OLEA, KEMPINSKI HOTEL MALL OF THE EMIRATES

The Levant has more to offer to a dinner table than just street favourites like shawarma and falafel. Olea, the glamorous Levantine restaurant at Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates, will put misconceptions about the region’s cuisine to rest with its iftar buffet in an air-conditioned terrace marquee. Heap plates with both heritage and flavours with Jordan’s chicken freekeh soup and mansaf laham (lamb in dried yoghurt), Palestine’s famous upside down dish of magloba daja (pot-cooked meal of veggies, meat and rice) and a whole host of delicacies from Syria and southern Turkey too. Traditional favourites like oven-fresh pitta bread, and quenching Ramadan juices of jallab and amareddin are also a part of the buffet, but it’s the cheesy kunafa, the baked vermicelli and clotted organe cream dish of osmalieh and baklava that steal the show.