Old Dubai Food Tour – Stopover Exploration

Another stopover in Dubai, another 21 hours to fill. This time I got offered a hotel with a meal included by Emirates, since my stopover was so long. Apart from the inside of a hotel room, I wanted to see the parts of Dubai I didn’t get to see last time, specifically the old town of Dubai: the original if you want.

Since last time I ate a doughnut and a burger, this time I opted for a food tour within the old town of Dubai to broaden my food horizon.

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Visiting old Dubai

The tour started at Al Khayma Heritage House in the old town of Dubai – Al Fahidi district as it is called today. To get there I got a metro day pass for around 6€ and took the metro directly from the airport until Sharaf DG station. Once in the old town, our guide explained how the settlement in Dubai came to be and what people did to survive in the desert (since Dubai doesn’t have a natural freshwater source). He told us that originally the city was heavily dependent on pearl diving, since pearls were a sought-after trading currency.

Old Dubai Food Tour

After quite a bit of research on which tour would be the best choice for my time at the stopover, I settled with the “Discover Dubai’s Creek and Street Food Souks*” from GetYourGuide.

We started our tour with a Dubai Coffee or Chai, offered in front of the heritage restaurant while we were waiting for everyone to arrive. The coffee museum was our first stop. We tried Arabic Coffee and Ethiopian Coffee to taste the difference: the Arabian Coffee was spiced with Cardamom. With the coffee we also got dates to counterbalance the bitterness with sweetness.

Back at the first stop we got a room for only the tour guests and settled on cushions on the floor around a low table. We tried samosas, flat Rogag bread with cheese, Karak tea (delicious!), Limonana (a Middle Eastern mint-lemonade) and for desert camel milk chocolate ice cream and Luqaimat, which are fried dough balls in a sugar syrup sauce.

More of old Dubai after the Food Tour

After the food, we headed to Dubai Creek to take a water taxi (an Abra boat) across the creek. On the other side, our guide Khan showed and explained the spice souk and gold souk to us, big markets that still (mostly) run as they always have, with vendors on either side of small alleys and lots of (loud) haggling going on.

We ended a tour in a spice, tea and incense shop where we got to smell and taste some of the products, without being pressured to buy something. From the souks to the next metro station (Al Ras Metro Station) it’s about a 10 minute walk, then from there you need about an hour to get back to the airport.