BETWEEN THE MOON AND THE PLANETS
Chef Solemann Haddad delights diners with dishes that mirror the experience of living in Dubai.
By Michelle Wranick-Hicks
At nearly 7pm on a Thursday evening, high above the rooftops on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, chef Solemann Haddad is calm under pressure. Only 25, Haddad is the founder of Moonrise, an omakase-style dining concept on the rooftop of chic Eden House, a luxury residential tower with views that stretch across the city from the beaches of Jumeirah to the Palm. Despite being open for just a few months, Moonrise is already distinguishing itself as Dubai’s most up-and-coming restaurant, not because of the jaw-dropping views, but for Haddad’s “Dubai cuisine”—a genre-bending medley of flavours of his childhood, from shawarma in Satwa to Indian street food in Karama. “I call it Dubai cuisine because we are cooking food that really tries to represent or mirror the experience of living in this city,” he says.
Haddad was born and raised in Dubai to a Syrian father and a French mother, and like many third-culture kids he felt untethered to his heritage. “I never really felt connected to my roots at all,” he says. “Dubai has always been my home. I’ve shaped my career around this city. I get very homesick actually, I can’t leave this place.”
He did leave once, however, to attend Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Tokyo and London. Instead of taking the traditional path of working under the wing of a Michelin-starred chef, Haddad immediately returned to Dubai. He took a job as a sous-chef at the restaurant Inked before diving into his first venture, Warehouse 16, a kaiseki-style pop-up at a gallery in Alserkal Avenue. Despite becoming an instant word-of-mouth hit, pandemic restrictions made the pop-up untenable.
“A big part of our philosophy is using ingredients from this region—niche ingredients that not a lot of people know about.”
Top, Mango Slushy Yuzu Meringue made with caramelised coconut, yuzu and chilli dust. Childhood friends Misbah Chowdhury and chef Solemann Haddad. Above, Lacto Fattoush Ceviche Hamachi, flown fresh from Tokyo’s Tsukiji market, floats in a broth of ponzu, mint, shiso oil, dukkah leaves, yuzu juice and rind. Nasturtium leaves balance on top.
Early last year, a chance introduction led Haddad and his childhood friend Misbah Chowdhury—Moonrise’s operations and social-media marketing manager—to the site at Eden House. Suddenly, Haddad was gripped with purpose and a drive far greater than anything he’d felt before. “I was so driven that I said no to everything. I made zero income for six months. I’ve risked everything to open this restaurant. Everything’s on the line for me.”
Cooking is more than a career for Haddad; he remains a student of his craft, spending his spare time poring through books on food science, fermenting his own miso, and sourcing ingredients himself. He has a passion for incorporating the unsung regional produce of the UAE into his cuisine, from edible flowers grown in a vertical farm in Al Ain to sidr honey from Ras Al Khaimah. He once spent a month driving around Fujairah in a quest to source the emirate’s finest mangoes. For his next menu, he plans to use fagga—the rare desert truffle that grows beneath the sands after the rain. “A big part of our philosophy is using ingredients from this region, niche ingredients that not a lot of people know about,” he explains. “We are trying to educate our guests.”
The eight-course dining experience at Moonrise takes place counter-style in Eden House’s retrofitted pool bar, industrial but polished, with green tiles and LED neon signage. Dishes are plated directly in front of the guests, served on hand-crafted, tactile ceramics made by Slo studio in Jumeirah.
With a staff ratio of nearly one to one—Moonrise hosts just eight diners for two seatings per evening—the service is carefully calibrated, casual yet unobtrusive. Between courses we are offered palate-cleansing tonic drinks perfumed with raspberry and lime, or shiso and vanilla, and regaled with how ingredients were sourced and storytelling. “Have you read the book The Little Prince?” Haddad asks. “Being on this rooftop made me feel a bit like that, where he’s jumping in between the moon and the planets. We really wanted a name that plays on the magic of being on a rooftop.”
Haddad’s Dubai cuisine simultaneously surprises and delights. His version of the Indian street food favourite, pani puri, is a delicate sphere of roasted and blended foie gras. It yields with one bite, imbued with pineapple and saffron chutney, white truffle and date syrup, and the measured fire of Sichuan chilli oil. Next is chutoro gunkan, the morsels of fatty tuna belly encased in nori and drizzled with date syrup, sidr honey and yuzu zest.
A5 Tsukune, a wagyu meatball, top image, seared over charcoal, is served with Kaluga caviar, a black truffle koji ponzu and lime kosho. Hummus is blended with black sesame seeds and charred Padrón peppers, smoked, and sprinkled with furikake.
Yuzu is Haddad’s favourite ingredient—so much so that he named his cat after the aromatic Japanese citrus fruit—and it is used liberally in many of the dishes on his menu. In lacto fattoush ceviche—inspired by fattoush salad, a staple dish at Arabic restaurants in Dubai—plump slices of hamachi, flown fresh that day from Tokyo’s Tsukiji market, float in a vivid green broth of ponzu, mint, shiso oil, fresh dukkah leaves, yuzu juice and rind, with large nasturtium leaves balanced on top. We are instructed to scoop up the hamachi with as much broth as we can manage. The fermented tomato in the dish gives it a gazpacho-style tang that is utterly delicious and familiar. There’s more chargrilled street food familiarity in the A5 Tsukune, the single wagyu meatball seared over charcoal, offering a well-rounded, intense umami, served with Kaluga caviar, a black truffle koji ponzu and lime kosho.
Despite the playful slant of Haddad’s cuisine, the most intriguing part of the Moonrise experience is marvelling at the team at work. Omakase is translated from Japanese as “I’ll leave it up to you”, the chef decides the menu and prepares it in front of diners. Here, the plating of each dish is technical and laborious. Dill strands are separated individually by tweezers, as are flower petals. The chefs pause every so often to fix imperfection imperceptible to our eyes. Ironically, they spend the longest amount of time plating the hummus, though this is no ordinary hummus. Blended with black sesame seeds and charred Padrón peppers, it is smoked over apple wood to impart a wintery campfire aroma and sprinkled with a furikake made from tempura, nori and za’atar. The decadent hummus is accompanied by bread, though describing it as an accompaniment is a gross injustice. Handmade in house, the soft, naan-like bread is made from a blend of flour from Al Quoz and T55 flour from France, rubbed with olive oil and cooked over charcoal. The smoky scent takes me straight to cherished memories around campfires in the desert. It is this nostalgia that Haddad strives for.
“We often get Dubai kids who come here and when they try the food they say things like ‘That really spoke to the child in me’. If you’ve lived here for a while, you will have a lot of nostalgic memories dining here.”
Spicy Tuna, chutoro tartare with a sauce of fermented Syrian chillies, served on a nori tempura, and finished with purple sorel leaves.
Photographs by Misbah Chowdhury
