Opening end of September at Kempinski The Boulevard, MamaBella flies in a new Italian grandmother each month to cook her signature dishes
Dubai loves a shiny new opening, but this one arrives with flour on its apron and stories at the ready. MamaBella is designed like a rustic southern Italian village tucked between Downtown’s glass towers, and the star turn isn’t a TV chef but real nonnas invited from across Italy.
Set to open at the end of September, the new restaurant and it’s monthly “Cucina Mamma” spotlight hands over the kitchen so each visiting grandmother can cook the recipes she knows by heart. Every month a grandmother will be flown in from Italy to make dishes like handmade pasta and deeply regional plates like lasagna, culurgiones, seadas, and grilled lamb, served with the kind of confidence that only decades at the stove can bring.
It’s a playful concept with a serious mission, celebrating memory, family and food made “with hands and heart.”
Chef Alessandro Miceli, who steers the culinary vision, puts it neatly: these women are walking cookbooks, and the restaurant is the platform for their stories. Ingredients take a artisanal with wild herbs, proper cheeses, fresh seafood, premium cuts, and that unmistakable peppery hit of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, so the flavours stay honest and regional. If you’ve ever wanted to eat in a village kitchen without leaving Downtown, this is your shortcut.
Pull up a seat at the 12-place Mamma Studio, a communal counter built for watching, tasting and learning, or slide into the dining room and let the courses arrive with a side of family lore. The point isn’t reinvention; it’s preservation, plate by plate, with the city as a willing audience. Expect the menu to evolve with each “guest grandmother,” keeping things seasonal, emotional and a little bit nostalgic (in the best way).
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