Berenjak

Bread before rice, fire before polish

Bread takes the weight of the meal first for Kian Samyani, chef at Berenjak in Dubai, where the pass is built around tearing, dipping, grilling, and returning to the table. His Persian cooking begins with family recipes and childhood visits to Iran, but the method at Berenjak is not preservation under glass. It is service. Dough, smoke, lamb, saffron, onion, tomato, and shared plates carry the memory into a working room.

Samyani founded Berenjak in 2018 in Soho after development work at Brigadiers, where fire, texture, flavour, and pressure had to line up cleanly. The Dubai restaurant at Dar Wasl is the first international outpost of that London house, and it keeps the same central argument: Persian food arranged around kebab and bread rather than the more expected kebab and rice. That decision changes the hands at the table. Bread becomes tool, plate, and measure. The guest tears rather than waits, passes rather than composes, eats with the rhythm of a kabab house rather than the distance of a formal dining room.

Koobideh worked in stages

The grill program gives the room its grammar. Koobideh comes from lamb shoulder, handled in stages after the method Samyani associates with his father, with freshness and texture placed ahead of heavy marinade. Jujeh follows another path, with saffron, onion, and tomato worked through the chicken in stages so the meat carries colour and sweetness before it reaches the charcoal. Baal-e-morgh, his chicken wings, bring fermented red pepper paste into the marinade, adding tang and heat from neighbouring foodways without pulling the plate away from its Persian frame.

The menu moves through noon, mazeh, sofreh, khoresht, and kabab rather than a linear progression. Taftoon arrives for dipping into black chickpea hummus, kashk bademjoon, and mast-o-khiar. Sangak brings whole wheat dough, sesame, and the heat of pebbles into the bread program. Rice is still present, with saffron, salted butter, and tahdig, but it does not sit alone as the centre. The coal does that work with the bread.

The room keeps close to the counter

The room at Dar Wasl carries the pressure of the open kitchen into the table. Persian rugs, chandeliers, atmospheric light, loud music, and the smell of charcoal make the place feel closer to a busy street kabab house than a quiet dining room. The pass is visible in the experience even when the guest is not watching it directly; smoke, bread, and grilled fat arrive before the plate does.

Berenjak Dubai holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, one part of the restaurant’s four current awards, and the bread lands hot enough to tear, the koobideh stays juicy, and the table keeps reaching back into the hummus. Samyani has described the frame as “family and culture, past, present, and future.” At Dar Wasl, that sentence comes through most clearly in taftoon, black chickpeas, and lamb shoulder over charcoal.