Where to stay

Marsa Malaz Kempinski Located on a spectacular man-made island, The Pearl, this luxury hotel has been open just over a year. Its European meets Arabic aesthetic, superb choice of restaurants, and Qatari hospitality make it one of the top places to bed down in Doha. Breakfast includes a buffet of local specialities, yoghurts, fresh fruit and very good pastries. Doubles from £220. 00 974 4035 5555, kempinski.com

Souq Waqif Boutique Hotels Nine hotels in the Souq area, each one a different design and hosting a variety of dining experiences, including Argan (see Where to eat) and Al Matbakh Rooftop Grill that serves up steaks against a backdrop of the city skyline. Doubles from £120. Souq Waqif, 00 974 4433 6666, swbh.com

The St Regis Doha A landmark hotel in the West Bay, near the Diplomatic Quarter. Perks of basing yourself here include a private beach and top notch guest services. Butlers, limos and top chefs are all on hand to cater for the well-heeled clientele. Doubles from £227. Al Gassar Resort, West Bay, 00 974 4446 0000, stregisdoha.com

The Torch Doha Architect-designed hotel within a 300m-high tower, and the centrepiece of Doha’s Sports City. The 21st-floor Tea Garden has panoramic views across the city and a nearby stadium being built for the FIFA World Cup 2022. Breakfast dishes include local fresh cheeses, fruit preserves and tiny pies. Doubles from £360. Al Waab Street, Aspire Zone, 00 974 4446 5600, thetorchdoha.com

W Doha Hotel & Residences In the heart of West Bay, and close to shopping malls, the Corniche and Doha’s nightlife. Stylish decor pervades in the 442 guest rooms and suites. Doubles from £420. West Bay, Zone 61, Street 831, Building 262, 00 974 4453 5000, whoteldoha.com

Travel Information

Doha is the capital of Qatar, currency is the Qatari riyal, and time is three hours ahead of the UK. The average high temperature in February is 21C and the average low 15C. Journey time from the UK is 6.5 hours.

GETTING THERE
Qatar Airways operates daily direct flights from London Heathrow to Doha Hamad International Airport. qatarairways.com

RESOURCES
For comprehensive information on Qatar, including cultural and historic sites, places of natural beauty, festivals, travel tips and suggestions for itineraries, visit the official tourist board website, qatartourism.gov.qa

CARBON COUNTING
To offset your emissions, visit climatecare.org where donations go towards supporting environmental projects around the world. Return flights from London produce 1.45 tonnes CO2, meaning a cost to offset of £10.85.

Where to eat

Prices are for two courses, including a non-alcoholic drink or ‘mocktail’. Alcoholic drinks are available only where stated.

Al Mourjan Lebanese restaurant offering good views of the Doha skyline and the Museum of Islamic Art from its waterside setting. Extensive menu of hot and cold meze, with some western dishes such as lasagne or escalope, too. From £32. Al Corniche, 00 974 4483 4423,almourjan.com

Al Sufra The name means ‘The Dining Room’ in Arabic and here you will find classic Levantine meze: hummus, tabouleh, baba ganoush, spinach pies and pan-Arabic dishes – upside-down cauliflower, meat-in-a-pot
– in a restaurant with an attractive terrace. From £82. Wines and drinks available. Marsa Malaz Kempinski, 00 974 4035 5555, kempinski.com

Antica Pesa Named for a centuries-old Vatican customs house, Antica Pesa (‘The Old Scales’) serves seasonal Roman/Italian cuisine based on local ingredients. Sicilian chef Marco’s menu includes Gulf scallops, lamb raised in Qatar, and coconut ice cream. From £46. Wines and drinks available. Marsa Malaz Kempinski, 00 974 4035 5555, kempinski.com

Argan Traditional Morrocan meze and dishes such as bistilla (spiced meat wrapped in pastry) and beetroot with parsley and argan oil. Innovative mocktails include kumquat and mint lemonade. From £27. Al Jasra
Boutique Hotel, Souq Waqif, 00 974 4433 6666, swbh.com

Gordon Ramsay Devised by the British chef, the menu at St Regis hotel combines local ingredients (pan-roasted octopus) with imaginative twists – try delectable ashta with sweet-sour berries. From £73. Wines and drinks available. The St Regis, West Bay, 00 974 4446 0000, stregisdoha.com

Grill Situated in The Village, the extensive menu covers Iranian, Indian and Turkish cuisines. Located above a modern delicatessan, this is an ideal place to visit with friends; try the large mixed meze platter, colourful salads, charcoal-grilled kebabs and tandoori Gulf fish. From £27. Salwa Road, 00 974 4444 4700,thevillageqatar.com

Panorama Situated in the city’s tallest hotel, The Torch, this 50th-floor restaurant includes rotisserie, seafood and modern European dishes such as squid in black ink sauce and homemade pasta. There’s an imaginative selection of mocktails too. From £55. Al Waab Street, Aspire Zone, 00 974 4446 5600, thetorchdoha.com

Pearl of Beirut Near the beach and just opposite the port, this simple restaurant is a good place to try the local fish and seafood, like hammour (grouper) with lemon, crab and prawns with Filipino spicing. A few simple meze, too. From £14. Al Corniche, Al Khor, 00 974 4472 0123

Shay Al Shoumos Well-loved café serving traditional breakfast dishes, a few sweets, and tea made the local way – strong and sweet, with milk. From £11. Al Jasra Street, Souq Waqif, 00 974 5551 5561

Spice Market Dishes inspired by Southeast Asian streetfood on the menu here include crispy grain salad with cumin, chargrilled chicken with kumquat and lemongrass, and warm mushroom dumpling salad. It’s located inside the strikingly designed W Doha hotel. From £46. Tasting menus also an option, with wines and drinks available. W Doha, West Bay, 00 974 4453 5000, whoteldoha.com

Food Glossary

Arabic coffee

Made with lightly roasted beans, sweetened, and flavoured with cardamom and saffron

Baklawa

Tiny, cashew nut-filled pastries soaked in ghee (clarified butter) and syrup

Balalit

Traditional breakfast dish of small noodles aromatised with saffron and sweetened with sugar

Biryani

An Indian rice dish that is very popular with Qataris, too; often made with nuts, saffron and cardamom, it’s served with stews, grills and fish dishes

Chai karak

Traditional strong, black Indian tea, served sweetened and with milk

Hammour

One of the most popular of the hundreds of species of fish caught in Gulf waters; a member of the grouper family, usually served grilled, with lemon wedges

Kabsa

A dish of stewed, heavily spiced chicken or meat, with rice cooked in the rich stock

Konafa

(also known kanafeh or katayef). Popular throughout the Arabic world; ‘shredded’ filo pastry, often filled with ashta (pastry cream) and soaked in rosewater syrup

Machbous

Richly spiced rice with pine nuts and raisins, and topped with lamb, young mutton, chicken or Gulf fish. Served on a large platter.

Madhrooba

Meat and mashed beans simmered to the consistency of a soft polenta. A local delicacy that is often served to break the Ramadan fast; look for madhrooba in Souq Waqif

Rogag

Soft bread, sprinkled with a chilli-hot spice-herb mixture and served alone or with mezes; or served plain with stews of mixed vegetables and meats to mop up their spicy sauces

Salona

Light, mildly spiced curry of lamb, chicken or vegetables, reminiscent of the curries of north India

Food and Travel Review

Sometimes it’s the simple things that help make sense of the world – heady, pungent spice aromas in the market, gloriously coloured fabrics, and the queues outside sweet shops. In a few short hours wandering the narrow alleyways of Doha’s Souq Waqif you begin to find clarity. The sacks stacked in the many herb and spice shops are marked Iran (chamomile), Sudan (dried lemons), Mexico (chickpeas) and Bolivia (fava beans), while fabrics bear the stamp of India. Souq Waqif means ‘standing market’, a description open to several local interpretations. Some say that the old market was prone to flooding so the merchants had to stand; others, that it’s a market that stays in one place.

Qatar lies at the northeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, bordered on three sides by the Arabian Gulf and to the south, by Saudi Arabia. The land is roughly half the size of Wales, with a population of just over 2 million. It was ruled over briefly by the Ottomans and then the British, before independence in 1971.

Islamic civilisations contributed much to astronomy and early forms of navigation. Maritime trade was strong in the Gulf and Qatar attracted ships from across the East. Bengalis are said to have arrived in their dhows in the 16th century. Today, the small town of Al Khor, north of Doha, serves as a port to repair these boats, and as a wholesale fish market. Fishing dhows, piled high with large- framed wire cages for lobster and crab, crowd the harbour.

‘Dhows are hard to control, the rudder is heavy, and one mistake can take me onto a reef or into deep water, which my flat-bottomed dhow can’t handle,’ a lobster fisherman tells me. Other dhows have a bow and curved hold, making them more buoyant, and able to fish in deeper waters. The fishermen, mostly originally from Kerala, sell their catch – tuna, kingfish, grouper, snapper, sardines, mackerel – quickly to the wholesalers each morning, before the fierce sun destroys their night’s efforts.

If perishables are hard for chefs to source, then spices rarely are. ‘I make my batters and spice mixtures before I open in the morning because I love to serve others the foods my grandmother made for me,’ says Shams Al Qassabi, a determined mother of five and owner of Shay Al Shoumos café in Souq Waqif. These include her favourite breakfast dishes: baid o tomate (eggs and tomato) and baid shakshoka (scrambled eggs). Delicious too is margooga (stewed vegetables in spicy sauce) and her freshly-brewed tea. In her busy shop next door, Al Qassabi sells large jars of the herb and spice mixtures she’s prepared earlier, for fish, chicken and soups, and her traditional pickles of carrots and peppers.

Qatari cuisine is, by climatic necessity, founded on opportunity. There’s no shortage of luscious dates, or cheeses made from milk fermented to extend its life. Pulses are a ubiquitous ingredient – favas, lentils – and the diet includes flatbreads, almonds, spices, dried herbs and rice. Fertile Gulf waters provide plenty of fish, while favoured meats are lamb, chicken and goat.

‘My grandfather loved young camel, too,’ a young Qatari woman who had attended a British university tells me, ‘but I won’t eat it, because I think that camels are beautiful. He had a very large clay oven just for cooking camel or a whole lamb, for feasts.’ These festive roasts, reminiscent of a Bedouin past, are served with plenty of rice, often spiced, and with nuts, and smaller vegetable dishes.

In its love of rice dishes rather than bread, Qatar is unusual in the Arab world. ‘We drink tea, too – strong, made with milk and sugar – twice a day,’ my young friend tells me. ‘Once in the morning, then again after lunch. This is the biggest meal of our day, followed by a much smaller one around 8pm, which is often something left over from lunch. We don’t eat pudding, but instead love to eat sweet dishes at any time of day.’

Bashir Aad, a Lebanese pastry chef at the Kempinski hotel, agrees. ‘Sweet pastries and small sweet puddings are an important part of our hospitality here,’ he says, ‘and I love making them.’ Aad shows me how to make ashta cream, the ingredient that makes many Arabic pastries so meltingly delicious. ‘In the old days, it was made by simmering very rich milk, scooping off the creamy solids, and flavouring these with rosewater or orange flower water. Today, we make a simpler version, using cornflour to thicken the cream. I don’t add sugar as most Arabic pastries are soaked in syrup.’

He uses ashta to fill katayef and other pastries, and serves it too with layali lubnan (semolina pudding) and fresh fruit. Or he adds rosewater, and douses the cream with syrup and pistachios (mohalabiah). Aad’s skills are very much on show as he works a ball of dough into 14 large, silky-thin layers of pastry for baklava.

The Kempinski lies at the heart of The Pearl, a man-made island just north of central Doha, and part of a larger plan for the modern city. Doha’s prevailing winds flow north to south and in the old days buildings were designed with this in mind. Alleys twisted and turned, to help alleviate the effects of sandstorms and high winds, but gaps were left, to create channels for any cooling winds to pass through. Today, Doha’s modern wind channels, at ground level amongst the high-rises, create a quite different atmosphere to the streets of similar high-rise cities. Traditional Arabic building design uses light as well as movements of air, and recognises that waterways give life. This architectural heritage, developed over centuries, is once again being utilised: the golden glow of traditional buildings that comes from the mix of mud and water used is now the glow of the thousands of multi-coloured lights that illuminate Doha’s night sky. At the centre of the city’s design is the ‘Al Baraha’ – traditional, open-air communal areas in old Qatari neighbourhoods.

Qatar’s youth, drive and ambition is present in its restaurant kitchens, too. ‘I was 17 years old when I began to see food as something serious,’ explains Krishnalal Beeharee, The Torch hotel’s Mauritius-born, football-loving executive chef.
‘I love the flavours here – the herbs and the spices – and the seafood, although it’s very different to what I’m used to at home.’

W Doha hotel’s chef de cuisine, Liu Xiaomeng, a more recent arrival from northern China via Australia and Macau, started working in a kitchen when he was 12 years old. ‘When I first arrive anywhere, I go to homes and cafés, to discover as much as I can,’ he tells me, ‘and I’m never disappointed.’ Turkish-born Ertan Afacan, executive chef of The Village, Souq Waqif, appreciates the occasions he can meet with his Qatari friends ‘who don’t need to work but just enjoy cooking, because they’ve interpreted the complexity of flavours here.’

Like many of the chefs I’ve spoken to in Doha, Moroccan-born Zahira Bouazi loves, and is inspired by, the foods of her home country. Trained in a top culinary institute in Morocco, she’s practised in French haute cuisine, and this is obvious in the food she prepares at Argan restaurant. ‘If you cook with love you love everything you cook, because you feel yourself inside the dish,’ she says, when I ask her which foods she likes best. ‘For every dish you need to give all your love, because it’s really hard work – if you don’t have the passion, you can’t do the job.’

Outside of Argan, the streets fill with evening shoppers, the Qatari ladies in black cloak-dresses (abayat), the men in white, full-length robes, and the warm air echoes with a call to prayer. Small shops sell perfumes in cut-crystal bottles, trinkets, shisha pipes, both simple and ornate, and prayer beads (misbaha, or subha) costing from a few riyals to thousands when made of amber or coral. Spice shops boast huge sacks of almonds, pistachios and peanuts, smaller sacks of sage, thyme, rosebuds, hisbiscus and barberries for teas, and jars of turmeric, cumin, coriander and chillies. Men push wheelbarrows stacked with goods through the crowds, to shoppers’ cars waiting at the edge of the souk, and the coffee shops fill with people enjoying their coffee prepared the local way – pale, and flavoured with saffron and cardamom.

From here, a short walk takes you to the magnificent Museum of Islamic Art, designed in irregular yet harmonious geometric shapes. Standing alone, and almost completely surrounded by water, it’s a beautiful reminder of the basic tenets of Arabic building – light, air and water. Out on the bay, recreational dhows light up at dusk like Christmas trees, and along the harbour wall three men are sitting, fishing. One uses a rod, another is fishing in the old Qatari way – with a length of thin twine attached to a block of wood indented either side, like the handle that holds a kite’s twine. In the shadows of Doha’s brightly-lit skyscrapers, he waits for the fish to bite.