother or pint glass that gets pressed upside down on a table-top power rinser - that sort of washing.
Walking in and seeing a heaving samak bazaar at 9pm feels very Dubai. The confluence of all shades of CMIO congregating in the inoffensively briny olfactory environment and the conversationally violent bargaining arena felt even more Dubai. Rows of Australian King Crab in Runescape bronze, bulging anti-gull bags of razor clams. What looked like whelk (which I’ve only had twice, once at Lyle’s and the other at Koya), scary looking conches, isopods, pregnant lobsters and Dibba Bay Oysters.
5DHS
A real Posh restaurant favourite in the +971 from what I hear, and super sustainable from what I read, i think once in particular in Preserve.
I tried to draw them and they ended up looking like ears.
The Big Man shucking me the oyster might as well have picked up the meat by his fingers, poured out all the liquor and replaced it with lemon juice - but it still had a remarkably refreshing note of the sun and sea - the texture of black fungus and the bite of a real firm lychee.
We picked up a bag of razor clams, dreaming of a Venetian cicheti, a mudcrab (with optimus prime claws), four king crab legs, six tiger prawns, and a hamour - the local favourite. We got it cleaned at the market then left to go look for some Azeri nuts, but VM, my ‘rural fishing village’ mate put me on some whole dried figs instead - and we walked through clouds of frankincense and China-make humidifiers humidifying the air to Yahya, a name I recognized from Global Village’s floating market, famous for their tom yum and cheese broiled mussels. The absolute heft of how much we bought hit us in a fat anticlimax - khao pad and fattoush and Pepsi Max didn’t wash away the shame - I decided not to get any mini-melts and we drove back home…
Smaller quicker bits:
Walid Mohammad Bakhit Bakery had a great light atmosphere for late-night rigaags with egg, cream cheese, mahyawa and Eagle Sauce. Definitely better than Heritage Village, and Global Village, and probably Friday Market - but I can’t recall if it’s better than the 24-hour place in Abu Hail.
No pictures from Form Bageri but pleasant Fort Nagen recalling asparagus truffle danish and tahini+black seed cookie - a good respite from Home Bakery - the one half or 32/64 of the checkerboard (abayas + kandoras - a shorthand for only Locals being there) corner that Espresso Lab and HB occupy in Dubai Design District, and their tartine-style brookie.
I’m in Six of One this week - writing about Coutrallam Rahmath Border Kadai, in South Harrow.
