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Orfali Bros Bistro, winner of MENA's 50 Best Restaurants 2025.

Courtesy of 50 Best

Orfali Bros Bistro Makes It a MENA’s 50 Best Hat-Trick

Journalist

The unpretentious and much loved Dubai restaurant has topped MENA’s 50 Best Restaurants for the third consecutive year

This year’s Middle East and North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants, sponsored by S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna, have been unveiled at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi, with Orfali Bros Bistro topping the list for the third consecutive year. 

The Dubai restaurant, run by three brothers from Aleppo, serves a playful and inventive cuisine drawing on Syrian and global influences. The restaurant’s lack of pretension has won fans both locally and internationally, and again it tops the MENA’s 50 Best Restaurants list, one dominated as usual by the emirate, with Khufu’s in Cairo the only restaurant in the top five outside of Dubai. 

Several additional awards were given out on the night, including the Chef’s Choice Award, which went to Tala Bashmi, who recently stepped away from her restaurant Fusions by Tala in Manama, Bahrain (number six on this year’s list). The Icon Award went to Omar Shibab, founder of Dubai’s Boca, which won the Sustainable Restaurant Award, while Carmen Rueda Hernández of Dubai’s Brix was named Best Pastry Chef. 

More were announced ahead of the ceremony: Yasmina Hayek, the Lebanese Executive Chef and Culinary Creative Director of the Em Sherif Group, which has 12 locations across the Middle East and now one in the UK, at Harrods in London, was named Best Female Chef; Table 3 in Casablanca, described as “redefining Moroccan fine dining with global flair” was named as the One to Watch for 2025; and Ossiano, in Dubai, received the Art of Hospitality Award. 

See the full list of MENA’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025, below. 

1. Orfali Bros, Dubai 

2. Tresind Studio, Dubai 

3. Kinoya, Dubai 

4. Khufu’s, Cairo 

5. Ossiano, Dubai 

6. Fusions by Tala, Manama 

7. Jun’s, Dubai 

8. Shams El Balad, Amman 

9. Em Sherif, Beirut 

10. Moonrise, Dubai 

11. Fakhreldin, Amman 

12. Boca, Dubai 

13. Alee, Amman 

14. 3 Fils, Dubai 

15. Bait Maryam, Dubai 

16. Marble, Riyadh 

17. Row on 45, Dubai *Highest climber 

18. Dara Dining by Sara Aquel, Amman *Highest new entry 

19. Zuma, Dubai 

20. Sufra, Amman 

21. Zooba (Zamalek), Cairo 

22. La Grand Table Marocaine, Marrakech 

23. LPM, Dubai 

24. Kazoku, Cairo 

25. Gaia, Dubai 

26. 21 Grams, Dubai 

27. Sachi, Cairo 

28. 11 Woodfire, Dubai 

29. Marmellata Bakery, Abu Dhabi 

30. Kuuru, Jeddah 

31. Lunch Room, Riyadh 

32. Sesamo, Marrakech 

33. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Dubai 

34. Izakaya, Cairo 

35. +61, Marrakech 

36. 13C Bar in the Back, Amman 

37. Mimi Kakushi, Dubai 

38. LPM, Abu Dhabi 

39. Aseeb, Riyadh 

40. Sachi Giza, Giza 

41. TakaHisa, Dubai 

42. Baron, Beirut 

43. Cut by Wolfgang Puck, Manama 

44. Le Golfe, La Marsa 

45. Smoked Room, Dubai 

46. Le Petit Cornichon, Marrakech 

47. Reif Kushiyaki, Cairo 

48. La Grande Brasserie by Hélène Darroze, Marrakech 

49. Myazu, Riyadh 

50. Niri, Abu Dhabi

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