Al Naqa Lao Kebab House, Neighbourhood Food Hall, Dubai

It’s the Bib Gourmand that Dubai deserves, but may never get.

Apr 23, 2025

Pallavi Sangtani

, friend and overall food sage, dropped a truth bomb last year about Michelin:

“But here's my biggest gripe: Dubai's Bib Gourmand awards feel off. We're talking about those hidden gems – biryani joints, chaat stalls, shawarma spots – the kind of places you stumble upon and fall in love with. These are the beating heart of Dubai's food scene, just like Singapore's hawker centers. Yet, they get no love!

Michelin did expand the Bib Gourmand's price range in Dubai, but it still feels tilted towards "casual restaurants" instead of truly budget-friendly eats. It's almost like Dubai's food writers need a wake-up call. We need more voices singing the praises of the street food scene that truly captures Dubai's melting pot of cultures.”

In summary, Dubai’s Michelin Guide doesn’t care about street food.

This does a disservice to Dubai, its residents and 18+ million visitors a year. Street food and budget dining are not just about affordability. They are litmus tests to tasting a culture’s past, present and future.

The Guides for Bangkok, Singapore, and Mexico City show each city’s culinary breadth where fine dining and budget restaurants are found across their pages.

So far, Dubai’s Michelin Guide is seemingly impenetrable to budget dining. It does not represent the diasporas that founded small eateries in Al Barsha, Bur Dubai, Karama, Satwa, and beyond. Such places are rarely glamorous but make this city delicious. Dubai’s Michelin Guide is sponsored. I always ask myself how much that factors into both the Guide’s constituents and the trimmings that hit the cutting room floor.

Do you, Michelin. Let others like me champion those gaps in your pages. People come to us for Dubai’s best restaurants, especially the affordable ones.

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So allow me to introduce Al Naqa Lao Kebab House, an unsupposing hawker-style stand run by chef Aphisith Phongsavanh. Call him AJ.

Al Naqa Lao Kebab House opened in Neighbourhood Food Hall just shy of one year ago after AJ launched Legendary Naga, a popular supper club that sourced from Persian, Laotian and Middle Eastern cuisine. Al Naqa is more casual in its scope and ambition.

Al Naqa Lao Kebab House’s Mission Statement of the Camel and the Dragon

Raised by Laotian parents who fled to Toronto as refugees, AJ worked inside the family restaurant where the desire to cook took root. He would find himself under David Chang of Momofuku and as chef de cuisine at New York’s Waldorf Hotel.

Al Naqa Lao Kebab’s food is recognisable, but different. You have seen some version of each thing. They are maybe a little Ottolenghiish, but not quite. I could make them at home, but I lack the imagination laid bare on each silver tray.

Al Naqa Lao Kebab House lamb platter with golden rice.

The Golden Rice is made from jasmine rice and coconut, layered with dried mint, saffron water, onion oil and more. It’s the foundation for firewood grilled kebab platters: a herbed beef kebab (AED 48), chicken tikka satay (AED 45) or a black lemon, tamarind lamb kebab with kaffir lime (AED 55). There’s a scattering of browned onions cooked to a sticky, jamminess over the Golden Rice. Order more for only AED 3.

Michelin may never send you here, but I will.

You should perch at the six-seater, glossy table opposite Al Naqa. The menu is short: a salad, a dip and choices of kebabs served on platters. Drink the iced pandan coconut limeonade (AED 15). Order the Major Flaves Green Apple salad that sings with a cheek-sucking pomegranate molasses and shrimp paste dressing, sumac and the warm crunch of toasted rice and cashew nuts (AED 36).

Al Naqa Lao Kebab House's usual menu with the Major Flaves Green Apple Salad and the Coconut Hummus and Chicken Tikka Satay

It’s the virtuous, good-for-you eating that almost absolves me of what comes next: Grandma’s Fried Chicken (AED 36). The skin is glassy and crisp. It’s light, without batter, and the glistening chicken meat purrs with the aromatics of ginger, kaffir lime oil and jeow maklen (smoked tomato hot sauce). This is real cooking. Delicious cooking. A plate so good, it is in the conversation for Dubai’s best fried chicken (competing with Sticky Rice and Kooya Filipino, IMHO). Come early, as his “GFK” sells faster than Glastonbury tickets.

As of posting, Al Naqa is running a limited chicken-only menu. You need to know the Special Hat Yai Dubai Fried Chicken Quarter Leg is deliriously tasty. A fried chicken leg served whole and on the bone—as I think all chicken should be—then festooned with crispy garlic and fried onions that cling to the jeow som, a Laotian spicy, sticky glaze, sumac and toasted rice powder (AED 40, or 50 with golden rice). It comes with pineapple habanero 3 chilli hot sauce. You should order more for good luck (AED 10).

Al Naqa's Lao Tahini Caesar's Salad and the Special Hay Yai Dubai Fried Chicken Quarter Leg. A message to AJ, written by hand.

Sheer greed compels me towards the Lao Tahini Caesar Salad (AED 38). Any cook can throw more at more with spices but, each stabbing forkful—a defty balanced tumble of Romaine lettuce, cucumber and Lao Tahini dressing with zaatar and fragrant herbs—tells me AJ knows when to pull back. A suave coconut hummus with satay chicken feels almost luxurious with tears of the housemade seeded flatbread (AED 36).

Al Naqa is not fancy. It is wedged between High Joint and revolving turnstile of Singaporean Malay outfits inside what I once benevolently described as a gentrified abattoir. There are no reservations, only queues. It’s dishes are good value, tasty and filling. It speaks to the personality of the chef, a man for whose talents and humility my admiration only rises. A man who serves his silver trays personally and solicits feedback like the best chefs do. He should have a red plaque fixed to his wall, next to the framed affirmations and mausoleum of electric fans, but Pallavi was right. Dubai’s Michelin Guide is not ready. Not yet.