Moonrise Sustains Its Michelin Star Through Deeply Personal Dubai Cuisine

The arc of Chef Solemann Haddad’s career traces a particular kind of conviction: the belief that cooking born entirely from where you come from can speak to the world. In retaining its Michelin Star for 2026, Moonrise demonstrates precisely this. What began as a deeply personal dining vision, seated twelve at a chef’s table overlooking Al Satwa, has evolved into something far more expansive while remaining rooted in its original essence.

Haddad describes his approach simply as “Dubai cuisine”. It is cooking shaped by the flavours, cultures and experiences of growing up in the city; a place where Middle Eastern ingredients and techniques meet influences absorbed from a lifetime lived within one of the world’s most genuinely multicultural cities. Rather than fitting neatly within a single culinary tradition, Moonrise has built its identity around the very fabric of Dubai itself. The Michelin Guide recognises in Haddad a homegrown, largely self taught chef whose multi course tasting menu brings Middle Eastern ingredients and flavours to life through considered techniques and a distinctive point of view.

The restaurant occupies an intimate perch atop Eden House in Al Satwa, a location Haddad describes as the intersection between old and new Dubai. From the counter that wraps around the open kitchen, guests look out across the Dubai he grew up in on one side, and the Dubai that evolved alongside him on the other. This geography, literal and metaphorical, sits at the heart of everything served here.

A Story That Travels

What speaks most eloquently to Moonrise’s growing influence is how the restaurant’s culinary perspective has begun to extend beyond the Emirates. Recent collaborations including work with Khufu’s in Cairo and AUYL in Almaty represent not a departure from Moonrise’s core identity but rather an expansion of the conversation around what a restaurant born from Dubai can become. These partnerships allow Haddad to explore his cooking across different contexts whilst maintaining the deeply personal ideas that founded the restaurant.

For Haddad himself, retaining the Star represents both continuity and evolution: staying true to the personal vision on which Moonrise was built whilst continuing to explore what happens when that vision travels, when it encounters different ingredients, different kitchens, different audiences. The journey that began with his receiving the Michelin Guide Young Chef Award in 2022, followed by Moonrise earning its first Star in 2023, has become something increasingly assured. The restaurant has been recognised with two toques by Gault & Millau and ranked among the region’s finest establishments, yet the focus remains singular: telling the story of Dubai through the flavours Haddad grew up eating.

“Retaining the Michelin Star means a lot to us because Moonrise has always been about telling the story of Dubai through the flavours I grew up eating,” Haddad reflects. As Moonrise evolves, travels and collaborates beyond the Emirates, that story continues to grow. Yet Dubai remains at its centre, the source from which everything flows.

Imagery courtesy of Moonrise.