Eric's Dubai

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.
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