Em Sherif’s halloum in honey and za’atar, Muscat

Em Sherif Restaurant in Muscat serves halloum in a shallow copper pan, its surface burnished amber where heat has caught the cheese, bright green rosemary scattered across the golden blocks and honey beginning to caramelise at the edges. The kitchen has found the precise moment where halloum softens without collapsing, where honey deepens rather than simply sweetens, and where fresh za’atar’s anise and thyme notes announce themselves clearly alongside the salt and slight squeak of the cheese itself.

The dish reveals a particular approach to levantine cooking: respect for tradition with room for interpretation. The halloum is sourced for its ability to hold shape under heat; the honey chosen for body and depth; the herbs fresh enough to retain colour through warmth. The proportions matter. Too much honey and the dish tips toward dessert. Too little and the cheese is simply warm. The kitchen has found the balance where each element supports the others: the richness of the cheese, the floral note of honey, the mineral and herbal complexity of the thyme.

What distinguishes this version is an almost austere attention to finishing. The rosemary is added at the moment it will perfume the pan without browning far enough to turn bitter. The copper pan itself becomes part of the presentation, conducting heat evenly and slowing the cooling, so the halloum remains yielding through the first several bites. The wooden surface on which the pan sits echoes the golden tones of the cheese and honey.

Halloum is traditionally a cheese of necessity: its high melting point allowed it to travel, survive shipment, and be cooked over fire and emerge intact. That practical history is what places it at the centre of levantine food across generations and borders. What Em Sherif has recognised is that the simplest treatments are often the most demanding. Honey and thyme ask nothing of the cheese except that it be good. The kitchen’s job is not to disguise but to set each element in its proper proportion and let the ingredient speak.

The dish is offered as part of the restaurant’s broader menu, which draws on levantine traditions while working with the produce and the palate of its location in Oman. That tension, between fidelity to origin and responsiveness to place, is what gives the kitchen its particular character. The halloum is a small example of how it works in practice: a dish that belongs everywhere the levantine diaspora has settled, made here with the clarity and the restraint that marks the best cooking of this kind.

Imagery courtesy of Em Sherif Restaurant (@emsherifrestaurant_om).