95. A new restaurateur - Lynn Hazim from Middle Child in Dubai.

If we then move into Dubai, where you are based and where your restaurant Middle Child is, how we were talking about the situation of course, but I mean Dubai has a super evolving restaurant and food scene with all kinds of nationalities, all kinds of different types of restaurants and so on.

How, I mean, what's your analysis of Dubai as a restaurant city? What's great and what's not so good?

I mean, Dubai really, really evolved in the last five years.

I would say Dubai used to be an import city where we used to import concepts like LPM and Zuma and whatnot.

And they would come and open a branch in Dubai.

And then, as I said, Dubai is such a young city that you could be the first to do so many things.

And so many people have realized that they want to make Dubai their home in the past few years.

And that's where they started creating their own businesses.

So they used to work in these big kitchens, for example, like LPM and Zuma and so on.

But then eventually... open their own thing and I think the word homegrown in Dubai might be a bit overused because everyone's like this is a homegrown restaurant this is a homegrown restaurant which Maybe, I don't know, in a city like Paris or Copenhagen, you wouldn't talk so much about because most things are homegrown and less things are imported.

But now homegrown is what we talk about here.

And you see more and more, as you said, people from different nationalities opening their own concepts and their own restaurants and their places with a lot more soul and identity and delicious food.

And I think it's amazing that one day you can have amazing Peruvian food and the next day, amazing Japanese and...

Lebanese and Italian and French and honestly whatever you want it's it's all here and it's all made by people who have made to buy their home and decided to stay here and build businesses here

obviously you filled one gap that you think was was needed among the restaurant with your your restaurant anything that you think is still lacking and still you would still love to see more of

Yeah, it's being able to open something small and casual with alcohol.

Which is, yeah, what I wish, yeah, maybe middle child 2.0 or something.

But yeah, that's what I feel is missing.

Also, I think casual Italian is still lacking here.

There's really good fine dining Italian, but you can't just go somewhere and have like very good pasta for an affordable price.

Like a day-to-day trattoria, I don't think we have that here.