Oftentimes, when dining out, we wonder what it is the kitchen staff puts in the recipes we know by heart that makes them so distinctly delicious. This is especially true when we, Middle Easterners, indulge in Middle Eastern cuisine and discover that it bears little to no resemblance to the homemade dishes we attempt from ancient cookbooks and YouTube techniques. At all-new Turkish and Levantine eatery Arrazuna, the gap is explained by three elements: skill, supply and style.

Headed by Finnish-Turkish Michelin-star-wielding chef Mehmet Gürs, Arrazuna comes sufficiently armed with skill. The chef-turned-restaurateur is widely considered a superstar of the culinary community, and has a legacy of popularising Middle Eastern cuisine across the globe. At Arrazuna, he paints our stuffed vine leaves and kufta in a picturesque, gourmet dining light. If it’s true that you eat with your eyes first, simply sitting by the Arrazuna kitchen would be enough to feed an army.

Now, skill can only do so much when paired with a faulty supply. Arrazuna’s dishes reach the optimal degree of quality that they do because not only are they crafted with chef Gürs’s expertise, but also because they are created with premium quality ingredients - the best in the region. The good news is that seeing as Arrazuna doubles as a marketplace concept, many of their ingredients are available for purchase in-store or through the Arrazuna app, meaning that an element of the restaurant’s excellence can be regurgitated in your homemade dishes.

Call us hopeless if you will, the truth is that there is something about dining in a space that is just elegant. Be it the aforementioned aesthetic quality of the food, or the picturesque serenity of Arrazuna’s dining space, the beauty of the eatery simply expands our appetite. With its floor-to-ceiling windows that showcase the metropolitan beauty of Dubai, its sleek and flowing wooden panels and its bespoke textures, Arrazuna is a feast for all senses.