RESTAURANT REVIEW: AL DAR SWEETS

RATING

*****

“Al Dar” - literally translates from Arabic to “home”.

لا دار بلا حلوى
ولا حلوى إلا الدار

Possibly my favorite slogan ever. It loosely translates to ‘no home (dar) without sweets, and no sweets except Al Dar (i.e. home)’.

This store comes from very humble beginnings going back to 1975, when a man by the name of Ismael El Cheikh Hassan, Hajj Ismael as he was known among people, decided he wanted to become a restaurant owner. Forty-three years later and the store remains a family run business, now operated by his grandson, Wissam El Cheikh Hassan.

The restaurant aspect back then did not do so well, but it was the first sweets shop to open in Abu Dhabi and became very successful and known as a sweets place.

Wissam, however, has a vision for this place, and he left his corporate job in 2012 to join his family in running the business. In 2017, they made changes to the store and introduced freshly baked good such as manakish and fatayer and pastries and so on, as well as a variety of dishes, bringing back the restaurant aspect that his grandfather desired, but also redecorating the place in an effort to make Al Dar really feel like ‘home’. In fact, the recipes for many of the dishes at the restaurant are his mother’s own recipes.

I have tried almost all kinds of manakish they serve, and they are absolutely delicious. Their new addition is the wild za’atar (thyme) manakish, which has a tinge of sweetness to contrast the tanginess and makes for very interesting flavors. My favorite, though, is their cheese manakish, which has the perfect ratio of cheese to bread, and when eaten fresh with a cup of tea, is truly the perfect start to the morning.

I also had their eggs and sujuk (sausage) baked in clay pots, which are so good and filling and cooked perfectly! And don’t get me started on their desserts!

Al Dar Sweets is usually our go-to for knafeh, ma’amoul or halawet el jibn or baklava or any other Arabic sweets you’re craving. Their ma’amoul, especially, is one of my favorite store-bought kind, because they really do taste homemade, and you can tell that this is his mother’s recipe. That being said, they do sell Western desserts, such as cookies and cakes and chocolate and so on. They even have ice cream!

However, when I recently went, I tried a new item on their menu: manakish knafeh. You may, at first, think…huh? Sort of like I did when I first heard that. But my God, does it work and does it work amazingly well. Remember how I said that their cheese manakish is my favorite? Well, imagine that, topped with the knafeh crust, baked to perfection, and then drizzled with sugar syrup.

I’m drooling just writing this.

It was definitely the highlight of my visit, and I highly recommend you all head over there to try it for yourselves! You can thank me later.

Al Dar is definitely one of my favorite places in Abu Dhabi. I love their food, their vibe and how authentic it is. With Fairuz playing in the background, it’s chalkboard menu, and a member of the El Cheikh Hassan family always present, you immediately feel like you are transported back to the good old days of Abu Dhabi, when communities were smaller but tighter. I love places with history, stories and backgrounds, and this place does not disappoint.