From cafes and high-end restaurants to some cheeky tip-offs from long-time residents, here’s where to eat and drink in the Northern Emirate…

To many, Ras Al Khaimah means a long weekend – desert, beach, mountains, resort pool, repeat. But a growing number of people are deciding to stay. As the emirate quietly builds a permanent population of residents who live here, work here, and eat here, the dining scene is following suit.

In search of where the locals and long-timers really go, we spent three days exploring Ras Al Khaimah city, ate constantly, and came back with this list…

CAFES

Risers House

Before even stepping inside, the car park tells you a lot: a cluster of blacked-out SUVs idling outside a chic bungalow beside the golf course. This is Risers House, and it is the café conversation in RAK right now. Step inside and it’s buzzing: vinyl records line the coffee counter, light floods in, and there’s a pastry selection that could hold its own in any European capital. The clientele is almost entirely Emirati, which is stellar endorsement. If you can, nab a seat outside overlooking the golf club lake, with a proper flat white in hand. It’s a quietly perfect way to spend a RAK morning.
@risershouse

Al Hish Farm

About 25 minutes from the city, Al Hish Farm earns its detour. It’s a tranquil, unhurried kind of place – horse carriage rides, a scattering of old vehicles for children to clamber over, a playground, and plenty of wide open space. At the centre of it all sits a gorgeous little A-frame café serving karak, coffee and juices, and one of the better chocolate brownies in the emirate. The service is warm and genuinely meant. A lovely place to exhale.
@alhishfarm

Cyclist Café

You won’t find Cyclist on instinct alone, as it’s tucked down a steep hill, invisible from the road (of course,
to make it that much harder to locate), but the cluster of Deliveroo riders parked outside gives the game away. This is a working neighbourhood café: bright, unpretentious, strong coffee, acai bowls and poke bowls for the health-conscious, and a small bike shop in the corner that quietly suggests repairs are available if you ask the right person.
@cyclecafe.ae

North Café

There are cafés with nice views, and then there is North Café, positioned next to a working stables so that guests eat their eggs and drink their single-origin pour-over to the sight of Shetland ponies doing absolutely nothing stressful whatsoever. The coffee is serious, the food simple, and visitors are welcome to wander the stables after, where thoroughbred Arabian horses rest in their stalls with the particular quiet dignity of animals who know how prized they are. An easy favourite.
@northcafe.uae

HIGH-END RESTAURANTS

Farmhouse by Syrco

Reach it by golf buggy from the Ritz-Carlton Al Wadi, past free-roaming gazelles and oryx, and you’ll already be in the right frame of mind. Farmhouse by Syrco is executed with precision by head chef Florian Van Dillen (known, affectionately, as Chef Flip), who draws on local influences, seasonal produce, and sustainable sourcing to turn out dishes that lean fine dining in technique but carry a vivid, garden-fresh lightness in the eating. The interiors could do with a bit of modernising (though we’re told this is in the works), but the ambitions and skill of the kitchen are worth the trip.
@farmhousebysyrco

Bar du Port Beach

The newest arrival on the RAK dining scene and already its most ambitious. Chef Hadi Saroufim’s Bar du Port Beach sits on its own stretch of beach beside the InterContinental – a sprawling, beautiful thing of swaying lampshades, a vast oval bar, and an open kitchen built around a state-of-the-art pizza oven. The fish display alone is worth a detour. The Mediterranean plates coming out of that kitchen are seriously good, and the whole operation – beach cabanas, pool, weekly events included – carries itself with confidence. The fact that it sits entirely outside a hotel only adds to the appeal.
@bdpbeachrak

Zuma

The pop-up that doesn’t feel like one. Zuma’s outpost at the Ritz-Carlton Al Wadi Desert – open until April 2027, extended by popular demand – occupies a two-level space with a rooftop terrace looking out over rolling dunes. The menu is faithful to the brand’s greatest hits: sushi, robata, sharp cocktails. What elevates it here is the setting, firepits and desert silence do considerable work alongside the food. A complete experience, as billed, though the dunes probably deserve some of the credit.
@ritzcarltonalwadidesert

Lexington Grill

Some restaurants earn their longevity through reinvention. Lexington Grill earns it through consistency. The New York steakhouse format – serious cuts, confident seafood – has been executed here with enough conviction to remain a reliable favourite in a landscape thatkeeps changing around it. Not the most surprising meal in RAK, but quite possibly one of the most satisfying.
@lexingtongrillandbar

Ula

Technically within the Mövenpick Resort Al Marjan Island, Ula has the rare quality of feeling like it’s independent from the hotel. The aesthetic does a lot of heavy lifting – neutral tones, rattan, pampas grass, swings at the bar, bohemian umbrellas – and lands somewhere between Mykonos and Tulum without feeling derivative of either. The Mediterranean menu, which leans pleasingly Greek, is broad: sharing dips, gyros, fresh pasta, and tapas bits. Come for the cocktails and the cabanas – stay considerably longer than planned.
@ulabeachrak

TIP-OFFS (FROM LONG-TIME RESIDENTS)

Qasr Al Afghan

Another tip, this time from Chef Flip of Farmhouse by Syrco, and another reminder that the people cooking the best fine dining in a city usually know exactly where to eat on their night off. Qasr Al Afghan sits just off the main motorway, easy to miss and entirely worth finding. Inside, the restaurant unfolds as a maze of small carpeted rooms divided by thick stone walls, low and intimate, where diners sit cross-legged on the floor around plastic sheets laid with enormous shared platters. Grills, kebabs, succulent lamb chops eaten with the hands – it’s communal and fun.
@qasr_al_afghan_restaurant

Fanar Bakery

The best tips always come from people who’ve been somewhere long enough to stop going to the obvious places. A long-time RAK resident pointed the way to Fanar – past garages and electronics stalls, down a dusty street just off the main city thoroughfare – and what a find it was. The kiosk is barely a kiosk: a deep pit oven, a young man taking orders, a couple of broken chairs outside for anyone who wants to eat bread while it’s hot. Watch the dough get stretched into an oblong, slapped against the sides of the vertical oven, and stuffed with cheese – an Afghani calzone of sorts, and at Dhs3.50, an entirely unreasonable amount of deliciousness for the money. Order it stuffed with Omani chips or honey if cheese isn’t your thing.
Tel: (0)50 3729664

Mannoor

Reputedly the oldest café in the UAE, it sits by the Creek in a state of magnificent, unironic time-warp: a few benches, majlis-style cushions, old men in kanduras locked in backgammon games that appear to have been running for decades. Outside, cars beep their horns to order karak tea – because why park when you can honk? – and nobody thinks this is unusual. It is a living document of a place. A reminder that RAK has a rich before, and it’s well worth sitting in it for a while.
@qahwat.mannoor