Dubai-it: ‘Dubai is a city. If you love it, it will love you way more,’ Chef Wadad Zarzour on her journey from Lebanon's war to finding her calling in the kitchen

Dubai: She came to Dubai as a mother wanting to protect her young sons from the trauma of Lebanon’s wars, a single mother seeking safety. Today, she’s a successful chef and restaurant owner, who found hope, a dream and love in the city she calls “home”. Almost every morning, Chef Wadad Zarzour makes labneh. It is a routine she learnt from her mother, Salwa, in their family home in Zahlé, Lebanon. At her Doughbai Bistro in Dubai's Al Wasl neighbourhood, the quantities she makes are larger - 15 kilograms of yoghurt yield approximately seven kilograms of labneh each day. “She used to do the labneh every day, like all mums. But she had her special way. Her labneh was really a good one.” It has become one of the dishes for which Zarzour's restaurant is known. So are the kibbeh, awarma and orange cake, all drawn from Salwa's recipes. “My mum was not only about the love of food, it's also for the love of people around her. Food alone is nothing. It's the memories. It's the culture. It's the gathering. It's the people on the table. So she was all of those.” Chef Wadad Zarzour. Salwa passed away last year. Zarzour has also recreated something of the household she grew up in, thousands of kilometres away. She lives in the community where she opened Doughbai. Neighbours drop in for coffee, share a meal or stop to tell her what has been happening in their lives. The restaurant has 26 seats. Zarzour likes it that way. “I want the cosiness. I want the feeling of like you are in your own dining room. You are at home. You are in your mum's garden outside.” It is her own little Zahlé in Dubai. The city she carried with her Zahlé, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, is recognised by UNESCO as a Creative City of Gastronomy. She grew up in a family where visitors were expected, whether or not they had announced their arrival. “My mum used to bake cakes in the morning, like three or four. I would tell her, why all of those? She would say, ‘Who knows who will pass by?’” There was always coffee. Someone would come for breakfast, stay for lunch or leave carrying something to eat. “Nobody would visit my mum without leaving with some food, some kaak, a cake.” Her family were farmers. They grew potatoes and wheat, and Zarzour remembers the smell of tomatoes, the red earth and the scent of soil after rain. “I know how it smells. You know, the smell of the soil when it rains. All of this influenced my sensory levels, my taste buds, the smell, the feel.” Zahlé was also a place where eating was a reason to interrupt a journey. “If you go to Zahlé, the first thing you would do would be having lunch. Even if you're passing by, you have to stop.” A journey she hadn't planned In 2006, Lebanon was at war. Zarzour had two young sons. One was around four years old, the other seven. “Every time he [four-year-old son] was hearing the airplane, the bomb, the bombing, he was not feeling well.” She needed to get away. “Why Dubai? Because when I visited Dubai, I loved it.” Her parents thought she was taking a holiday to Dubai. “They thought I would go for a vacation, so they said let her go. At the end of the war, like 30 days of war, they felt like we were stressed. So they thought, okay, let her go for a vacation, and she will come back.” She found work and stayed. Twenty years later, she still remembers the feeling of being welcomed. “Where in the world would they welcome you the same way they tell you, ‘Most welcome’? They don't care about your colour, about your nationality, about your religion. As long as you are a peaceful human being, you are most welcome.” Dubai became home to her children, too. Her daughter Haya, now 14, was born into the life Zarzour built here. “She is a child of Dubai. So when you ask her where are you from, she would say, ‘I'm from Dubai.’” Zarzour also met her husband in Dubai, during her work in the telecommunications industry. For the love of dough… Zarzour studied business and spent three decades working in telecommunications and information technology, including 15 years in Dubai. “Cooking is my passion. Like cooking and anything around food, going to the supermarket, looking at the shelves, and trying to choose one kind of apples versus the others - this is for me joy.” Given a choice between the beach and a food market, she says she would choose the market. In 2014, she enrolled at SCAFA — School of Culinary and Finishing Arts, in Dubai. She studied culinary arts and restaurant management while continuing her full-time job. “I was going to the office, eight to five. Then I would go to the cooking school in Dubai for three, four hours, every day, on Saturday as well.” She continued taking courses, attending workshops and reading about food. “I was preparing myself for 10 years.” Then came the pandemic. Her son Ghadi had chosen to study culinary arts abroad. After he came to Dubai, during the lockdown period, mother and son began experimenting with sourdough at home. Chef Wadad Zarzour “Everyone was doing sourdough at th