Liam Collens

I knew almost nothing about Afghan food beyond what you see on television. I assumed it would run close to Pakistani cooking. How wrong I was.

Afghan Kabab Village sits on Al Maktoum Road in Deira behind a gold sign the length of the building. It boasts five hundred covers, so our waiter tells me, running about seventy per cent on a Friday afternoon. It has been open over a year and I cannot find a single person who has written about it. Something is filling that room, and it is not the press.

I suspect it is this: ten or so of the hundred-plus dishes here are actually Afghan. The rest runs to Yemeni mandi, Hejazi bukhari rice, Punjabi korma and dum pukht, Levantine hummus and a page dedicated to Gulf seafood. The receipt is headed Afghan Kabab Al Mandi and Al Bukhari Restaurant L.L.C. Three cuisines in the licensed name versus Afghan alone.

That is not a criticism and I suspect it is the whole answer. The Afghan name gets you noticed on a street of restaurants. The rest of the menu is what the street actually eats, so the street will come.

Upstairs you leave your shoes at the step and eat barefoot and cross-legged on carpets. On a Friday after prayers it was almost entirely men, in groups, ordering the same plates. I did not know how to be there. Whether to fold my legs or stretch them, whether looking around registered as curiosity or intrusion.

The uncertainty was mine and, hundreds of reviews later, it was welcomed.

The mutton pulao is better than anything that comes out of my kitchen, the grains separate and fine, a sweetness rolling in from carrot and dark raisins. Every other karahi I have eaten arrives eye-swellingly hot; the charsi karahi here leaves a thick, hearty gravy and mutton you gnaw off the knuckle. The palak is greener and more pungent than any spinach I know.

Lunch for two, wildly over-ordered, came to 211 dirhams.

Full review live on Substack and EatGoSee, including the two Afghan dishes the menu files under Desserts and the enormous screen playing footage of people walking around Copenhagen, which nobody could explain to me. Link in bio.

Have you eaten Afghan food before? Tell me where to go. Less

Dubai froths over the splashy new openings. A table perched on the 60, 70, 80-something floor overlooking other glass edifices once prized as the shiny new thing. Inside there is low lighting as a superfluous DJ presses play on a pre-recorded innocuous dance track while diners are presented with dry ice-frothing towers laden with fish that come from the same part of Turkey where these beautiful people got their teeth and fillers. Smile. Get a picture.

These restaurants, fuelled by private equity, whether by capital or patronage, come and they go. And so much of the conversation about Dubai’s dining scene, its awards, its (paid for) “power lists” orbits this world.

Praise and enthusiasm for those understated places, bastions of community still trading five, ten, fifteen years later, rarely rise above a whisper, if they get a mention at all.

Yet they exist miles beyond the reach of those towers, in a part of the city their shadows never reach.

This dining scene feeds a community that forged it over years of repeated custom. And it’s not less competitive or accomplished. Here, three generations of families mill, chatter and order the same plates, as if by ritual.

A crimson vindaloo of beef, not pork, its heat knocking and making clear it intends to come in. A meaty, cricket-ball-sized mutton potato chop, soft enough to eat with a spoon. There’s an assertive sol kadi and a thirst-quenching lime soda, sweet or salty, as you prefer.

There’s more: momos and seekh kebabs, butter chicken and paneer jalfrezi, a pivot away from a solely Goan menu, reflecting the palate of the community it now feeds.

Eric’s, a lacy, sea blue restaurant in Al Karama, is homely, almost grandmotherly in its design and pacing. And while I see my beard regrow in the time between dishes leaving the kitchen during a relaxed Saturday lunch, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

There’s a sincerity here that captivates me more than any sparkler-clad matcha fondant ever could. Eric’s is a capsule of Goa that belongs entirely to Karama, and should still belong to it in twenty years’ time.

Read more on Substack or EatGoSee. Link in my bio.
Have you been to Eric’s? Less

This is another Sound Bite. No music. No voiceover. Just a few moments exactly as they happened.

This evening came from the collaboration between the three Michelin-starred Trèsind Studio and local hero 1004 Gourmet in Dubai. One of the things I enjoyed most wasn’t simply the food, but watching one of the world’s most accomplished Indian restaurants step outside its usual format.

Korean ingredients, familiar techniques, a room full of chefs and industry people and a kitchen that looked like it was genuinely enjoying the freedom to experiment.

And the kitchen wasn’t the only one enjoying it. This dinner reminded me of season four of Trèsind Studio back when they introduced a fun-filled menu in the wake of the Covid pandemic. You could feel the shackles of formality being loosened, allowing the team to just have fun, but in that way that fine dining chefs allow themselves.

Sound can capture things photographs never quite manage. Conversations fading into the background. It puts you back in the room.

I wrote about why I think Trèsind Studio should do more evenings like this in Amused Bouche. Checkout my Substack for more. Less

There are some parts of a restaurant that words and photographs never quite manage to catch.

The scrape of a chair. Glasses clinking. The hum of a dining room settling into its evening rhythm. The sight of steam rising from a basket or a broth. They’re fleeting details, but they’re part of what it feels like to be in a restaurant.

So I thought I’d try something new!

I’m calling these Sound Bites. No music. No voiceover. No trending audio, but also no ASKR gimmicks. Just a few moments from a restaurant exactly as they happened.

This one comes from ROW on 45.

Returning three years later, I found a restaurant that had become leaner, sharper and far more assured. It also reminded me that if restaurants are allowed to evolve, critics should be prepared to revisit their own conclusions too.

If you’d like the full story, including why I changed my mind, the complete review is now on Substack and EatGoSee.

DO YOU LIKE THE SOUND BITES IDEA? Less

Three years ago, I sat in a room that wasn’t even open yet, eating a tasting menu with Jason Atherton and Dan Birk watching. I wrote 1,300 words that landed somewhere between admiration and a warning: a genuinely good restaurant, hiding inside one doing far too much.

I didn’t go back for three years. Partly pride, partly principle. When I finally did, I wanted to go with people who’d never been.

ROW stands for Refinement of Work. So the only real question worth asking is whether it had.

Sixteen courses are now twelve; the pricing is trimmed; the music still modern but less intrusive. There are other softer edges sanded down “refined, through the steady, unglamorous graft of moving one hundred things one inch forward.”

There’s enough Japanese produce to make one question whether this is still credibly a British restaurant, but then you lob in a kari buto cheese and onion “crisp” and a 540-day old jacket potato with what I’ll uncharitably call tuna mayo, meat and two veg with Saroma Wagyu A4, a meltingly pleasing blue cheese and — if it only matters to me — bread that once justified its own course now sits quietly as a side.

“The dining rooms remain admirably eclectic and unmistakably British, like a lounge in Saltburn estate, minus all that transgressive eroticism.”

Two people can eat here for less than one seat costs at FZN, Dubai’s three-Michelin-starred Frantzén outpost. That says more about FZN’s pricing than it does about ROW.

Full review, ROW on 45, Dubai, revisited — link in my bio. If you were at ROW in its first year, I am curious to know what stands out for you now. Less

La Fonte has a great deal going for it. One of the best positions in town, overlooking a steaming Roman pavilion that tourists photograph and locals ignore. A wine list that champions the region without gouging the diner. A room that is elegant without trying too hard. Service warm enough to produce an off-menu bowl of buttery tagliatelle for a two-year-old mid-tantrum without being asked twice.

It also has a kitchen that cannot stop adding things.

Anchovies arrive beneath batter so thick their character never surfaces. Artichokes, crisp and greaseless, are wrapped in like gauze in batter. A scorpion fish, described as firm, arrives soft — laid on soft courgettes, finished with soft splodges and nipples of beetroot purée. A celeriac marinated in chocolate, soy, miso and grapefruit somehow tastes of none of them.

The ideas are there. The restraint and discipline aren’t.

This is the most frustrating kind of restaurant to review, not to mention experience. You just want the restaurant to get out of its way.

The full Uninvited Opinion including what to order, what to skip, and where to eat instead is now on Substack. Link in bio. Less

At Bar School we were made to listen to recordings of ourselves failing.

No praise. No participation trophies. Just a room full of people explaining what needed fixing.

It steels you. It was also one of the most useful things I’ve ever done. There is good reason, supported by research, why that approach not only works but often prepares people better for success.

Years later, I found myself thinking about that while eating dinner at The Devonshire, one of London’s most celebrated restaurants and arguably the city’s most talked-about pub.

Not because The Devonshire is bad. Far from it.

But because I increasingly wonder what happens when a restaurant is praised so enthusiastically, and for so long, that criticism starts to feel impolite.

Does consensus eventually become truth?

Do we stop assessing a restaurant on its own merits and instead inherit the judgement of everyone who came before us?

My latest London restaurant review is now live on Substack. Less

Everyone knew Grégoire Berger would do something significant after Ossiano.

Few expected this.

An unlicensed seafood restaurant on Al Wasl Road. No aquarium. No enviable wine cellar. No return to the temple of spectacle he helped define. Well, maybe some spectacle.

Kraken commits loudly on the surface. Mirrored ceilings ripple. Tentacles loom. The room is theatrical, occasionally polarising, and entirely unapologetic. Even the bathrooms feel faintly Ursula from the Little Mermaid. But beneath the theatre sits something steadier.

Serious skill.

For those who knew Ossiano well, there are familiar notes. A greatest-hits anthology just short of a few singles, confidently executed and offered at a far more accessible price point. For everyone else, it simply reads as very good seafood cooking done with confidence, creativity and intent.

The tuna sausage and mash is the culinary equivalent of being tucked in at night with a 10 tog duvet. The dry-cured kingfish is cooked by a Jedi. The butterflied Sultan Ibrahim, cooked with precision, is reason enough to return.

Not everything lands perfectly. Some dishes are pulled from the heat just before texture fully makes its case. Step back, though, and the balance is clear.

Kraken sails between drama and discipline and one should chart a course for Al Wasl Road.

Full review now live on EatGoSee and Substack. Link in bio.

Kraken Seafood Restaurant, Al Wasl Rd, Al Wasl, Jumeirah 2, Dubai

Have you been? Less

There is a particular kind of restaurant discourse that does more harm than good. Not because the restaurant is bad, but because the noise around it becomes so loud that it distorts what is actually on the plate.

Middle Child sits squarely in that space.

The room is warm and bookish. Mustard yellow, soft wood, shelves of cookbooks and bottles. It feels calm by design rather than by affectation. The food follows suit. Familiar flavours, cooked with care. A sour cream and onion dip that knows exactly what it is. A hand cut steak tartare that is assertive, toothsome, and very nearly excellent. At its best, some of the dishes here are among the best of their kind I have eaten in Dubai.

Does everything delight? Non.

There are moments where things lean one dimensional. A steak that tips too sweet. A soft serve whose idea is more compelling than its execution. None of this feels terminal, or even surprising. This is a young restaurant, opened by a first time restaurateur, finding its rhythm in public. That is not a flaw. It is a process.

What interests me more is the conversation around it.

Middle Child is often spoken about in absolutes. As a revelation. As a standard bearer. As something that must be adored rather than discussed. That does the restaurant no favours. It sets expectations that are almost impossible to meet and leaves little room for the more interesting, more generous truth.

Which is that this is a good restaurant with flickers of a very good one. Bistro adjacent cooking that values restraint over spectacle. Plates that do not beg to be photographed before they are eaten. Service that is warm, human, and genuinely joyful.

Strip away the mythology and what remains is far more compelling. A place that understands its scale. Knows its audience. And does not shout to be heard.

In a city that often mistakes excess for excellence, that quiet confidence matters.

Would I go back? Yes. Almost certainly for lunch.

Sometimes the most interesting restaurants are not the loudest ones, but the ones that reward attention rather than appetite alone.

The full review is now live on EatGoSee and on my Substack. You can read it via the link in my profile. Less

In the fading days of 2025, the good ladies of Nourish by Spinneys asked me where I want to eat in Dubai, among other things. Go check out the episode.

In Dubai there will always be the shiny new thing, that trendy new thing or just that trend we’ve seen cycle on loop again and again.

I cover those as a food writer partly both out of intrigue and strategically. Go where the people want you to go.

But I spent 2025 also thinking long and hard about what I want to cover and, with this modest platform, there are places deserving of your attention—our attention; places where you want to nudge people. Places perhaps known by some but not by many.

@hashmibarbeque.dxb is one such place.

“Hashmi Barbeque is a bone-gnawing, lip-licking restaurant occupying serious square footage in Al Barsha—an often-overlooked Dubai neighbourhood better known for cheap apartments and the unsolicited ‘business cards’ of scantily clad ladies surreptitiously tucked into your car window, usually the driver’s side, or so I am told.”

Hashmi Barbeque is the Kenyan-meets-Indian restaurant that more people should talk about—ideally with a mouthful of lamb and hot sauce.

Eat the mutton samosas. Order the chicken chooza. Get a plate (maybe two) of the grilled lamb chops because sharing tugs on a will-power I do not have in me. Chase it down with the kulfi ice cream.

Read more via the link in my profile on EatGoSee or subscribe to my Substack.

📍 Hashmi Barbeque, Ground Floor, Trio Building, Al Barsha 1, Al Barsha First, Al Barsha, Dubai

Have you been?

#itsliamcollens #foodwriter #dubairestaurants #wheretoeatdubai #eatgosee Less