Matbakhi

Verdict

Matbakhi is worth booking if you want a serious, ingredient-forward take on Palestinian and Levantine cooking in a setting that punches above the typical mall-dining expectation. Open since spring 2024, it has already built a loyal following in Kuwait City; rare for a restaurant in its first year. The format suits everyone from solo explorers lingering over mezze to small groups working through a charcoal grill spread. Booking is easy, which makes it accessible, but that also means it can get busy at peak hours. Go with intent rather than impulse, you will get a meal that holds up against the better Levantine tables in the Gulf.

About Matbakhi

Matbakhi sits inside The Avenues, Kuwait's largest shopping mall on Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Road in Surra. The location sounds like a compromise, but in practice it works in your favour: The Avenues draws a crowd that expects quality, Matbakhi has positioned itself as a destination within that space rather than a fallback option. Since opening in spring 2024, the restaurant has focused on contemporary interpretations of Palestinian and Levantine classics, a cuisine category that lives or dies by the quality of its sourcing.

That sourcing orientation is where Matbakhi earns its credibility. Levantine cooking at its core depends on produce integrity: the brightness of a good tomato in a fattoush, the fat content of lamb going onto a charcoal grill, the freshness of herbs folded into meat-filled pastries. When those inputs are right, the cuisine reads as clean and vivid. When they are not, no technique rescues it. Matbakhi's contemporary approach to this tradition suggests a kitchen that understands this; the menu spans traditional breakfast dishes through to charcoal grills and mezze, a range that requires consistent sourcing across protein, dairy, vegetable categories simultaneously. For a food explorer interested in how regional cuisines translate to a Gulf dining context, that breadth is the thing to pay attention to.

Visually, the room carries the same contemporary framing as the food. The Avenues is a high-design environment, Matbakhi fits that register without tipping into the kind of over-styled interior that distracts from the plate. The setting is polished enough for a business lunch or a dinner with people you want to impress, but not so formal that a solo lunch feels out of place. The charcoal grill component means there is often visual and aromatic activity coming from the kitchen side of the room, which gives the space a sense of purpose that purely comfort-driven Levantine restaurants sometimes lack.

For practical logistics: The Avenues is accessible by car and has substantial parking. The restaurant is easy to book relative to comparable dining options in Kuwait City, so you do not need to plan weeks in advance, but arriving at peak mall hours, particularly on weekends and Thursday evenings, without a reservation is a risk. Since opening in spring 2024, the restaurant has had roughly a year to refine its operation, which is long enough that early teething problems should be behind it but recent enough that the kitchen is likely still cooking with ambition rather than complacency.

If you are visiting Kuwait City and want to understand the contemporary Levantine dining conversation happening in the Gulf right now, Matbakhi is one of the more coherent places to do it. It is not the only answer, see the comparison section below, but it is a considered one, the combination of Palestinian and Levantine focus in a properly resourced setting is not something you find at every price point in this city. Check our full Kuwait City restaurants guide for broader context, or explore Kuwait City hotels, bars, and experiences to build out your trip.

Booking

Booking difficulty is rated Easy. You do not need to plan far ahead for most visits, though weekend evenings and Thursday nights at The Avenues are busier. A reservation is advisable for groups of four or more at those times. For solo or paired visits on weekday lunches, walk-in availability is likely but not guaranteed.

Explore More

For broader reference on what serious ingredient-led restaurants look like at the global level, Pearl profiles include Arpège in Paris, which built its reputation almost entirely on sourcing integrity, Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María, where the kitchen's relationship with its ingredient supply defines the entire menu concept. Closer to a contemporary urban dining format, Atomix in New York City and Atelier Crenn in San Francisco show what it looks like when a regional culinary tradition is reframed with modern precision and sourcing discipline. See also Le Bernardin, Alinea in Chicago, Lazy Bear in San Francisco, Emeril's in New Orleans, Alain Ducasse Louis XV in Monte Carlo, Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen, Aqua in Wolfsburg, and Arzak in San Sebastián for international benchmarks across fine-dining formats. Also see our Kuwait City wineries guide.