Follow the scent. This is not the complicated instruction it might seem, because the scent in question – olive wood smoke rising from two cast-iron grills, lamb fat meeting flame, the particular perfume of wild oregano that can only mean one thing – cuts through the usual olfactory clutter of a Dubai evening with the precision of a well-honed knife.

It leads you past the skyline views that usually demand attention, past the infinity edges and the artful lighting, straight to a stretch of sand at TH8 Palm Dubai Beach Resort, where a restaurant called Bakalis is making a rather compelling case that we have been doing Greek dining all wrong. Not by adding anything. By taking things away.

The city has, after all, spent the better part of two decades perfecting its own impression of Hellenic hedonism – the whitewashed walls, the turquoise pools, the studied nonchalance of watching a sunset set the Gulf ablaze. It is, one might argue, already more Greek than Greece, if by “Greek” we mean “impossibly photogenic and equipped with valet parking”. And yet.

And yet here is Bakalis, nestled into the sands of Palm Jumeirah, making a rather compelling argument that we have not understood the assignment at all. That we have been so busy curating the look of the Aegean – the Instagrammable geometry, the cobalt domes, the artfully distressed plaster – that we have forgotten what actually draws us there in the first place. Which is to say: the fire. The smoke. The feeling of sitting barefoot at a wooden table while someone’s grandmother emerges from a kitchen no bigger than a linen cupboard, bearing lamb that has been thinking about becoming dinner since daybreak. The genius of Bakalis – and it is, I think, genuine genius – lies in its refusal to perform authenticity. It simply is.

The origin story arrives with the pleasing symmetry of a well-constructed myth. Culinary Director Faisal Albaradie – whose Greek grandmother presumably did not anticipate that her grandson would one day weaponise her memory in the cause of Dubai’s restaurant scene – was dispatched to Athens without so much as a map. The brief, one imagines, was something like: get lost, and see what you find.

What he found, inevitably, was not a Michelin-starred destination restaurant with tasting menus and tweezers. It was a neighbourhood taverna where time had apparently retired from active duty, where the scent of grilled lamb mingled with the clatter of cutlery in a hidden courtyard, and where the seasoning was simple because the ingredients had nothing to hide. This is the sort of discovery that sounds like a cliché until you have actually made it yourself – until you have sat in such a place and understood that the Greeks have not been keeping secrets so much as remembering what everyone else has forgotten. That moment became Bakalis.

Walk in, and the first thing that hits you is not the view. This is significant, because the view is considerable: the Dubai skyline rising from the Arabian Gulf like a fever dream of what cities might become if you gave them unlimited resources and a mild god complex. Palm Jumeirah stretches out in that improbable frond pattern that still, after all these years, seems to belong more to science fiction than urban planning. It is, by any objective measure, a spectacle.

The first thing that hits you is the smoke. Olive wood crackling beneath two open-fire grills, sending up the kind of aroma that bypasses the intellect entirely and speaks directly to something older – something that remembers cooking as ritual, as community, as the thing that happens when people gather. The flames kiss the iron with the familiarity of old lovers, and the ingredients, stripped of unnecessary fuss, are finally allowed to speak for themselves.

“Pure, honest, soulful,” the restaurant promises. It is the sort of claim that usually precedes disappointment. Here, it functions as a straightforward description.

The menu reads like a love letter written in ingredients. Cold plates arrive first, because Greece understands that pleasure should not be rushed. A tzatziki that manages the considerable feat of being both light and confident – yoghurt, cucumber, garlic, dill, the whole thing humming with the quiet assurance of a dish that has been perfected over centuries rather than invented for a focus group. Fava, smooth and golden, tasting more of the earth than seems reasonable for something made from split peas. Dolmades that wrap their vine leaves around rice and herbs with the tight precision of a secret worth keeping.

The anchovies deserve particular mention. Marinated, not salted into submission; served with the kind of reverence that oily fish rarely receives in a city where sushi-grade tuna and Omani lobster typically command the spotlight. They taste of the sea in the way that swimming tastes of the sea – directly, unapologetically, without mediation.

Warm plates follow, though “follow” suggests a sequence more rigid than the restaurant intends. This is sharing food, which is to say it is food designed to create the conditions for its own disappearance while you are busy talking. Grilled aubergine with feta that has been aged into salt-and-sun crystals. Courgette chips engineered for the specific form of addiction that comes from combining crisp exteriors with yielding interiors. Squid that would make a fisherman reconsider his career choices – tender, charred, finished with lemon and wild oregano so fragrant you might briefly hallucinate a hillside in the Peloponnese.

And then the fire takes centre stage. The two cast-iron grills are not decorative. They are the heart of the operation, the reason the air tastes different here, the source of the lamb chops that belong in epic poetry.

These are not the polite, trimmed, apologetic chops you encounter in establishments worried about fat content and dietary preferences. These are lamb chops that remember being part of an animal – assertive, flavourful, charred in ways that speak to the primal pleasure of cooking over wood.

The whole sea bass arrives with lemon rice that could, in a just world, be bottled and sold as a fragrance. The Gulf prawns have been treated with the respect that comes from understanding that seafood should taste of itself rather than whatever sauce is currently fashionable. And the moussaka – that most clichéd of Greek dishes, the one that appears on every menu from Astoria to Melbourne – has been stripped of its usual heaviness and reminded that it is, at its core, a meditation on layering rather than a competition in density.

The question of authenticity in Dubai’s dining scene is always a fraught one. We are, after all, a city built by people who came from elsewhere, a place where “traditional” often means “interpreted through the lens of luxury development”. When Shimmers does its elegant turn as the premier spot for photographing the Burj Al Arab while eating perfectly respectable lobster orzo, it makes no claims to be anything other than what it is: a beautiful restaurant in a beautiful location serving beautiful food. When Eat Greek Kouzina sets up at JBR with its moussaka burgers and casual beachfront vibe, it offers a different proposition entirely – accessible, modern, unbothered by the weight of history.

And when Meraki opens at Aloft Palm Jumeirah, inviting guests to handpick their seafood and have it prepared according to preference, it taps into another aspect of Greek dining: the market-fresh immediacy that characterises coastal eating, the sense that dinner should be negotiated directly with the catch of the day.

Bakalis exists somewhere in the conversation between these approaches. It is not trying to be Mykonos on the Palm – that particular niche has been filled repeatedly by venues that mistake volume for atmosphere and exclusivity for charm. Instead, it is aiming for something more specific: the feeling of having stumbled upon a neighbourhood taverna that happens to have been airlifted to one of the most valuable stretches of sand in the world. It is, as one observer noted, “Mykonos in silk loafers” – familiar enough to be comfortable, refined enough to justify the journey.

The wine arrives in carafes. This is a detail that matters more than it should. In an era of sommelier presentations and decanting rituals and the careful choreography of wine service, there is something profoundly liberating about a carafe of rosé placed unceremoniously on the table. It says: we are not performing sophistication here. We are drinking. We are sharing. We are allowing the evening to unfold without the tyranny of pairings and recommendations and the implicit judgement of whatever critic decided that this vintage should be drunk before 2026. The carafe says: relax.

Dessert arrives as both conclusion and consolation. Loukoumades – those golden, wicked doughnuts that seem to have been invented specifically to make you question every virtuous choice you have made this year – are dusted with cinnamon and drizzled with honey. Bougatsa is so delicate it might actually levitate, the custard-filled filo pastry managing the contradiction of being simultaneously crisp and yielding. Pistachio baklava tastes like a love affair conducted in a marble courtyard, all crunch and syrup and the particular bitterness of nuts toasted to the precise edge of surrender.

And then, for those who prefer their endings austere: Greek yoghurt with wild honey and crushed walnuts. It is simple in the way that all great things are simple – which is to say it is the product of impeccable ingredients assembled by someone who understands that the relationship between them matters more than any individual component.

The cultural context deserves attention. Dubai’s relationship with Greek food has always been complicated by the city’s relationship with Greece itself – that strange, aspirational longing for a Mediterranean simplicity that our own environment cannot provide. We build our beaches, we import our sand, we construct our islands in the shape of palm trees, and then we wonder why we cannot quite capture the feeling of sitting in a waterfront taverna on Paros, watching fishing boats bob in the harbour while the light turns the water to liquid gold.

Bakalis understands that the feeling cannot be manufactured. It can only be evoked – through scent, through taste, through the particular quality of warmth that comes from a kitchen that cooks with wood rather than gas. Chef Ioannis Baxevanis, who joined the opening night to narrate the cultural and culinary traditions that inspired the menu, represents an acknowledgement that this food comes from somewhere specific, that it carries history and memory and the accumulated wisdom of generations.

This is not fusion. This is not interpretation. This is translation – the careful work of rendering something from one context into another without losing its essential meaning.

The restaurant sits within TH8 Palm Dubai Beach Resort, which has quietly positioned itself as something increasingly rare in Dubai: a genuinely boutique property. While the city’s hospitality scene has trended towards ever-larger developments with ever-more amenities, TH8 has committed to the proposition that smaller can be better – that intimacy has value, that a hotel need not contain everything in order to contain what matters. The newly unveiled Infinity Floor, with its themed suites catering to fitness enthusiasts, artists and gamers, suggests a property that takes its guests seriously enough to design for their specific desires rather than generic expectations.

Bakalis fits this philosophy perfectly. It is not a destination restaurant in the sense of requiring a journey and a reservation three months in advance. It is a neighbourhood restaurant that happens to be in a resort – a place where guests can wander down barefoot, order a carafe of wine, and watch the sunset without performing the ritual of fine dining. The distinction matters more than you might think.

Is it authentic? The question hovers over every conversation about restaurants like this, and the answer is both simpler and more complicated than it appears.

No, it is not authentic in the way that a taverna in a village on Crete is authentic – the one where the owner’s uncle caught the fish that morning, where the olive oil comes from trees that have been in the family for centuries, where the recipes have never been written down because they exist in muscle memory and grandmothers’ hands.

But yes, it is authentic in the way that matters: the flavours are true, the techniques are respectful, and the spirit animating the whole enterprise is one of genuine connection rather than cynical appropriation. Chef Albaradie’s Greek grandmother, one suspects, would recognise the food. She might even approve.

On Mondays, the kitchen is closed because Chef Faisal has gone fishing. This is the sort of detail that cannot be manufactured – the kind of genuine eccentricity that separates restaurants with souls from restaurants with concepts. It says: we are not always here. We have lives, and appetites, and the same desire to be by the water that brought you to our door. Come back tomorrow. The fire will still be burning. And the fire, they promise, never goes out.

This is, perhaps, the most Greek thing about Bakalis – not the food, not the setting, not the carefully curated authenticity of olive-wood grills and carafes of rosé. It is the understanding that hospitality is not a transaction but a condition. That the flame on the grill is also the flame in the hearth, the flame in the story, the flame that connects this evening on Palm Jumeirah to every other evening, in every other taverna, where people have gathered to eat and drink and watch the light fade from the sky.

The sunset over the Arabian Gulf is not the sunset over the Aegean. But it is beautiful in its own right – the skyline catching the last light, the water turning to copper and rose, the city beginning its nightly transformation from urban centre to illuminated spectacle. Bakalis does not ask you to pretend you are somewhere else. It asks only that you be here, now, with people you love, eating food cooked over wood and seasoned with care. It is enough. It has always been enough.

Bakalis is located at Th8 Palm Dubai Beach Resort, Palm Jumeirah. Open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday, 6 pm to 11 pm (kitchen closes at 10.30 pm). Closed on Mondays, when Chef Faisal is, presumably, out fishing. For reservations and more information, visit th8palmdubai.com or call +971 4 525 8888.

 

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