Once upon a time, dates were just dates: packed in gift boxes, passed around at Ramadan, tucked into school lunchboxes like nature’s version of a chocolate bar. But now? They’re espuma. They’re lacquer. They’re vinegar. They’re part of the tasting menu.
In the Gulf, July marks the quiet arrival of rutab season — that rare, short-lived stage when the fruit moves from dry chew to soft velvet. And in some of the Middle East’s MICHELIN-starred kitchens, chefs are treating this humble fruit like caviar.
At One-MICHELIN-Star Moonrise in Dubai, Chef Solemann Haddad’s tasting menu begins with something unexpected: a foie gras ganache paired with date syrup. It’s rich, confusing, and somehow exactly right. “You take that first bite and think, ‘What is this?’” he says. “You may not be familiar with it, but it’s also very understandable and harmonious.” For Haddad, dates are more than sweet. They are what he calls Thesis Statement Ingredients — culinary symbols that carry the weight of place, memory and culture. “We don’t use dates as sugar or as a sweetener for sauces, but as themselves,” he explains. “They’re not about palate structure; they’re about cuisine structure. They say something about who we are.”
That conviction has led to unexpected reinterpretations: tare glazes, emulsions, even a riff on canelés made with powdered date sugar — a bite that unexpectedly evokes Horlicks, the malted drink of choice in Gulf cafeterias in the ’90s. “If I’d treated dates as just sugar, I’d have missed that connection,” Haddad says. “It’s not just about dates. It’s about what they represent — the idea that ingredients can hold the memories of people.”
Over at One-MICHELIN-Star Talea by Antonio Guida in Abu Dhabi, Chef Luigi Stinga approaches dates with a similarly reverent precision, even if from an Italian point of view. “They’re not part of our traditional flavor repertoire,” Stinga admits. “But being in Abu Dhabi, surrounded by their presence and cultural significance, I felt I couldn’t ignore them.” For one dish, he folds date jus into slow-cooked beef bones, layered with roasted hazelnuts and bitter savoy cabbage to balance the fruit’s intensity. “It’s a harmony that surprises people but still feels grounded,” he says. “Localization isn’t a compromise — it’s a dialogue.”
Image credit: Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, Abu Dhabi/Talea by Antonio Guida
That dialogue plays out in subtle touches across the region. At 3Fils, the MICHELIN Bib Gourmand favorite, a medjool-laced miso glaze on their signature sea bass transforms the familiar into the uncanny: salty, sticky and just sweet enough.
For Haddad, these moves are less trend-chasing and more overdue reclamation. “The goal is not to chase trendy ingredients or meaningless luxuries,” he says. “It’s to work with ingredients that carry a narrative. If an ingredient doesn’t add value to the story, then it has no place on the plate.”
And in a region where the date palm is more than a symbol — it’s survival, sustenance, and increasingly, subtlety — that narrative is both intimate and expansive. “Moonrise is a Middle Eastern restaurant,” Haddad says, “Not Japanese, not European. These refined techniques help people access the story of our food, whether they know what a date is or not.”
So, this summer, while the Gulf bakes in its own kind of rotisserie, the region’s chefs are doing what they do best: elevating the everyday. Dates are no longer just the fruit of Ramadan — they’re now the flavor of memory, of meaning, of the Middle East rethinking its place at the table.
And yes, date sugar caramelizes beautifully when torched.
Illustration image credit: © clearandtransparent/iStock
