Say hello to Haya’s Kitchen Meets KAVE
Who doesn’t love a supper-club-to-permanent success story? We’ve had many of these delicious tales come out of Dubai in the past few years – Neha Mishra’s A Story of Food to Kinoya, Gabriela Chamorro’s Girl and the Goose, the anonymous-chef-led Hawkerboi, husband-and-wife duo Salam and Tareq’s Dukkan El Baba from Birria Tacos, to name a few.
The latest entrant to this club is Haya’s Kitchen, Palestinian chef Haya Bishouty’s culinary baby. What started as Sufra, a Covid-era awakening from corporate slumber, and a series of workshops focused on Palestinian food skills around town, is now a permanent kitchen.
Haya’s Kitchen Meets KAVE has been operational for about six months, with a grand launch coming up soon, and is located inside KAVE in a quiet lane of Alserkal Avenue.
The story
Respective founders and friends Haya and Rania Kana’an welcome you with open arms into their space – a space all about creating a community of eco-conscious, kind humans, featuring a cavernous co-working area laid out with communal tables, surrounded by retail pop-ups of sustainable, regional, upcycling brands. Apparel, jewellery, vintage accessories, ceramics, bags and more, and in the corner, the kitchen.
The synergy of these two concepts comes from the roots they intend to honour. Haya’s Kitchen started as and continues to be Haya’s personal journey into discovering, understanding and embracing her heritage. KAVE brings back the practices of the ancestors, the cave people, creating a system of conscious living – take from the Earth, give back to it.
Both women are paying tribute to their heritage, their tetas or grandmothers, by reviving this way of life, whether through food or communal belonging.
The food
The menu at Haya’s Kitchen Meets KAVE follows a pattern of seasonal and personal cooking, the core of any cuisine and culture. You can sample dishes like the msakhan and macarona bil’laban, unadulterated versions of the childhood classics.
At a time when food was consumed depending on what the Earth was giving us, the tetas used locally-sourced ingredients and passed these recipes down from one generation to the next, as we see in the selection of seasonal salads with bulgur wheat and tomatoes.
No food is wasted, no part thrown away, and everything preserved expertly to make sure it doesn’t go bad, as in the khweya, a breakfast dish of leftover oven-baked Arabic bread with cinnamon and sugar soaked in warm milk before serving.
As we dine, Haya and Rania share their own stories about these dishes, different iterations of the same comfort food they ate across different parts of the country. These are their shared memories, not in consciousness, but in heritage.
Haya’s Kitchen Meets KAVE, KAVE, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, weekdays, 10am to 7pm, weekends, 11am to 8pm, closed on Mon, @hkmeetsk, @hayasktchn, @kavepeople.
Images: Supplied
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