An advocate for sourcing ingredients locally, Teible shares insight on where to find great tasting, fresh ingredients within the country, including The Greenheart Farm, My Farm Dubai, Kinoko Farm, and more.
Spearheading the way for restaurants in Dubai committed to sourcing ingredients locally, farm-to-table dining destination Teible at Jameel Arts Center takes a food tour around the region to discover the best produce available as the restaurant celebrates sourcing 95% of its ingredients from within the UAE.
“Teible, an advocate for food sustainability and supporting farmers in this region by making use of local ingredients, sets our main goal to showcase the true potential of regional produces and how it can be fresh and healthier for our environment. We can collectively change the world, starting with what we have control over and make a conscious effort on daily basis to choose better, with future generations and food safety in mind,” comments Teible’s Executive Chef Carlos Frunze.
When it comes to farms in the UAE, Teible vouches for The Greenheart Farm in Quata, Sharjah. Supplying the restaurant with almost 60% of its fruit and vegetable products, Teible notes it chooses to work with this farm because of its variety of heirloom products they produce and the exclusivity to these ingredients that Teible has. “They do not use any chemicals in their products. They do not abuse, pollute, or poison soil – ensuring they are always respecting people, animals, and nature by using natural cultivation methods,” Teible notes.
For meat products, Teible is supplied a variety of fresh, locally butchered meats such as cow, lamb and camel from Home Meat Farm. Teible shares that they like the approach of Home Meat Farm to sustainability and the growth of local cattle, given the difficult conditions of raising them here. They are fed with dates, alfalfa, and wheat berries and this produces sweet and tender meat.
Looking at specific local ingredients, the culinary team at Teible are particularly big fans of the quality of local lemon verbena, milk and mushrooms, revealing that the restaurant sources lemon verbena herbs from My Farm Dubai. “Mr. Mohammed provides the best quality of fresh herbs to us. They use real soil and natural light, employing only sustainable methods and techniques of plant cultivation. They also do not use any insecticides and fungicides. It’s important to know what kind of products we use at Teible, where it comes from, and how it’s cultivated. It’s one thing to have local ingredients but if they don’t practice sustainability and make use of natural processes, I don’t think there is a point to it.”
Teible’s milk is sourced from Rumailah Farm located in Fujairah, where the farm provides naturally grazed and locally milked Jersey cattle that allows them to produce fresh milk that’s high in fat, giving a creamy texture.
Mushrooms are sourced from Kinoko Farm and Green House Farms, where they cultivate local exotic mushrooms and innovative techniques are used for vertically growing mushrooms in the middle of the desert. They also make use of mushrooms as nature’s decomposers, breaking down waste material and turning them into nutrients.
Ahead of Teible’s imminent re-opening and the highly-anticipated launch of Season Three, Chef Carlos shares that the new menu will showcase the region’s best seafood – looking at its versatility and how unique in flavour seafood can be when fished from the Arabian Gulf.
During the upcoming season, guests will discover locally caught wild varieties such as snappers, mullets, lobsters and scallops. “Our chefs will personally be choosing and buying the seafood from the Waterfront Fish Market in Dubai, while we will also work with farmed and ranched fish in the UAE. We will have farmed oysters from Dibba Bay and also ranched varieties of fish from the Fish Farm and locally farmed salmon,” Teible explains.
Teible is located at Jameel Arts Centre, Jaddaf Waterfront, Dubai. For further information, please call +971 4 243 6683, e-mail [email protected], visit teible.com, or follow @teible_ on Instagram.
