In the Hajjar mountains of the UAE, artist and chef Moza Almatrooshi is connecting people, food, and place at her cafeteria, championing a new way of interacting with a meal: an approach she calls ‘landscape to table.’
“Sorrel grows after the rains,” Moza Almatrooshi says, as she reaches down to pick the bright green leaves. We’re in the Hatta mountains of the UAE on a guided foraging hike, and Moza is teaching me how to eat the scenery.
It’s 8 am on a Tuesday morning, and already the temperature is 34°C (93°F). I’ve driven up from Dubai specially for this walk, because Moza, a 35-year-old Emirati artist and chef, is bringing the landscapes of the UAE to a place where they’ve been largely forgotten: the plate.
She calls it ‘Landscape to Table.’
Sorrel (humadh in Arabic) is bright and citrusy. When I first tasted it with Moza, she’d blended it with a granita, creating an icy, tart dessert, perfect for the heat. Now, she hands me a leaf, and it’s warm from the sun, but those citrus notes are still there, punchy and vibrant.
Sorrel, among other native flora, often makes its way into the food she serves at her restaurant, Jebal Albalad Cafeteria, which means the mountains of ballad, or in the mountains of the country. “Cafeterias tend to have these cheesy names,” she says, “and I really leaned in; I love it.”
In Arabic, ballad is pronounced softly, almost more like belled, and it means land or country. Where did the name Jebal Albalad come from, I ask? “I was interested in this idea of land, like the region we share with Oman, the mountain region. Land doesn’t know a border when you think about the environments and the ecologies that exist within it. And in English, obviously, ‘ballad’ is a long poem that is sung; it has the narrative element,” she says. The stories of what she cooks mean everything. “That’s what it’s all about.”
First and foremost, Jebal Albalad is a studio, focusing on artistic and culinary outputs; No set menu. “I had to have this space where I would try different things constantly, even if I’m working with very familiar ingredients. But I had to treat the combinations differently.” While artist and chef might feel like two titles that don’t always have a lot in common, Moza would disagree. “I don’t stick to one medium. And I think it’s because the stories demand that they sit within specific formats based on what the stories are when I’m telling them, and ballad is the same.”
“It [the food] depends on the encounters that I have.”
The cafeteria operates a few weeks each month with a small, innovative menu that bridges local flavors with international dishes: mulberry custard and toast, sourdough ‘meshwara’ & omelette paratha, hibiscus espresso tonic with marshmallow topping. Eventually, Moza hopes to offer chef residencies, closing weekdays to collaborate, then reopening on weekends with a brand new menu.
“The core ethos of ballad is how to create horizontality between us when we work together. So when I’m working with a farmer or an artist or another chef, or even someone who is coming in to create an event together, how are we able to not have this hierarchy and generate the best way of telling a story together?”
I was interested in this idea of land, like the region we share with Oman, the mountain region; that doesn’t know a border when you think about the environments and the ecologies that exist within it.
Moza AlmatrooshiArt is Language, Food is Language
Think of the UAE, and you might imagine sandy red deserts or its famous skyscrapers.
But the Hajjar mountains cut across the peninsula like a dinosaur’s spine, with jagged peaks that extend from the UAE all the way to Oman. These mountains make up only 6% of the landscape, yet hold approximately 60% of the UAE’s terrestrial plant species. For Moza, it was the sight of local mining and quarrying activities in the mountains that inspired much of her artwork. “I became really fascinated with earth matter and how we intervene within the landscape as if we’re not part of nature itself as humans.”
The UAE has undergone an intense period of rapid urbanization, and not just in the largest cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi; Across the country, new development and construction sites signal the expanding role the nation plays on the global stage.
“There was such an ephemeral quality in it,” she says, trying to describe the experience of watching the countryside, both desert and mountain, become increasingly commercial. In response, Moza refused to use earth matter in her artwork in any way that felt extractive. A practice that led her directly to food.
“I went to grad school, and I was thinking of things that had a symbolic weight but are still ephemeral. And food, obviously, is that. Food stands in for language. It can be divisive, weaponized.”
“It can bring people together.”
Learning the Mountains
Moza is from Ajman, a coastal emirate in the North of the UAE, though she spent much of her childhood at her grandparents’ izbah. Across the region, many families have land out in the country. It might be a traditional working farm with crops, known as mizraha, or the more common izbah, which is more like a second home. There, her grandfather would lead her through the sand dunes of Umm Al Quwain, pointing out edible plants.
“My grandfather would just nudge me and say, ‘Yalla, let’s go and pick.’ I’d have this very quiet experience, because he wasn’t a talkative man. And that was very constant, to the point where I thought I had a unique experience with him, that I was the only grandchild he did this with,” she laughs, “I felt so betrayed when I told my siblings, ‘I had this special bond with our grandfather because we foraged together.’ And they said, ‘We all did this with him.’”
This marks the beginning for Moza, the point where she began to realize the complexities of the ecosystems around her, not only when witnessing the trash and litter scattered from humans, but also the larger integration between life and the landscape. “You see how it interacts with the animals that are grazing when you yourself are foraging. It wasn’t just identifying what to eat; it was identifying what not to eat. So he would point things out and say, ‘This is poisonous, but this animal can eat it, so it’s okay if you see them eat it.’”
And what can be foraged from the UAE? Ghaf leaves for one; Moza has a local producer she collaborates with who turns them into a compound butter, though traditionally this mild-flavored leaf would be used as seasoning and mixed with rice. Sadifa is another, a leaf often mixed with a traditional dried fish (brought back from the coastal areas during a time when the journey from the mountains to the sea could take days). The uses for these plants go far beyond flavors, though, and extend into the medical realm, or are even used as aromatics, similar to incense.
Incorporating these local flavors into her dishes obviously tells a story. The UAE and Oman are particularly intertwined, sharing a border of over 600 kilometers (370 miles) and a history that goes back thousands of years. These two countries, which share cultural and landscape similarities, also have a burgeoning dining culture recognized internationally. But increased development always comes at some cost, and the stories of the tribes who occupied the landscape are often lost.
Who’s the farmer that foraged these herbs? What does this locally-grown millet have to tell us about food culture? How can two flavors from different parts of the world narrate the current reality of modern life in the Gulf?
Perhaps big questions to ask of a small cafeteria in the mountains of Sharjah, but Moza is happy to interrogate the status quo.
The Agricultural School
In a country most famous for its deserts, there’s often a question about food sourcing: where is all this fresh produce coming from, and how much water is being used to grow it? We’re always told to eat local, but is that possible in a region where temperatures are rising and rainfall is decreasing?
Prior to the founding of Jelab Alballad Cafeteria, Moza was working on a very specific body of artistic work she called The Agricultural School.
Moza tells me about a school based in Ras Al Khaimah (a northern emirate) during British rule in the 1960s; at the time, non-native crops were introduced to the area to support the school, depleting the natural water resources to this day.
Moza wondered: How does this history of extraction affect the present moment and our food sovereignty?
“I remember talking with a farmer, asking, ‘How much water do you use?’” she says. He clapped back: “‘Did you go and check with the golf courses and the water parks?’”
The interaction left a mark, forcing her to reframe how she was approaching her own community: “I should not go to farmers and people who work with the land and poke at their pragmatism,” she says.
Instead, Moza decided to be a medium. She would connect farmers together, facilitating discussions, “Like putting someone in touch with someone who creates his own soil recipes and how this can be done differently,” she explains.
And so The Agricultural School was born. A table was set up within a shared space, and ‘menus’ were created, inviting people to come together. A muralist created ‘wacky landscape murals,’ setting the scene for their foodie performance art.
“We would talk about different things. Every menu was about something different. And I think this was one of the most powerful catalysts for ballad because I was like, ‘Oh, this could be a thing where menus bring people together.’”
“I am trying to position the people who are in the land as my very primary source of information. So the farmers, the guides, the beekeepers, those are my primary sources of information. I’m just a conduit between us all, you know?” she says, referring to the role she envisions for the cafeterias, an interplay between chefs, food, farmers, heritage, and art.
The Invisible, but Present, Weight of History
The mountain regions are home to tribes whose ancestors have lived there for centuries. Many still care for the land to this day, Moza tells me. “The stories they carry and the timelines that pass through the mountains carry so much information and richness that we ourselves have disconnected from in one way or another,” she opines. “It’s like we run on different timelines.”
“Ballad basically started in 2024 with taking people out into the landscape where we eat our way through historical sites or sites where history is invisible but present.”
Invisible, but present.
The phrase lingers throughout our call, an overarching idea of what history is in this part of the world. Even in areas where the sheen of modernity offers distraction, beneath it rests a landscape and a people connected through a simple, universal action: the shared meal.
