Dina Macki – Omani-British chef, food writer, presenter, recipe developer and food consultant specialising in Omani, Zanzibari, Middle Eastern and East African cuisine – is preparing to wear yet another hat with the opening of a ‘Portuguese, Mediterranean meets Oman in the middle of fine dining but still accessible restaurant’ at Muttrah Fort this October

Dina Macki walks the line between Michelin cuisine and street food effortlessly. She was among 20 guests invited to a £3,000 per guest dinner prepared by seven – no less – Michelin chefs at One&Only One Za’abeel in Dubai recently.

A few months earlier in February, she wrote a commissioned piece for Conde Nast Traveller Middle East on the best street-food restaurants in Muscat.

Third on this list featured a no-frills eatery in a busy corner of Ruwi called Bakery & Rosted (sic) that has seven items on its menu, all priced about RO1. It has a loyal Omani and Indian subcontinent clientele who mostly take away. But Dina always eats in.

“I’m just about happy to sit anywhere in any setting to enjoy great food,” she says. While she warned her readers that it’s not for the faint-hearted, she also lured them by writing that this is where they’d “find the best tandoori chicken and fish in the city.”

So, other than the obvious, how do the two experiences – dinner prepared by seven Michelin chefs vs Bakery & Rosted’s seven-item menu – compare?

“I feel like there’s more love going into it,” Dina says in reference to the latter. “You feel the hard work and love; the blood, sweat and tears in it. The food tastes so much better because there’s probably sweat in it. Okay, I don’t like to imagine it, but I’m telling you that’s why it’s good. There’s passion to give people their food. The whole experience is so authentic, so rough and ready.”

Raising awareness on Oman

These are the kind of stories the Omani-British chef likes to narrate and has a book full of these. Released in February, ‘Bahari – Recipes from an Omani Kitchen and Beyond’ is the first Omani cookbook written by an Omani chef featuring close to 90 recipes. Three years in the making, Dina travelled extensively across Oman (except Al Wusta governorate) and Zanzibar for the book, tapping into stories behind the recipes and ingredients.

Bahari won the Jane Grigson Trust Award for New Food and Drink Writers which recognises distinguished scholarship and depth of research in cookbooks. ‘Dina aims to educate the world on the food and culture of Oman, a hidden gem of the Middle East…’ the jury stated of Bahari.

Her ability to engage readers and TV viewers – besides taste buds – has landed her enviable projects and collaborations with renowned brands, including Adobe, Mastercard, Nat Geo and most recently, Amouage.

Dina has developed recipes for British brands Tesco and Waitrose, and made five appearances in Sunday Brunch on Channel 4 and two in Saturday Kitchen Live on BBC. Taking Dina away from food to corporate social responsibility, last year Magnum Ice Cream took her to Ivory Coast – her bucket list destination – to write a feature for Glamour magazine about a programme launched by the company to socially and economically empower the women of their cocoa farming communities.

“I’m not the best cook and I don’t want to be the greatest chef there is. I prefer to tell the stories of culture, of me, and my identity. And I love the element of travelling, writing and filming,” the Omani British chef says of what drives her.

How it all began 

A search for identity is how Dina landed behind the kitchen counter.  Born and raised in an Omani-Zanzibari family in Portsmouth, UK, as a little girl, “I had just assumed I was exactly the same as every child I sat with in class. As I got older, I slowly began noticing the differences in my life: I spoke a second (uncommon) language, I didn’t look the same as them, and, of course, I always had warm and extremely aromatic lunches that would not lose their smell no matter how many bags and jumpers I wrapped them in,” she wrote in the prologue to Bahari.

In university to study fashion and marketing in the summer of 2013, her first Ramadan away from her grandmother, mother, and their food, Dina began to learn their recipes via FaceTime, taking her on a journey to discover “where I was really from and who I actually am. It turns out that every bowl of ingredients I mix together, every meal I plate up and every bite I take leads me on an adventure through family trees and maritime history.” The more she cooked, the more she understood that “the food I grew up eating is not alien, but a mix of me, my family, my heritage and the two countries beyond the UK that I refer to as home – Oman and Zanzibar.”

The heritage and culture she once had to try to fit into, she counts as a blessing now. It has given Dina opportunities. “When they’re looking for someone different – from the UK perspective – to partner with to target a new market, I fit in a very good kind of box.” While there are others, too, from the region talking about Middle Eastern food in the UK, the fact that she comes from Oman gives her an advantage.

“It always sits nicely because Oman is seen as a neutral, happy country. I get picked and chosen to be the representative for the rest of the Middle East. And they know that I can bring the Middle East as well as the Western side. So, I’m that chosen hybrid.”

Many hats and more

Of the many hats – recipe developer, food consultant, food writer, presenter, chef and communications manager (Anglo Omani Society) – she wears or has worn, besides the crown of Pomegranate Queen bestowed on her by her social media followers, the first two are dearest to Dina. She enjoys helping create something new from food or teaching people something new about food.

“I love recipe development because I love to play and experiment with food. And that’s kind of the same with food consultancy – you’re advising and experimenting. I don’t actually love being a chef as much because it’s tiring, very draining.”

Dina is currently preparing to wear yet another hat – that of restaurant managing partner – with the opening of Mesa in Muttrah. An old house at the bottom of Muttrah Fort is being turned into a boutique hotel and restaurant. 

‘Mesa’ she explained, in Portuguese, Spanish and Swahili means ‘table’. “Back in the day when the British, and also before when the Portuguese were there, they had a word called ‘meizaan‘ derived from an Arabic word which basically meant a big spread of food. It was a very known word in the Muttrah area. We wanted something that correlated to the area, but also made sense for the restaurant. It ties in the whole Portuguese fort element as well as Oman.”

Scheduled to open October end in time for National Day, the kitchen will be ready earlier in the month with a few offerings which customers can grab and go. “I want to bring in a softy machine and make really crazy flavours of ice cream before the opening.”

Originally brought in as a consultant, Dina has designed the restaurant interiors and is looking to recruit staff, including a European chef with whom she’ll curate a menu which is ‘part me, part a European chef that comes together’. She’s quite certain Muscat doesn’t need another Middle Eastern restaurant.

With the historic fort sitting next door, the Omani-British chef will add a new spin to its story from Mesa’s kitchen.