If you’re looking for that perfect Spanish meal in Dubai, it doesn’t get much better than this
It’s natural for dinner guests to taste Sultan’s paella and assume that he’s got Spanish blood. Actually, he’s Syrian Lebanese, while his wife and co-host Kinda is from Lebanon, but Sultan’s family has a home in Spain and they’ve been going there for 35 years.
“Since childhood, I have loved paella,” he says. “Over the last few years I developed my own take on it. My sisters live in Spain, and when they tasted it they said it was better than what they get there.” At first, it was just for the family to enjoy, but now the couple invite others to eat on the deck of their traditional wind-tower house, with Sultan working like a DJ between two round platters, two variations on his specialist dish – one with squid ink and one a traditional Spanish marisco paella, with a home-made aioli sauce and Dover sole on the side.
“It’s really an experience,” says Kinda. “They’re cooked over charcoal in traditional pans, then they come to the table, and everyone shares, but they each get their own individual fish.” Both equally passionate about food – Kinda is more of a baker – they started inviting people over to eat a couple of years ago. “We had no menu, no cutlery, nothing,” she says. “We didn’t overthink it. We just threw ourselves in and just did it. The supper club is our creative outlet to express what we love and share it with other people.” Having been in Dubai since 2005 (though he met Kinda when they studied at the same school in Jeddah earlier on in their lives), Sultan believes this type of cooking in this kind of setting, gives locals something they’ve been craving and missing.
“The pace of Dubai is very fast, and people rarely stop for a second to connect with the fabric of the place, which is made up of all these different cultures. A supper club does that. The food on the table brings people together, and by the end of dinner, they’re all so friendly. There’s something really special about that.”
They named their club after a nickname Sultan was given as a child, which was actually taken from the name of a Spanish flamenco dancer his parents loved. It has since been passed around the city by word-of-mouth – when he cooked his paella at a recent event with two other chefs, someone walked in asking, “Who is this Tanos? Everyone is talking about Tanos.”
Their main philosophy remains ‘Simple is King’, using the freshest and most seasonal ingredients while cooking and preparing them to perfection. While the couple change their menu every six weeks, their original Veal Milanese with Spaghetti Al Limone along with their Spanish ‘line’ is making them famous. The paella, of course, but also gazpacho and salmorejo soups, made with “special tomatoes” sourced through Spinneys. One of their most popular desserts is the burnt Basque cheesecake, inspired by the couple’s travels to San Sebastian.
Their three kids weren’t sure at first, seeing so many guests at the house. But now they’re excited about it, says Sultan, whose hope is that “if you grow up around two people who are passionate about what they do, that creativity gets passed on”.
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Sultan and Kinda are #couplegoals. Despite neither of them being Spanish – their food is authentic, prepared with passion, presented with care and, most importantly, is utterly divine. Their supper started with salmorejo – a cooling tomato soup that trumps gazpacho; we enjoyed rolling our own striploin carpaccio filled with truffle and tomatoes and the mushroom manchego croquets were crispy and satisfying. Pil pil chilli garlic prawns preceded both paellas (we’re not sure we can ever eat these again if not cooked over coals) and the Dover sole meuniere was cooked perfectly. And Kinda’s burnt Basque cheesecake wins all around on appearance, taste and texture.
