Eat & Drink Restaurant: An Abu Dhabi & Dubai Institution

Unassumingly tucked away on bustling streets and quiet corners of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Eat and Drink’s restaurant empire has come a long way from their humble beginnings in 1982. Starting out as a cafeteria, serving up fresh fruit juices and sandwiches to hungry workers on the go, the Eat and Drink branding followed after establishing restaurants in Jumeirah and Al Quoz.

So what sort of food are you in for? If Eat & Drink Restaurant is pretty broad in its branding - unsurprisingly, so is the menu! From Arabic and Lebanese classics to Chinese and Indian dishes, a big breakfast selection, an even bigger offering of sandwiches and a bunch of juices, milkshakes and drinks to round it out, Eat & Drink Restaurant brings new meaning to the phrase ‘something for everyone’. 

Breakfast brings a morning rush: in between orders flying out the door for delivery, tables are snapped up for an eat-and-go style breakfast. Indian breakfast staples start from AED5 - you can nab a kadala puttu, an idly set or vada set for a fiver, or spring for poratta with chicken or beef curry for a pocket friendly 8 dirhams. If you’re leaning towards a more Lebanese breakfast, a falafel plate with hammous (AED13) might be more your thing, or an omelette is only AED5 as well.

A menu with over 500 items is pretty overwhelming. Popping in to Eat & Drink Restaurant for a late lunch, we ended up panic-ordering and went for a little bit of everything: Chinese cashew nut chicken, bindi fry from the Indian selection and a shawarma wrap for some Arabic flavour. A karak tea rounded out the order - and an eight dirham bowl of rice big enough to feed us and everyone we know!

What did we love? The bindi fry was our favourite - fresh and full of flavour with a decent hit of heat. Pleasingly, the karak was tasty and probably the cheapest one you'll find on Reem Island (we're looking at you, fancy cafes charging upwards of AED20 for something that won't set you back more than a couple of dirhams downtown).

Heads up - the Chinese dishes are more of the Indian Chinese style, not unexpected as Eat and Drink Restaurant has Indian roots, but good to be aware if you're expecting more traditional Chinese flavours. The chicken was juicy though, not at all dry, and despite finishing it all we barely put a dent in the accompanying rice.

It won't come as a surprise that this isn't the best - or most authentic - shawarma we've had in the Abu Dhabi. With some Indian flavour by way of a curry-gravy type sauce in the wrap, it was a bit unexpected - but it wasn't bad by any stretch, and for AED15, it's fine for a lunch on the go.