Riyadh's New Culinary Voice

Saudi Arabia opened to tourist visas in 2019. Since then, the food scene in the capital Riyadh has been changing at a startling pace. Chefs trained in France and Japan are reconstructing home-style dishes like kabsa and jareesh using French and modern kaiseki technique.

The chef at the restaurant we visited trained for two years at a Tokyo kappo restaurant. A dish he described as "applying the logic of dashi to camel-milk butter" layered a delicate salinity with the aroma of fermentation. Respect for ingredients, he said, is a philosophy Saudi and Japanese cuisine share.

This country's food culture is still barely known globally. But that very obscurity may be exactly what makes it, right now, the most interesting soil for creation.