In Old Dubai, a Michelin-trained Italian chef turns fermented dates and honesty into joyful, healthy food

You know when you see bread and olive oil, you’re in good hands.

 We were a little too early at Loma restaurant in Oud Metha, but that wasn’t a problem for the cheerful, bustling Chef Matteo Casamichela. “Make sure to take care of them,” he called out to his staff, while he walked in and out of doors, laying down bread and olive oil and then settled behind it, to talk to us and share the story of why he started a restaurant in Oud Metha, old Dubai.

 To use the oft-cliched adage, Chef Casamichela doesn’t mince words. He is straight to the point and begins without much ado, just like the food that he cooks for customers. His passion for food and health reverbrates through each word as he begins. “This is our first branch in Dubai, and our aim is to create something tasty and healthy. Our food is based on probiotic fermentation, and we try to avoid any processed ingredients,” he says firmly.

After years in Europe’s Michelin-star kitchens, the Italian-born chef remained fascinated by ingredients in their purest form. An opportunity presented itself, after he met the owner of Loma who was working on the fermentation of dates. “Dates is considered a superfood, but that’s just one aspect of it. It’s full of sugar,” he explains. Through fermentation, they discovered a way to reduce the sugar while preserving the fruit’s beneficial nutrients, including protein and fibre.

And so, the road led him to starting Loma in the oldest part of Dubai, a choice that reflected his own philosophy and the message about food: Go back to the beginning, to where it all started.

 As he emphatically says, he doesn’t do what he does ‘just to be cool’. “We do want to be unique and different, but for something that brings value to the lives of people,” says Chef Casamichela. And that means, being natural and real; something that’s often forgotten in today’s world, where you’re always compelled to be what you’re not.

He clears the common doubt that people have: They aren’t trying to be futuristic at all. They’re just being themselves. It’s all part of his philosophy: “We are what we eat, and we’re the most beautiful when we are being real,” he says.

 Nevertheless, working with food ingredients in their most natural state has been their biggest challenge, but Chef Casamichela doesn’t let the hindrances deter him from his beliefs. As he says, he avoids sugar as much as possible, to the point that he even uses natural honey. And so, working with nutritionists, he works to make his food healthy, light and well. For him, food is about balance — nourishing the body, aiding digestion, and clearing toxins — but it must also bring joy. ‘Healthy food shouldn’t feel like medicine.

 That’s what, it really can be. He takes us through his kitchens, detailing his process, from the bread being fermented in careful cans, to a lamb leg cooking in the oven. He cooks for us a risotto quickly, cutting vegetables swiftly, spritzing oil over them and cooking it over a large fire. Finally, he serves us a fresh salad, the risotto, bread with an unprocessed tomato spread.

As we dig into the risotto — creamy yet light, each bite grounded in simplicity — it’s easy to see what Chef Casamichela means. Bread, olive oil, and honesty — that’s where it all begins.