Meet Iris Yas Island's Chef, Mustafa Chhoury

My remit has been to create a new, exciting menu, experiment with new concepts and flavours and dream up delicious cocktails too. All of this of course with a brilliant team in the kitchen.

While studying in Lebanon, I took a part-time job in a restaurant. There, I found that I loved to create new dishes and realized that culinary art meant more to me than anything else.

I began my career as a chef in the popular, surging Downtown area in Beirut.

When I was a child I used to like watching my mom cook at home and when I made something myself it was just brilliant when all the family liked it! Their enthusiasm certainly encouraged me.

The best thing about being a chef has to be the opportunity to experiment with different cuisines, create new dishes and work with a great team.

On the other hand, the worst thing is sometimes having to keep trying to perfect a new dish, not giving up and becoming frustrated but doing it over and over again until it is spot on.

There is a rich mix of various cuisines in UAE and something to suit all tastes, which of course means that there is a high level of competition among the top chefs to be consistently among the very best.

The best thing is perhaps the opportunity to create so many new dishes because here in Abu Dhabi you have such a cosmopolitan clientele. We have diners from all over the world and aim to give them a sprinkling of what they might expect at home with a good pinch of something new to excite their taste buds.

Oh, perhaps the international tapas because it allows such great scope for creativity. You can produce so many dishes with a plethora of flavourings, spices and herbs; each little dish with its own personality and qualities.

My guilty pleasure? I find it hard to resist chicken waffles; inexpensive and so tasty. Quite addictive!

Certainly a person who appreciates good food, its taste, preparation and presentation. Typically, a foodie will always be on the lookout for new culinary experiences and doesn’t necessarily eat because he’s hungry but because of his constant search for something new and delicious. This doesn’t mean he overeats, no, but he is very discriminating.

The challenges are the long, long hours you have to put in, sometimes unpredictably. You never completely overcome them but as you rise in your profession you learn to budget your time, delegate and organise. You also realise that you never stop learning, that there is always some exciting new concept and that you can never ‘know it all’.

Iris Yas Island stands out in Abu Dhabi for many reasons – the entertainment, the music, the stunning location but I will only speak about the food. We aim to create an all-round eating experience for our guests.

Good food is the reason your guests are sitting at your tables and you must provide them with the best, creative and authentic dishes possible. You must serve them something they will come back for, something they will tell their friends about. This is what we do at Iris Yas Island and we do it better than anyone else.

We like to create dishes that will tempt the most jaded palates. Food has to be packed with flavour and beautifully presented. The range of cuisines we offer is pretty wide; everything from tapas to tamales, burgers to burrata and Mediterranean.

Whatever we serve, it has to be of the highest quality and authentic.

The top dishes at Iris? Hard to define because it depends on individual taste but the grilled Scottish salmon is very popular as is just about anything with creamy burrata cheese.

Small dishes that allow guests to ‘graze’ are trendy right now as well and there’s a great variety featuring meat, seafood or vegetables.

My personal favourite? That’s a difficult one to answer because everything that leaves our kitchen is the best it can be. Fresh, creamy burrata with heirloom tomatoes, pesto and Poilane bread would be hard to resist though!

Discover your own style and put your personality into your food. Take note of what’s going on in the food world but be true to yourself and don’t try to follow every new trend. Stamp your personality on what you create.