Dubai restaurant Orfali Bros reinvents the food of the Syrian diaspora

For Mohamad Orfali, memory plays a very strong role in the way he approaches food. It is not just the lingering impression of a taste or texture, but also about the hands that made the food back home in Aleppo, Syria. “The city was the capital of gastronomy in so many ways. Food for us was a lifestyle. You didn’t just appreciate the dishes but the people who brought all the ingredients that went into the food. So, for me, my mother, grandmother, the kebabji making the kebabs on the street—all these people impacted me,” says Orfali. These core memories not just shaped his attitude towards food but also to the people when he started Orfali Bros Bistro in Dubai with his two younger brothers, Omar and Wasim, in 2021. “My legacy is my team, who add so much to the restaurant. That is the culture that we create. My team is my family,” he adds.

The CNN, in its 2024 article, ‘How a family-run bistro became the Middle East’s best restaurant’, called the menu at Orfali Bros as a love letter to the brothers’ Syrian roots and the culinary traditions the brothers grew up with, fused with contemporary Arabic and Mediterranean flavours. “While the Orfali Bros Bistro is grounded in Syrian influences, it offers something Orfali calls ‘Dubai Cuisine’ — not Emirati food, but an adjustment of global culinary traditions for the international palette, a way of allowing people from hundreds of different backgrounds and tastes to enjoy a meal together,” it further adds. It is this distinctive approach that earned the Orfali Bros its first Michelin star earlier this year, and the “best restaurant” award in the Middle East and North Africa on the 50 Best List.

Dubai has played a key role in the way Orfali’s culinary philosophy has evolved. “Of course, I am very Dubai-ish. I spent two quarters of life in Aleppo and the last quarter in Dubai. I love the city and its diversity. If you head to any one of the streets, you will find 20 restaurants there, showcasing different cuisines and different cultures,” says Orfali. “I came to Dubai to learn English, by the way, in 2007. I fell in love with the city and stayed.” It was during this time that he got exposed to many different dishes from across the world—biryani, samosa, dosa, sushi, and even burgers.

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Today, Orfali Bros is part of the strong homegrown independent restaurant movement in Dubai, which are being helmed by talented chefs. Orfali, a former TV chef, is the chef de cuisine and his brothers helm the patisserie section. “The menu showcases our journey from Aleppo to Dubai, and the memories that we have built along the way,” he adds. And the team tried to showcase snippets from that journey as part of a special dinner hosted recently at The Oberoi Gurgaon during the Orfali Bros’ maiden visit to India. The Orfalis were here at the invitation of Culinary Culture in association with American Express.

There is always an element of surprise in the menu—-including the name of the dishes— at Orfali Bros. Memories and tradition are rebuilt to reflect a childlike enthusiasm. So, you have a dish named ‘Ooh la la’ featuring foie gras, hazelnut, quince vinegar and hazelnut miso, or the ‘yum yam’, a mix herbs salad with pomelo, buckwheat, peanuts, lemongrass, tamarind and dressing. Some of the most popular items on the menu include the OB cheese burger, the ‘shish barak a la gyoza’ and the ‘pide’, or the team’s take on the pizza. “Our cuisine is about taste, texture and ingredients. It is these three things that define what we do, instead of starting whether we are traditional or modern,” says Orfali.

Food is, perhaps, the one thing that speaks to people across nationalities, across borders and languages. At Orfali Brothers, the extensive staff comes from different cultural backgrounds. In that context, food acts as a common language for the staff in a multicultural city like Dubai. Indeed, the various members of the team—be it in front of the house or the kitchen staff—continue to inspire and influence dishes at the restaurant. “One of our staff members—a Filipino—cooked chicken adobo for us as the staff meal. We loved it and encouraged the guys to incorporate it within the menu. And today, one of the star items is the adobo chicken wings,” he explains. “We are a family, we speak the language of food.” Every person, who steps into the restaurant, is inducted into the fold of this large family, and is invited to feel at home, feel happy and feel the energy.

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The impact of climate change can be witnessed as we speak in all sectors, including the food and beverage industry. Orfali is looking at the role that chefs can play in incorporating local ingredients, highlighting local producers, and reducing carbon footprint. “We are almost locavore. Sometimes it is hard in Dubai as the summers are very harsh. But Dubai has improved a lot from a decade back in the availability of local ingredients,” says Orfali. To him, the concept of ‘face certification’ is very important—for chefs to know exactly who grows the ingredients. “There are so many good farms in the city and no one knows about them. Somehow, there is a communication gap between the farms and chefs, and I am trying to build a bridge,” he adds.

The one thing that has got the team at Orfali Bros excited is the lab, which started six months ago. The various members can be seen fermenting and pickling away on most days. Most of the soft drinks served at the restaurant are a result of this process—be it the kombuchas or the Russiankvas.“The guys came up with a chilli sauce, which blows my mind, and will be added to the menu as the Orfali hot sauce. It comes across as a mix of the Louisiana hot sauce, the tabasco and the Thai chilli,” says Orfali. People often get surprised by the many experiments, permutations and combinations that come out of a kitchen, which is relatively smaller than that of other major restaurants in the city. “Everything in Dubai is the tallest, largest, biggest. We are the smallest,” laughs Orfali. “But on a serious note, we took a bigger space for the kitchen than the dining room, and have still managed to make business.” As of now, the team is working on two new projects—Three Bros—which feature star items such as the burgers and the pide, and a Thai concept restaurant. “I will be the R&D supporting that concept, but my main focus will be the Orfali Bros,” he says.

Sometimes when the brothers look back on the journey of the restaurant, and how they got to this point, they find it hard to define the feeling in words. “I think it is the culture that we bring. ‘Breaking the rules’ is a scary term. But I think that is what we did—we break rules but respect tradition. We like to make connections. Our storytelling does not come from whether we cooked the eggplant sous vide or not. But it is about how we can create a link between human beings and food,” says Orfali.

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