Em Sherif Sea Café

Heritage kept active at the pass

The fish reaches the pass as a decision, not a flourish. Yasmina Hayek, Chef at Em Sherif Sea Café on Al Maryah Island, Abu Dhabi, sets Lebanese taste against seafood in a contemporary frame, keeping the line back to the family table intact. Her work here sits inside the Em Sherif group’s wider discipline, but the Sea Café gives it a particular station: coastal, direct, and built around the meeting of mezze, grill and raw preparation.

Hayek’s formation at Institut Lyfe, formerly Institut Paul Bocuse, and in Milan gives the cooking its structure. The food does not treat heritage as an archive. It moves it by adjustment: texture held clean, seasoning kept legible, presentation restrained enough for the ingredients to remain in charge. Her own phrase for kitchen work, “The kitchen is definitely a happier lab to be in,” suits this room because the experimentation stays close to use. A dish still has to gather people at the table.

At this address, that means Lebanese memory handled through seafood rather than nostalgia. The kitchen can move from cold mezze to grilled fish, from a tahini-dressed vegetable to a beef bar plate, without losing the grammar of the cuisine. The house also carries the confidence of a group that began in Beirut in 2011, though Hayek’s work in Abu Dhabi is not a replica of Beirut. It is a present-tense version of the same hand.

The fish counter sets the method

The program is à la carte, with the display bar doing part of the argument before a plate is written. Guests choose from the catch of the day, then the kitchen prepares the fish to the table’s preference. That small exchange matters. It keeps the seafood visible as material, not as a hidden supply line, and it lets the pass answer the fish in front of it.

Raw Red Sea Bream sits on one side of the method, where freshness and knife work carry the dish. Shrimp Provençale brings a broader Mediterranean accent into the Lebanese frame. Samak Rass Asfour keeps the menu tied to a fish dish with a local name and a clear place in the meal. The vegetarian work is not an afterthought: Whole Roasted Cauliflower in Tahini arrives with spicy pickled walnut dip, while Hindbeh bil Zeit and Lentil Kibbeh keep the mezze table grounded in greens, pulses and oil.

The signatures named by the house, Wagyu Hummus, Salted Sea Bass and Fattet Kraydis, show the range of the station. One leans into comfort and richness, one into salt crust and the patience of fish cookery, one into the layered logic of fattet. The wine program is curated rather than loudly announced, and the room also makes space for coffee and shisha, keeping the day’s rhythm broader than dinner alone.

Light, tile and the Gulf beyond the room

The room sits on the ground floor of Rosewood Abu Dhabi, with the Arabian Gulf held in the windows and the terrace. Natural light does useful work here. It catches the hand-painted Azulejo wall tiles from Portugal, softens the sea-inspired surfaces, and keeps the room closer to a coastal café than a sealed hotel restaurant.

The atmosphere is composed rather than hushed. Conversation can stay at the table, background music moves behind it, and the forestry theme gives a green counterpoint to the water outside. The bar section, the large terrace and the light room design all serve the same purpose: to let Lebanese Mediterranean seafood feel relaxed without losing its polish.

By evening, live music and shisha change the tempo, but the craft still returns to the pass and the counter. The close view is the one that matters: a chosen fish, Yasmina Hayek’s kitchen, and the Salted Sea Bass leaving the pass at Em Sherif Sea Café.