After more than two decades in the emirate, hospitality expert Dan Clayton looks at how gastronomy has captured Dubai’s diversity, resilience and evolving cultural identity.
Dubai: For most people, the story of Dubai lies in its economy, development or history. For Dan Clayton, who has lived in Dubai for over 25 years, the city’s story is laid out on its tables.
The British national, who works in the hospitality industry, specifically in gastronomy and experiences, and is the vice president of product, food and beverage, and hospitality at a hotel group in Dubai, said: “Not everyone can read a balance sheet or a master plan, but everyone eats. The city’s whole story is there on its tables, if you’re willing to sit down at enough of them.”
In the case of Dubai, which is home to people from all around the world, there’s an “extraordinary amount to discover” through the way the city eats.
Clayton, who was born in Kuwait, and raised in the UK and Oman, moved to the UAE in 2003: “I was drawn by the rumours and whispers of this ambitious new city rising fast from the desert, with global aspirations and visionaries driving it. I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to contribute to it.” He lives in Dubai with his Serbian wife, and has two children.
Watching his adopted home grow and evolve, through a gastronomic lens, has been special. Clayton said: “Most cities grow slowly, from the inside, over generations. Dubai does something rarer and, to me, more remarkable. It welcomes the whole world in and finds a place for all of it. People arrive here from everywhere, bringing their languages, their food, their traditions, their ambitions and their hopes, and instead of asking them to leave those things at the door, the city puts them to work. It turns them into neighbourhoods, businesses, restaurants, rituals and shared memories.”
You see this most clearly in restaurants, and the hospitality industry: “A homesick community’s food becomes a restaurant. A weekend with no rituals becomes a brunch. A casual supper club becomes a business that supports dozens of people.”
It’s why Clayton believes the culinary landscape of a place reveals a lot, as much as its skyscrapers or monuments.
The city’s thriving food scene
Dubai is home to around 13,000 cafes and restaurants – the most of any city in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, according to the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET).
Findings by the third annual Dubai Gastronomy Industry Report, published by the DET in April 2025, revealed that the city’s food and beverage sector is on a steady upward trajectory, with 1,200 new restaurant licences issued to operators. The same report found that dining out is a regular activity, with Dubai residents visiting restaurants 2.5 times per week on average.
When they do eat out, the diversity of cuisines is a top priority for diners. The DET’s ‘Gastronomy Always On’ (GAON) report, which tracks diner attitudes, satisfaction scores, and local food trends, found that 49% of respondents considered the type of cuisine as the most important factor when selecting a restaurant.
These numbers make sense to Clayton, who sees restaurants as organic indicators of growth, prosperity – and identity: “There are always two sides to any city, the public and the private… Restaurants are a city’s private journal. They have to be true to the people they actually serve, because they survive on whether they come back. And to do that, a restaurant makes hundreds of small, honest decisions: what’s on the menu, what it costs, who’s in the kitchen, how close the tables are, whether you’re welcomed to linger or gently moved along. Every one of those choices tells you who the place is really for. That’s why I trust the table.”
A community at its core
Clayton credits Dubai’s residential community for bringing authentic flavours to the city from around the world. By introducing their own style of hospitality, and importing their unique tastes and experiences, they have come together to create a vibrant industry – and by extension, a community.
Clayton explained: “Think of all the young talent the big brands brought in, through the 2000s. Many of them never left. They stayed, put down roots, and went on to build their own restaurants, their own companies, their own networks. That’s the real story: Dubai rewards entrepreneurial spirit. It lets people build something around hard work and talent, and a whole generation of hospitality lifers has grown up here doing exactly that.”
Underneath it all, is the bedrock – traditional Emirati hospitality. Clayton explained: “It is the Emirati foundation, the culture of welcome this city is actually built on. Everything the rest of us have added sits on top of that instinct for generosity and hospitality. The industry may be global, but the impulse to open the door and feed the guest is deeply Emirati. That, more than anything, is what holds the community together.”
Eat your way through Dubai
Clayton has a tip for visitors and newcomers who are guests of the city. The best way to get introduced to Dubai and its unique community? Eat your way through it.
There is no single neighbourhood, restaurant, or meal that says ‘Dubai’, according to Clayton – it’s just too complex to be tied down so neatly. Instead, to understand it in terms of food, you have to go on a journey of discovery, through the city’s vibrant neighbourhoods.
Clayton took Emirates 24/7 on a food tour: “Start in Deira, by the Creek, where the culinary story begins: Middle Eastern bakeries, mandi rooms, spice shops… the old trading city you can still taste. Then Karama, which is where a lot of Dubai actually lives. Go at dinner time, and it’s families lining up for dosa, someone grabbing biryani on the way home, third-culture kids flipping between languages without thinking about it. Warm, unpretentious, some of the most honest eating in the city.”
When you have made your way through the heart of Dubai, turn towards its newer districts. Clayton said: “Then the waterfronts and hotels – Downtown, Dubai International Financial City (DIFC), the beachfronts – the confident, global Dubai the world recognises. And finally the independent clusters like Alserkal, where founder-led places are starting to author Dubai’s own food rather than borrow it. Eat across those four and I think you will start to feel the real city.”
A bold new future
While, so far, Dubai has welcomed cuisines from around the world, it is currently at the threshold of something new and exciting: It’s applying the Dubai-it philosophy and ambition to gastronomy.
Having been in the food industry for over two decades, Clayton has a prediction: “From a gastronomic perspective, Dubai is already becoming an author rather than just a host. It’s creating from its own conditions, its own food, its own cultural voice, its own way of doing things, so that the rest of the world is starting to borrow from us for a change. The ingredients are all here, and the city is already putting them to work: the talent, the ambition, the extraordinary mix of people, and a place that genuinely lets you build things. What it needs now is time, because a real identity can’t be rushed, and the best of it is coming from the generation growing up here right now.”
As time marches forward, Clayton looks back at his own experiences in the city. Over the past two decades, he has seen Dubai’s food scene explode and evolve. If its restaurants were telling the city’s story today, what would they say?
Clayton said: “It would be a story of extraordinary range, and of a city assembled by many hands. Dubai’s tables have fed millions, kept diasporas connected to home, and made eating out one of the real pleasures of living here.”
The story would also be one of resilience: “This is an industry that has weathered downturns, a pandemic, and constant reinvention, and kept its doors open through all of it. That staying power says a lot about the city itself.”
And at its heart, it would be a story of generosity. Clayton said it’s “because so much of Dubai’s food is made by people from somewhere else, cooking for people from somewhere else, and finding common ground over a meal. If the restaurants told the city’s story today, it would be this: a place still being written, by everyone who eats here.”