The Majlis Gallery

The XVA gallery in Dubai is a little gem very different from the rest of Dubai with its tranquility, nice exhibits and great food in its cosy little restaurant.

The XVA Gallery is part of a hotel and cafe in the historic Bastakia area of Bur Dubai. One can pop in for around 10-15 minutes to just see the art forms and paintings (these are quite good and one need not stay here to access these). Ideally, one can combine a quick art tour with a snack or two at the nice cafe they have. In all, one can spend around 30-45 minutes here.

I must be completely honest, Dubai left me a superb and marvellous shock as I was expecting something completely different to our experience. This place was one of those that contributed to this. Walking eastbound from the Al Fahidi Fort (Dubai Museum) and into the old town surrounded by so many things to see, you will find the XVA Art Hotel. We found it by pure luck as it was not referenced on anything that we had bookmarked that day to visit. In fact, we didn't have it at all on the list of things to see. It was those sorts of opportunities where you say 'How about we just walk down this maze to take a couple of pictures... I am bored of all these buildings, this looks a tad different...' and 10 minutes later you find this inviting door, you look in and there are a series of empty tables shaded with lino cloth roofing and a beautiful green tree and dried roses hanging off it. How in the world could you turn and walk away from this? To us, this is what made the middle east so charming and appealing to visit (more than the soulless mega buildings). We stayed, capturing every inch with our camera just to find one of the guys from reception looking at us, saying "inspiring, isn't it? Are you guys hungry? or just want to take pictures?" I had no idea of the menu or the prices, but a look at my wife told me, we are having dinner here. Asked the guy to show us the way, as I could not believe nobody was eating at this place; he greeted and showed us the cafe area and gave us the menu. You know you are in an art gallery when the menu is a piece of painted canvas and the tablecloth is a piece of paper with the signature of previous visitors. Inspecting the menu we found a lot of delicious dishes but a price tag equally delicious (to the owners) but accessible depending on what you consider affordable (for us, around Dubai we considered affordable a meal of 30 to 40 dirhams... or $13 to $15). We ordered a bowl of parsnip chips (fries) and a pomegranate salad. Waited 5 minutes and our food arrived, very carefully arranged. It was beautiful to look at and so tasty. The salad was fresh, the sweet flavours of the mustard were playful with some of the sourness of the salad with a surprise release of a pomegranate grain. It was very well balanced. The parsnip chips were great, good amount of salt and pepper to give you that change of piece between the sweetness of the parsnip crust and the delicate flavour inside. At atmosphere is so relaxing, the buildings so accepting and inviting that you forget you are in Dubai. In my mind, we were transported to one of those fairy tales of the Arabian nights. We even considered changing our accommodation to stay here, just to continue enjoying the amazing environment and the vibe impregnated in this space. I could continue rambling on with every delightful second we spent there here and I would run out of qualificatives to express how good we felt here... But this is one of those things you need to visit it (open-minded) to experience it yourself. We truly loved it and hope more of the soul inhabiting this place goes around Dubai to give it more spirit and uniqueness than the soulless concrete jungle around most of the known expensive hotels.