Mezlai

Designed to recall an airy Bedouin tent, Emirates Palace's award-winning Emirati restaurant, Mezlai, pays homage to Abu Dhabi with decor and a vast menu steeped in the heritage and geography of the UAE. Mezlai's traditional atmosphere, design and authentic Emirati cuisine gives you an experience to savour, combining luxury and tradition in a contemporary and unique design. Mezlai's tent motif elicits a millennia of Arabian culture and hospitality under which diners are treated as royalty.

Mezlai features Emirati cuisine with a Middle Eastern touch to suit the palate of a multicultural environment. The traditional food of the Emirates has always been rice, fish and meat. Lamb and mutton are the more favoured meats, then goat and finally beef. Popular beverages are coffee and tea, which can be supplemented with cardamom, saffron or mint to give them a distinct flavour. In planning its menu, Mezlai creates dishes with ingredients derived from the sea, mountains, oases and deserts that evoke the region. The menu features decadent updates on staples of the Arabian diet accenting expected ingredients, such as za'atar, camel and dates, and introducing the unexpected flavours of saffron, rosewater and hand-picked wild oregano.

A meal in Mezlai is a window into Emirati culture, a warm welcome to the long history of Arabian hospitality and a journey into flavours as old as the sands of time, which taste as fresh and inspired as this city of tomorrow. No stopover in Abu Dhabi is complete without sampling the local flavours and dining as the locals do.