SALMA DAKKAK

“Hiiiii sweetie!” - There is a sudden break in the interview as chef and owner, Salma Dakkak, pauses in her story to greet a few regular guests at her Dubai Restaurant. Or maybe restaurant is too diffuse of a word to properly describe the dining space in which interruptions such as these are so common. To Salma Dakkak,Bait Maryam is more of a second home, if you will. And the guests? They are not guests. To her, they are family.

“A lot of people in Dubai - men and women alike,” Salma explains as her focus returns, “live without their families who are often far away in neighboring countries or even on the other side of the world.” The very reason she opened her restaurant, her story continues as her deep eyes flash with emotion, was so that these people would have a safe home to come back to. Even if they are miles and miles away from their real homes. “This should be their home,” she says, visibly moved now, “and I should be the mother cooking for them.”

“We have told this story so many times,” her real-life daughter nterjects from across the table with a loving, grateful smile aimed at her mother, “and still to this day, our emotions get the better of us.”

“After they finish their food, I love nothing more than for them to come sit with me on the sofa and tell me whatever their hearts desire,” Chef Salma continues, in a voice full of empathy and genuine warmth. “Even if they have problems.I want to make them feel at home and safe. People come here, they eat, they tell me their stories and ask for advice.I offer them my advice And that is how it should be,” she laughs.

A mother’s legacy

“My passion for cooking comes from my mother. From watching her every move in the kitchen. How she cooked. And how she loved what she was cooking. Which is the most important aspect. She could cook anything and I would follow all her steps,“ she says lovingly about mother. Whom, she leaves no doubt, takes up the only spot in her heart bigger than that reserved for her extended family and her restaurant turned home-away-from-home. So great is her love, for her mother, that she actually created her beloved restaurant, in which she is now sitting, as an homage to her mother.

“I promised my mother, I would one day create something in her name,” she continues, picking her words slowly and carefully. Something her mother would accept and be proud of, she stresses. And that something, she quickly decided, would be a restaurant that would honor her mother and the dishes she so loved to cook for her family. 

For a long time she pursued the dream, pushing her husband and family for support until eventually in 2017, the stars aligned and her dream came true. When asked what the name of her dream restaurant would be, she replied, quite simply “,Bait Maryam.” Bait is the Arabic word for home, and Maryam was the name of her biggest influence in life. Her beloved mother. So, quite simply, the name of her dream come true could literally be translated into: “The home of my mother.”

Unfortunately for dreamers, not all dreams come true easily. Not even those dreamt from the bottom of the heart. They, too, take spirit and sacrifice. “It was really tough in the beginning,” Chef Salma recalls, but she soldiered on for the sake of her dreams and the legacy of her mother.. She even convinced her daughter to move back to the Emirates and help her out. “I had to,” her daughter simply smiles, and reveals that eventually, all the dreaming, pushing, the dedication and love paid off for Salma who over the course of about a year went from worry to wonder and disbelief. As her restaurant slowly and steadily started to fill up. 

“Who are all these people? Who are all these nationalities? Do I know them? How do they know me,” she quickly found herself wondering. Her wonder was sincere and not hard to understand. The 70 seat Bait Maryam restaurant is far from the high road or even the more popular streets. It is, as the family so often say, a true hidden gem in every meaning of the word. And a rare one at that. But as they also smilingly say “Once you have found it the first time, it gets a lot easier.” 

But still, how did people find it in the first place, they would wonder. The answer, not surprisingly, was the media who were quick to lash on to the unique, soulful  story of Bait Maryam. The woman who thought of herself more as a caring mother than a Chef. The woman who worked out of what she considered more of a home than a restaurant. The woman who cooked with all of her heart and considered even strangers as family. This very woman became an instant media darling and a darling of the people, and word spread like wildfire: across town and across the region, in newspapers, magazines, on TV and even the internet. 

Salma Dakkak achieved what most people could only dream of in life. And yet, she remained humble. To this day, she still comes in by herself every day in the morning. She gets in the kitchen and she cooks everything herself from scratch and from the best ingredients the region has to offer. She even deals with staff, décor and everything else. “To them, I am mom,” she smiles, “and because of that, they respect me. And I, in turn, respect them. If you are tired, go home, rest, come back and be ready. We all need to work together and we all need to be our best.”

Another thing that needs to be at its best is the food, as her daughter earnestly explains: “First of all, it is hard for her to find a supplier she really likes. She wants only the best ingredients and produce and she wants it to taste like the food of home. For all of her extended family.” As a result, some of the ingredients are from Jordan, some from Lebanon, some from Palestine while others still are local or from somewhere else entirely. The one thing they all do have in common, whether they are vegetables, oils, spices or anything else? Is the fact that, to Chef Salma, they are the very best in the region!

“Even my butcher is the very same one I use for my home cooking. We were the first restaurant he ever supplied to,” says Salma, “I do not want you to use a sub-supplier, I told him sternly, I want the very same quality of meat that I use in my own home. Okay, he just said.” And since then, the meat used in the restaurant has been the very same she cooks for her family at home. What Mother wants, Mother gets. And for her extended family, she wants nothing else than the same quality she cooks for her own family at home.

Read also: Bait Maryam - An unparalleled Middle Eastern home cooking oasis in the middle of busy Dubai

 Actually, it is as if sometimes, the lines between home and home away from home gets blurred for Salma Dakkak. Looking around the restaurant. Gazing at the tables, chairs, plates, the decorations., even the way the table is set. It looks more like a private home than a restaurant. And if you ask Chef Salma, this is all entirely intentional. “I want this to be a home. I am not into decoration or presentation. Just food,” she says smiling again, “but food made with love. Food should come from the heart. That is most important. That you can taste and feel the love.”

And herein lies the real magic of Salma Dakkak’s Bait Maryam: The love. The food is fantastic, of course, make no mistake. Fresh, fragrant, aromatic, flavorful. Highly praised by all major nationalities in the region for its authentic flavors and home-cooking feel. But Bait Maryam is more than food. It is a vibe. A feeling. A unique sensation. And that sensation is love. A love for food, a love for cooking and a love for hospitality and caring for guests.

It seems nearly cliché to say. In fact, it is something that has been so often said before. But at Bait Maryam, it is genuinely said from the heart. The heart of the world’s perhaps most humble power woman and female entrepreneur. A woman who in her own words thank God for her success and the many restaurant rewards she has earned since opening her doors in 2017, but is still perplexed by the response. “Whenever I am picked for one of these awards,” she says, “I am always full of surprise. Because, really, this is not a restaurant. it is a home.”

“And that is exactly the thing. People buy into that. There are a thousand good restaurants in Dubai,” her daughter offers, gazing in awe at the impressive array of awards achieved over the years. – “All of them are good. It is just that we have a different story to tell. It is an experience for people to come here. You can find similar concepts. But nothing quite like this.”

If ever there were more perfect words to end an interview. They are hard to come by. There really is no place in the world quite like Bait Maryam. Whether you chose to believe the yeswefood.com review, the words of famous local instagrammer Bedouin Foodie or even the hundreds of guests who call the place home, Bait Maryam is a unique pearl in the sea of Dubai restaurants. Insofar as it can even be considered a restaurant. 

To all who come here, it is simply... Home.