Sufret Maryam, Dubai restaurant review: "Lather me in the Labneh Creme Brûlée"
Sufret Maryam elevates Chef Salam’s familial, home-style cooking. Bring friends, persist with bookings and leave room for dessert.
If you like or love this review, why not drop a like, share with a friend and subscribe!
The truth is I tried to dine at Sufret Maryam three times, but it was always fully booked until one fine Saturday lunchtime.
Busy is a good sign, but this is expected from a relatively new opening by Chef Salam Daqqaq; a woman exalted across multiple fronts.
Her worshipped Bait Maryam started a snowball effect that led to Michelin Guide gongs, MENA 50 Best list slots and a MENA’s Best Female Chef Award and, of course, the irresistible PR catnip of Somebody Feed Phil. The likes of Massimo Bottura and others flocked to Bait Maryam and, now, we congregate around Sufret Maryam which, if you did not know, means “Maryam’s Dining Table”.
I am here with someone I do not know: the mutual friend of another person that I also do not know. She, the mutual friend, recommended we meet, and an early Saturday lunch feels like the most acceptable of circumstances to risk a kidnapping. What a time to be alive!
Sufret Maryam’s dining room and decor
Sufret Maryam walks the liminal line between casual and smart. There is a bit of the old familiar, like being inside your neighbourhood Baroness’ home. The dining room is enormous. “175 covers”, one broad smiling server boasts. And I couldn’t get a table for weeks?
There are chandeliers, a sofa in the reception, what look like oil paintings on the far wall and a long dessert-slash-drinks bar from that produces delicious, boozeless things (yup, Sufret Maryam is unlicensed). Order the Jaffa Orange. She’s juicy.
There’s new-made-to-look-old chairs that I can’t help but wonder if I once saw in a Shakespeare and Co and enough potted flora to double as a garden centre should the whole serving food thing fizzle out.
It is all very Jumeirah, with a cosy maximalism that befits its Wasl 51 environs. Check out the wonderful YAVA just around the corner for a slice of the same. (Also grab YAVA’s chicken orzo and a mandarin fruit pudding that Heston Blumenthal might want to have a word about.)
Sufret Maryam’s menu
Sufret Maryam’s menu is admirably concise for a Levantine outfit. I should explain. I worship Levantine food. It is some of the world’s finest fodder, but like me, the menus have a hard time self-editing.
Sufret Maryam’s printed menu only lists forty plus dishes across cold and cold mezze, hot appetisers, starters, salads, raw, mains and sides.
The restrained pricing is laudable. Before you sharpen your pitchforks, let’s be clear: you can always find cheaper, but Jumeirah is not an area known for value. Only seven of the forty-odd dishes crack 100 dirhams and the La’Moshet Maryam, a slow-cooked lamb shoulder somewhat cryptically marinated with Chef Salam's “special spices”, flirts scandalously with the 400 dirham mark. I foresee another Bib Gourmand in Salam’s future, deservedly.
Sufret Maryam’s food
Sufret Maryam’s dishes make quantum leaps in presentation and finesse vs its humbler Bait Maryam. The latter’s homely kitchen fayre sticks to the ribs and sends you on your way. Portions that feel like Salam’s hand is on my shoulder while loading another spoon on the plate, like a grandmother, now that mine are no longer here.
Sufret Maryam is smarter, tidier, self-aware and, like a first meal with your in-laws, it wants to impress you where it matters by showing its best version while remaining itself: recognisable, acceptable and never pretentious.
Anyone looking for a groundbreaking, fourth wall tear down should stand down. Only my favourite dish strays into pioneering territory. A labneh crème brûlée—personally recommended by Salam who turned up and found us here—is met with audible grunts of appreciation. The sugar crust shatters into a suave cream with labneh’s sharp bite and, is that lemon I can taste? The pastry chef knows the assignment like she or he set the test.
Earlier, we mull over a Kinney Maryam of kebbe with that sticky, Levantine elixir of pomegranate molasses, a classic fattoush—one of the noblest salads in my view—and some of the grills, like the shish tawook or the lamb rack freekeh with whipped yoghurt sauce. A mansaf feels like a threat for only two people to eat, but it was tempting.
Plates of glossy chicken livers, homemade pickles and Shawerma Lahme glide passed to appreciative tables of mostly Emiratis nodding and chopping with approval.
Barely ten minutes passes before our orders arrive. First, a surprise amuse bouche of za'atar dusted crisps with a sprightly mound of what tastes like whipped labneh. Making this disappear would not be my first magic trick of the day.
If you’re looking for a thoroughly grown up version of Hummus bel Lahme of the smoothest hummus with spiced meat wrapped in olive oil; if you want Musakhan Rolls lysing with sumac-stained chicken that are a crunchy, amethyst golden brown with more than a passing resemblance to a spring roll; if the refreshing Mediterranean simplicity of a tomato, fresh za’atar leaf and labneh salad where Hulk green olive oil pools amid the divots spoons leave behind; if all sounds like a day well spent, well you may need to book and hope to be lucky.
We pay for six dishes and two drinks for about 200 dhs a head with (voluntary) tips (really, not bad pricing). I congratulate Salam on a successful opening and gently posit that the Halawet El Jeben might want another gear, and she listens. I share how I admire the deconstructed rendition to stuffing baby aubergine in her Fatet Eggplant, but the homeliness of the Bait Maryam version—the one where you plunge a spoon in search of treasure—makes my heart sing.
She needs no advice from me. Sufret Maryam looks to be a success at the hands of a woman for whom I hold unshakeable respect. She does not need a forty-something, Caribbean lawyer moonlighting as a restaurant critic lobbing his unsolicited thoughts at her. She, and Sufret Maryam, will be just fine.
Sufret Maryam, Would I Return?
Yes but the caveat is that there are many good places to eat in Wasl 51, including the obvious Orfali Bros, Iranish, Monno and YAVA. I am almost never in this part of town, despite a possible next review coming soon?
Sufret Maryam, Who Should Come?
Levantine food fans, smart casual diners, those not looking for booze at lunch (or dinner), out of town visitors and endurance athletes up for the challenge to get a table.
Sufret Maryam, How Much Was It?
Liam is a restaurant critic, food and travel writer based in the Middle East. He owns EatGoSee and contributes to other publications. You can follow Liam here on Substack, Instagram, Threads or BlueSky.
Sufret Maryam, Wasl 51, Jumeirah, Jumeirah 1, Dubai. Call +971 5 0417 2272 or visit Sufret Maryam’s Website or Sufret Maryam’s Instagram for the latest information.
A captivating menu and writing! The labneh crème brûlée sounds as dreamy as it is creamy…
Been meaning to go for a long time. Should be part of the 2025 checklist.