Caviar, Comté & A Very Serious Cheeseburger Land On the North Coast 

Mohamad Orfali has spent a good portion of his career interrogating the rules of serious food, so perhaps it follows that, somewhere between the caviar and the 24-month Comté, he would hand us a cheeseburger.

Three Bros has taken up residence from August 20th to 25th at Moga, the beachfront restaurant at Ramla by MARAKEZ in Ras El Hekma, for the final chapter of WHEN WE EAT at Ramla. The summer residency series began by moving Tulum’s fire-led Arca to the Egyptian Mediterranean, followed with Dubai ramen institution Kinoya and now concludes with the Orfali brothers, whose particular contribution to the proceedings is a menu that treats culinary borders as suggestions rather than law.

Mohamad’s own route here has been similarly circuitous: culinary school in Aleppo after an academically unpromising adolescence; years spent away from Syria; and eventually the uncomfortable discovery that he could speak fluently about other cuisines while struggling to articulate his own. That reckoning helped produce Orfali Bros, the restaurant he opened with brothers Wassim and Omar that spent three consecutive years atop MENA’s 50 Best. Three Bros, their newer proposition, feels like what happens when there is considerably less left to prove.

At Moga, potato disappeared beneath smoked crème fraîche, caviar and chives; celeriac croquettes arrived with 24-month Comté and truffle aioli. Tuna roja found its acidity in pickled sea fennel and lacto-fermented tomato, while lettuce abandoned any pretence of virtue beneath Roquefort, caramelised walnuts and crème fraîche.

Then, gloriously, the OB Cheeseburger: Wagyu, cheddar, onion and OB sauce tucked into a yielding Hokkaido bun. Around it came triple-cooked potatoes and sourdough laden with stracciatella, tomato, Aleppo and Urfa peppers; another with burnt leeks, brown-butter miso and hazelnuts. Syria, Japan, France and Italy ricochet across the table, without much concern for where one ends and another begins.

Hokkaido-style milk ice cream with Madagascar vanilla, macerated strawberries and pink peppercorn closed the meal — and, fittingly, WHEN WE EAT’s summer procession through Ramla.

Three Bros remains at Moga through August 25th, with bookings available directly through Moga.