The Lighthouse, Dubai Hills: restaurant review.
An all-day diner that comes alive at night. Still, The Lighthouse mostly flickers instead of beams.
The Lighthouse opened in Dubai Hills during the backend of 2024, a neighbourhood that—like Alserkal Avenue—shifts Dubai’s culinary centre of gravity away from the Palm Jumeirah, Downtown and “Marinagrad”. Many people will know The Lighthouse as a café in Mall of the Emirates and Nakheel Mall that started in the Design District before beaming over to Abu Dhabi’s Yas Bay Waterfront and a near-predictable opening in Riyadh—such is the natural order of Dubai restaurants, it seems.
The Lighthouse is Dubai Hills’ closest embodiment of an upscale wine and cocktail bar. Yes! It is licensed with reimagined Palomas, a wine list boasting AED 99 Laurent-Perrier by the glass and 375 ml carafes just a smidge over AED 100. There are full bottles for the rest of us and mocktails for the sober curious. The office workers above need not look far for a Negroni during happy hour (it ends at 8 PM).
Come at night because, during the day, the decor feels busy and not cohesive, almost as if it is staged and labelled in Swedish. There is a striking horseshoe bar, Art Deco-influenced and shingled with emerald subway tiles and lined with wicker-backed bar stools. Inside, there is a towering brassy display—the true lighthouse for some.
Leather banquets and sofas warm the austere flooring. Air conditioning ducts are painted black, hoping we won’t notice. Raised tables sit to the left. A reception desk stands awkwardly juxtaposed to the entrance, followed by a DJ booth and, finally, a soaring partition. Behind it? A palatial second dining space where *pokes index finger and counts the tables* I ask, is this Dubai Hills’ largest restaurant by covers? Maybe Reif Kushiyaki, maybe.
“Three plump and glistening chops are rewardingly tender with plenty of tasty rendered fat and enough meatiness to give the back teeth a good time.”
That was the first of two visits to The Lighthouse within two weeks, where a second helping sought to clarify the first. The menu needs no clarification; it is modern Eastern Mediterranean. Think warm Goat’s cheese salads with pistachio dukkah, chicken musakhan rolls stained violet with sumac, octopus carpaccio with pine nuts and more sumac as well as harissa-crusted sea bass with roasted vine leaves and glugs of olive oil.
The second lunchtime visit aimed to reconcile my thoughts about the food. The best moments involved a plate of grilled lamb cutlets served with a tzatziki side and rounds of pita. Three plump and glistening chops are rewardingly tender with plenty of tasty rendered fat and enough meatiness to give the back teeth a good time.
A spinach ricotta cannelloni on the specials menu serves nostalgia in a speckled baking dish under an armoured crust of melted Parmesan and fried basil leaves. The suave bechamel lubricates the bite of pine nuts and spinach, then comes an eye-widening rush of lemon zest. Who honestly eats a gut punch of oven-baked stuffed pasta during August in Dubai? Me, it turns out, and I would again, as a sharing dish alongside such hefty crowd pleasers like the thigh-sized Angus Côte de Boeuf grilled under Josper with lashings of Café de Paris butter.
Those two dishes would yield a rosy outlook, but there is more. The starter of half a dozen or so grilled garlic prawns are not ‘deveined’—a euphemism for the ‘poop chute’: the gritty, bitter, blackened digestive tract that, frankly, kitchens should remove.
The apple tart tatin arrives suspiciously quick minus the lacquered sheen of sticky caramel. Tart tatin is a nowhere to hide dish. These apples are halved, not in thin slices, creating a soft mouth squelch accentuated by the dense, almost doughy pastry beneath them. A decadent tart tatin demands time to allow the alchemy of butter and sugar to do their best work. Good things come to those who wait, and the wait is 25-30 minutes in my experience.
Most people will not care about such pedantry, especially while sipping prosecco-charged frivolities refilled by a service team with a Jedi-like sense for a glass perilously close to empty. For that, The Lighthouse is a beacon.
Dinner-wise, it fades somewhere to the middle of Dubai Hills’ raft of restaurants. It lacks the cool of DUO Gastrobar, the kitsch laissez-faire of Pitfire Pizza and the finesse of Avatara. It’s more serious than the Revelry, more impressive than Tap House and less grinding than MOLI by Shi, and it’s vast enough to snag a last-minute table on a Friday night or a seat at the bar that beckons like Gatsby’s green light.
The Lighthouse, Would I Return?
During those evenings when my wife wants to wear a nice dress, drink wine, order bar bites (maybe) and stay close to home, or with friends who want a night out but want to get a taxi home by 11 pm. Ah, to be 40+.
The Lighthouse, Who Should Go?
Those indifferent to deveined shrimp seeking a jack of all trades and good times. Residents from Dubai Hills down the Al Qudra stretch.
Review information:
Number of visits: 2.
Number of dishes: nine, Josper-charred aubergine (AED 54), grilled prawns, starter (AED 105), tuna carpaccio (AED 90), seabass crudo (AED 75), spinach ricotta cannelloni (AED 120), grilled lamb chops (AED 230), tart tatin (AED 55), bread and hummus (complimentary) and broccolini (AED 40).
Drinks: 2 cocktails during Happy Hour, 1 bottle of white wine, Grand Cru Riesling (AED 550), one red wine by the glass (AED 68) and a carafe of white wine, Albariño (AED 165) and Voss large still water, a few (AED 37 each).
Total spend including taxes and tips: approx AED 1700.
The Lighthouse Restaurant & Bar, Dubai Hills, Dubai Hills Estate, Emaar Park Building 2, Al Khail Road, Dubai. For the latest information, visit The Lighthouse’s website or its Instagram. +971 52 642 6608.
Liam is a restaurant critic, food and travel writer based in the Middle East. He owns EatGoSee and contributes to other publications. You can find Liam on Substack, Threads, Instagram, BlueSky or Facebook.
"Most people will not care about such pedantry, especially while sipping prosecco-charged frivolities refilled by a service team with a Jedi-like sense for a glass perilously close to empty. For that, The Lighthouse is a beacon." Yes, please and thank you.
Sounds good! But maybe without the prawns 🤣