Explore Dubai
Dubai’s coffee culture is thriving with many hip, locally owned cafes that highlight specialty coffee drinks and all-day breakfast options. Get your fix at our selection of the 5 famous cafes in Dubai, whether you want a soy latte, flat white, or complex layers of coffee.
The Grey
The Grey is a hub for artistic expression, thought-provoking ideas, and meaningful relationships. Experience the fusion of cultures and ideas at the heart of Dubai.
The Grey is a smartly designed facility featuring several sections, such as a high bar for fuss-free coffee visits, a dining area for more leisurely meetings, and a lounge-style setting facing the garden.
The Grey is where you come for the coffee, stay for the food, and come back for the outstanding service. This cafe was designed for today’s busy professionals, creatives with ideas to brainstorm, and artists and designers seeking vision.
Ambiance
The coffee shops, decorated in monochrome tones of Grey, are the creation of boutique interior design and product design firm XO Atelier. It was intended to provide a relaxing space for business meetings as well as superb coffee and creative meals. You can find healthy bowls and breakfast items, drinks and butterscotch lattes, acai and avocado smoothies, and more.
Menu
Burgers and large meals like shrimp spaghetti and mushroom risotto are also available on the menu. Try one of their locally inspired sweets, such as sticky date pudding or pistachio torte, to satisfy your sweet tooth. Their coffee is excellent, and makes a fantastic, delicious traditional cold brew.
Here, there is an air of subtle grandeur that is posh and refined. It’s the ideal place for a private discussion or to do some task. Nothing about this establishment is loud, startling, or gimmicky. From the decor to the food to the noise level, and that may be what makes it so appealing.
XVA Art Cafe
Since it first opened, the XVA Cafe has been praised as “Dubai’s best-hidden secret.” Freshly cooked vegetarian and vegan cuisine is served at the café. The cafe also has a selection of main dishes, salads, soups, and desserts. Their chefs work tirelessly to adapt their culinary vision to diverse cultures in order to please all palates.
Ambiance
They invite you to unwind with a cool mint lemonade in their peaceful garden.
The XVA Art Hotel combines history, art, and legacy and is far from Dubai’s usual ultra-modern hotel architectural ethos. A visit to the XVA Art Cafe is worthwhile, even if you aren’t staying in one of the 14 distinctive hotel suites in Dubai. A selection of vegetarian cuisine with Middle Eastern influences is available at this cafe. It is one of the 5 famous cafes in Dubai, located in the center of the Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood. Seats are accessible in the peaceful courtyard or gallery-like interior area.
Menu
On the menu, you’ll discover vegetarian items like salads and mains that seem to be a creative fusion of foods from the area. You’ll also find eggs (for breakfast) (think a bit of Egyptian, a bit of Indian, and a bit of Lebanese-style mezze). Try the Seddiqi omelet with feta and zaatar flavors if you arrive for breakfast.
This café is popular among those searching for a peaceful, hidden retreat in old Dubai. It has a wicker furniture, sand-colored arched halls showing artists’ work, and an art gallery. Bring a book, or relax with a coffee after a long day!
Roseleaf Cafe
Location
Roseleaf Cafe is tucked away inside Dubai Garden Centre. A bright, airy cafe with courteous service and big slices of freshly baked cakes. It is evocative of the classic cafe inside garden centers around small towns in England.
Menu
They take their hot beverages seriously, providing organic and single-origin coffee roasted in small batches by neighborhood roasters. Do you prefer tea more? Roseleaf provides a selection of excellent whole-leaf teas from Australia served in vintage porcelain teacups. Their coffee is excellent since it comes from Nightjar, a specialist café and roastery in Al Quoz. The food selection is also relatively comprehensive and includes pies, baked goods, eggs, lasagna (including a vegetarian version), and more.
Ambiance
Looking at the flora and rustic garden furniture in a glasshouse environment significantly differs from seeing glass and concrete everywhere else in Dubai. Weekends may be hectic with families and kids who decide to make a day trip to the Dubai Garden Center. Despite the location being calm during the week and ideal for choosing a seat and reading for hours.
The Sum of Us
Bull&Roo, which is another cafe that comes under our list of the 5 famous cafes in Dubai, the team behind projects like Tom&Serg and Common Grounds, has created a series of wildly popular, ultra-hip café ideas, including The Sum of Us, which combines elements of a bakery, a roastery, and a gourmet cafe. Everything that can be created in-house, including the melt-in-your-mouth sourdough and the steaming hot coffee, is made using Arabica beans roasted in the on-site micro-roastery. The restaurant is situated on the border of DIFC.
The Sum of Us is a laid-back café on the ground level of the upscale Burj Al Salam apartment tower on Sheikh Zayed Road. If you’re taking a break from touring or are in the vicinity of the Trade Center, it’s a perfect place to stop for a leisurely lunch and coffee in the afternoon. It’s quiet enough throughout the week to complete some work or maybe hold a brief business meeting. However, given the location, anticipate slightly higher pricing.
Menu
Avo toast, eggs Benedict, pancakes, shakshuka, and other standard morning favorites will be available, along with salads and burgers for lunch. Although it’s not as lovely as specialist cafés, the coffee is still decent.
Their bakers get up early every morning to produce their sourdough bread, cakes, and pastries from scratch.
They responsibly purchase their green coffee beans from organic farmers in coffee-growing locations all over the world. For their fresh food, they cooperate with as many regional vendors as they can, and they collaborate with nearby farmers to support the local horticulture environment. The Sum of Us Cafe’s menu is innovative and constantly changing.
Vivid, fresh tastes and textures inspire their chefs, and they work hard to create dishes that will thrill their guests. Experience nostalgic memories while breathing in the aroma of making bread from Rise&Dawn Bakehouse. Free coffee samples are available at the roastery with its skilled baristas.
Comptoir 102
Location
Comptoir 102, a hybrid of a boutique and a coffee shop, is tucked away in a charming house in Jumeirah. With its rattan furniture, swing seats, cream and white colour scheme, fairy lights, and tranquillizing scents that make you think of a spa, this cafe transports coastal Bali to Dubai. There are several places to sit, both inside and outside, including a workspace and a tranquil terrace garden where you may spend hours reading a book and forgetting about the fanciful idea of time.
Menu
The menu offers vegan delicacies and eggs prepared in the morning.
Ambiance
A sizable store nearby offers a wide variety of goods, including lovely (and pricey) furniture and tableware, wholesome gourmet foods, home perfumes and accessories, shoes, purses, apparel, and jewellery.
This colourful concept shop in Jumeirah 1 is created as a house, and bohemian oasis with a healthy café weaved in. The café, which hosts daily yoga classes, is a centre for healthy living with a strong emphasis on clean, sustainably produced cuisine that feeds the body and the mind. There are vegan alternatives, sugar-, gluten-, and dairy-free options, as well as a wide variety of smoothies, juices, and homemade nut milk, all produced with ingredients acquired from nearby organic farms.
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Conclusion
Dubai’s thriving café culture has just evolved, or should we say, blossomed, in the last five years, unknown to many tourists who jump from attraction to attraction. The best cafés in Dubai have naturally evolved into places to work, catch up with friends, or steal a few quiet moments to themselves throughout the day in a city where residents spend a large portion of the year indoors due to the oppressive midday heat of the summer months. The most excellent cafés in Dubai aren’t always found in shopping malls or while visiting tourist destinations and attractions.
Whatever style you want, minimalist, hipster, laptop-friendly, so exquisite it makes you feel wealthy, garden cafés where you can cuddle up with a book, or coffee shops that roast their beans, there are lots of cafés where you can experience non-touristy Dubai. We have mentioned some of the 5 famous cafes in Dubai above.