It’s nice of Dubai to finally jump on the “fresh, locally-farmed ingredient” genre of restaurant bandwagon. Back home, I feel like every city block had one of these restaurants – not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. In Dubai however, land of the non-existent hybrid car and barely-there recycling, certainly the same claim cannot be made. I just love how this new restaurant concept is being touted as so unique, like the rest of the world hasn’t been beating this genre to death for years. It is unique in Dubai, so fair enough I suppose – this is a desert after all, not exactly prime farming land. But then again, with the amount of money dumped into this place to keep up with the rest of the world’s big cities, I am still a bit surprised it took this long. But really what do I know; I just love to complain.

All this to say, I tried a new restaurant called The Farm this weekend for breakfast. And it was tasty. And peaceful. And green. And very different from the vast majority of restaurants in Dubai.

The Farm is located in a new(?) “eco-friendly” community called Al Barari, which is pretty much just another super-expensive community for over-paid jerks to live in. (…but I’d probably be one of those jerks if I had the cash) It’s super green – like incredibly so – and is filled will botanical, herb and produce gardens and ponds and streams and it’s all this really that makes it different from many of Dubai’s restaurants. It had a very natural feel that was nice, as Dubai, to me, seems to usually throw a multitude of tacky, obvious, overwrought productions at you at every opportunity. The food was excellent as well. It all simply tasted very fresh, and very flavorful despite the fact the dishes (omelette, waffle, sausages) were relatively basic.

The only thing that bothered me there was the service. The restaurant was almost completely empty, there was no need to rush anything. Yet from the moment after being seated about every 30 seconds, the waiter would come to the table and ask if you were ready to make your order yet. Like cool your jets, dude. There’s no-one here that needs this table so no need to push us along, and between your incessant interruptions I barely have time to even properly look at the menu (which was more difficult to browse than most menus due to its layout on an iPad with different types of foods in different categories that you needed to individually select and enter). Stand off. I really, really hate hovering staff.

But whatever, it wouldn’t stop me from going back, which I hope to do in the not terribly distant future to try dinner or lunch.

On a side note, I really, desperately, want one of these for my yard: