Tiff's Table
A supper club that brings farmers, artisans and the eaters who love them closer together, season by season.
Let me give you a quick peek under the kimono… *whispers* I know Tiffany Eslick, the namesake behind Tiff’s Table—a new supper club that’s been a long time coming.
Tiffany is South African, a joy, a restaurant-lover, a sage, a friend and a long-time Dubai resident. Her many years of grafting at Spinneys gets you some serious face time with growers and producers worldwide. She attended Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland learning those things they teach you in culinary school and doing a worrying amount of swimming in those inky waters off what the Irish call beaches. She set in motion my enduring affection for Al Naqa Lao Kebab House. You too can hear her dulcet tones over the Nourish podcast with co-host
.She is someone for whom I have tremendous admiration. I leave media dinners wishing we spent more time together. So—quelle surprise—this charm offensive is all to say that I am not unbiased about Tiffany or Tiff’s Table. The following is not a review. It’s a report.
Does Dubai need another supper club, I ask myself. It’s a mixed bag dining category that I often malign as saturated with people’s misguided self-adventures.
With two bookings a month, Tiff’s Table is one of the latest additions to Dubai’s supper club scene. Here, Tiffany—together with Nadia Parekh of Mélange fame—offer four courses, a welcome drink, and maybe an antipasti, but more on that later.
There’s enough food to test a gastric band’s tensile strength long before Nadia sidles up with her nutty, brown butter almond sponge.
The reason you should book Tiff’s Table is two-fold.
Dinner is a canvas for farmers, fishermen and other artisans across the UAE. People say #SupportLocal while others do it. Tiffany lays a bowl of Pure Harvest tomatoes with pomegranates and freekeh on her communal table and effuses about the producers she knows personally. Their stories pour out of her and onto your fork. That antipasti? It features cheeses from Six Senses Zighy Bay’s, that luxury hotel in Musandam filed under ‘one day’.
Second, Tiff’s Table leans into the joy of ingredients at their zenith—a notion in Dubai subservient to choice and year-round availability. A menu so of the moment, you could probably set your watch by it. For those Chef’s Table loyalists gorging on the latest Legends season, there’s a whiff of Alice Waters about it all. (I can close my eyes and see Tiffany smile as Alice is mentioned). By the time you read this, some dishes will no longer be on the menu because, for some flowers or vegetables, their best days are soon behind them. You might miss the courgettes in a warm courgette soup with chilli, fennel oil and garlic crisps sliced thin and cooked to a jammy, sticky consistency, served alongside a slab of homemade focaccia thick enough to stop a truck rolling down hill.
An amuse-bouche platter of Dibba Bay oysters with cucumber and lime granita follows a story about the fishermen, the harvest, Ramie and the success story. A side of salmon is smoked by Le Fumoir (Tiffany walks you why them and their process) then dressed with date syrup, orange and adorned with micro herbs presented with that tomato, freekeh and labneh za’atar salad and green beans and nasturtium flowers.
There’s enough food to test a gastric band’s tensile strength long before Nadia arrives with a nutty brown butter almond sponge, Rumaliah Farm mascarpone and Qattf Farm figs caramelised in Hatta honey. Nadia’s wedge of sponge soaks up a life-shortening amount of butter-soaked figs
Dinner is an understated, provenance-led procession of approachable dishes like those in the cookbooks that adorn a nearby shelf. Our group of chatty strangers exchange stories and listen intently. We learn without being lectured. There is no mission statement. No pious diatribes about air miles. I waddled walked away proud of two things. First, how far food culture has come in the UAE since I started this writing lark; not just the restaurant scene, but now the agriculture that reinforces it. The second is pride in a friend who is (finally) doing the thing that many of us wanted and hoped for her. Well done Tiff x
Tiff’s Table is a supper-club near Al Safa park. (It’s her home, I’m not giving away her address to strangers, albeit much loved subscribers!) Bookings are available via Tiff’s Table on Instagram. BYOB acceptable. The four courses are about 400 dhs.
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.
Loved reading this Liam, you have captured to wonder of the evening perfectly. I’m still dreaming about it and of course wandering how on earth the delish cake was so light….
Lovely write-up, and thanks for the podcast mention! So pleased for her and the supper club launch; she is so passionate about it! <3