Abu Dhabi residents reveal the best food spots for a proper feast under Dh500 – and how to find them

It’s a giant sea-bass on our table and it’s gone in minutes.

My best friend and I harbour this tradition: We scrabble our way every month to indulge ourselves shamelessly in some good fish (we might even eat light during the day in preparation). Sheets are spread over the table; we’re armed with gloves as we begin with corn, salmon, prawn sticks, dynamite shrimp. 45 minutes later, the sea bass arrives.

The bill doesn’t give us jitters; it’s around Dh200 at least. We find this joy in Off The Hook, which led to our insatiable love for fish and so we found our way to Dampa Seafood & Grill too.

And, there's also Thalassery Thattukada, whenever I feel homesick: Parottas, tea, chicken curries to comfort my soul for a week.

Yet, while the fish and meat is all very well, despite my five (almost six) years in Abu Dhabi, I still have sometimes stumbled into eateries where I could actually feel the pinch. And so, I had to shamefacedly ask, for those on a fair budget and really would like to keep their bill under Dh500 and hopefully, even lower. And when I mentioned this to Nikita Saxena, my aforementioned companion in all things fish and food in Abu Dhabi, she answered, “There are so many affordable places here?”

She recited quite a few at a stretch: For instance, Kopitiam by Chandy's is an excellent place. Usually for 2, the bill is under 150 dirhams. It has Malay, Indonesian and Singaporean cuisines.

Another one that she recommends, Myanmar Restaurant, and the dishes are authentic Burmese, with Burmese inhouse staff.

All the dishes are priced at Dh15. “If you want good, value for money sushi, Saisho Sushi and Ramen is also good. But the bill over here will run close to 300 for 2.”

She suggests Bait Al Khetyar for a good Arabic style breakfast, Zam Zam Mandi in Khalifa City, as well.

I pause for breath and well, I’m hungry.

So I asked a few more Abu Dhabi residents where they eat when they want good food without the Dh500 sting.

Here’s what they said.

If you want to stretch Dh500, head for Abu Dhabi's older neighbourhoods. Al Danah, Al Zahiyah (the old Tourist Club Area), Hamdan Street, Electra Street and Madinat Zayed are where your money goes furthest.

Within a few streets of each other you'll find Lebanese, Indian, South Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, Burmese, Chinese and Turkish kitchens, many of them so cheap that a Dh500 dinner for two starts to feel like an extravagance.

For resident Needa Khan, the small cafeterias and restaurants of the city centre are always her first stop. "Abu Dhabi is one of those cities where you have to look beyond the obvious," she says.

She goes to House of Tea for a quick bite and to Seashell for anything from snacks to a proper sit-down meal. For Italian, she picks Il Forno.

For Lebanese and Arabic food she sends people to Karam Al Sham, Mualim Hasan and Layali Al Sham, and for a shawarma that will actually fill you up, Bayt Al Khatiyar. Her "OG spots" for Indian food are Evergreen and Nehal, and when she wants Indo-Chinese, she goes to Oasis.

The lesson: in Abu Dhabi, the best bargains are found by people who know the city.

Naila, who has lived in Abu Dhabi for around eight years, says that some of her favourite meals in the city have happened a long way from its fanciest dining rooms. "Give me an old neighbourhood, a little family-run restaurant, a busy cafeteria with people coming and going, or a place where the menu is proudly uncomplicated and I'm interested," she says.

Al Zahiyah, the neighbourhood long known as the Tourist Club Area, is one of her regular haunts, and its streets have been lined for decades with restaurants serving Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, Middle Eastern and Asian food, much of it designed to be shared.

This matters when Dh500 is your ceiling, because ordering several dishes for the middle of the table goes much further than everyone choosing their own main course, and a spread of hummus, a grilled meat platter, salad, bread and perhaps a dessert can become a proper feast without anyone tallying the bill on their phone.

For Indian street food and chaat, Naila heads to Chaat Junction Restaurant, while Dampa Seafood Grill is her choice when she's craving seafood and Bait Al Khatyar is where she goes for Lebanese food.

If you're after something a little different, she suggests Mongolian Chinese Restaurant, near the Mary, Mother of Jesus Mosque, for Desi Chinese cooking, and for Italian there's Prego's Restaurant.

If the brief is 'I want to eat well and I don't want the bill to hurt', it's hard to look past Hamdan Street, Electra Street and the central streets around them, which is where you'll find the comforting Abu Dhabi classics of biryani, curry, naan, daal, shawarma, manousheh, noodles and karak, and sometimes that is exactly what you're in the mood for.

When she wants something simple and satisfying, Naila heads to Chutney Stories, and for South Indian food she recommends Malgudy's, where a crisp benne masala dosa with a filter coffee hits the spot. Momo lovers should try Vansha Ghar, and she suggests asking for Nisha Didi when you get there.

That's not to say every restaurant in this part of town is automatically cheap, but the sheer number of independent places packed into these streets gives you plenty of choice, and plenty of choice is good news for your wallet.

Keeping the bill under Dh500 doesn't mean eating in a cafeteria every time, because the city has plenty of sit-down restaurants where two people can share several dishes and still come in comfortably under budget.

Lebanese food is especially good for this, since it's built for sharing and can make a table feel generous without anyone ordering a main course of their own.

Naila's advice is to plan for the whole table instead of one plate each: order a few dishes that everyone wants, share them, add bread and a drink, and if there's money left at the end, finish with dessert. It's a different way of thinking from "one person, one main", and it gets you a lot more for your money.

If you're eating your way around Abu Dhabi, don't let the hunt for bargains crowd out Emirati food, a cuisine worth seeking out for dishes such as machboos, harees, chebab and luqaimat.

Naila recommends Al Fanar Restaurant for a more traditional experience, and it shows that you don't need a fine-dining budget to explore food that tells you something about the UAE. One of the real pleasures of eating in Abu Dhabi, after all, is discovering what the people who actually live here eat.

Here's where the Dh500 rule gets fun, because if you want to splurge, the smartest move isn't necessarily to spend the lot at the restaurant with the longest menu and the fanciest view, but to put it towards the dish you actually came for.

For Naila, that could be a really good mixed grill, an Emirati machboos or a Yemeni mandi, but if she had to pick just one it would be madfoon, and her go-to is Najd Palace, where she orders the chicken madfoon with kabsa rice.

There's no secret list, and for Needa a big part of the trick is simply talking to people. "For me, part of being a foodie is trying new places, especially on a budget," she says. When it comes to newer restaurants, she uses Google Maps to pick an area and browse what's there, checking menus, prices and reviews before she goes, and she looks on Zomato and Talabat as well. After that comes the most important step of all, which is trial and error.

That might be the most Abu Dhabi way of finding somewhere to eat: a friend mentions a cafeteria and you give it a try, someone at work recommends a restaurant and you save it for later, or you walk past a place that's packed on a Tuesday night and wonder what everyone else knows that you don't, until one day you realise you've found your new favourite place.

If you're the kind of person who likes to plan your food budget before leaving home, resident food and deals platforms can help.

Best Bites costs Dh119 for 12 months, but its app also functions as a free directory, so you don't need a membership simply to browse what's happening around Abu Dhabi.

It's another way of checking what's available before you commit to a restaurant.

So how far can Dh500 actually take you? Pretty far, as it turns out, since a casual meal for two might cost Dh100–150, a more elaborate dinner around Dh200–300, and even a slightly smarter restaurant can come in under Dh500 if you share several dishes.

The trick isn't necessarily to eat less but to eat differently, which means choosing neighbourhoods over destinations, checking menus before you sit down, sharing dishes, asking residents for tips, remembering that an impressive interior doesn't guarantee better food, and never overlooking the little cafeteria with 30 people eating inside.

After almost six years in Abu Dhabi, I've learnt that the city's food scene is less about finding the best restaurant than about finding the right one for the mood, the company and, occasionally, the state of your bank account. As for the days when Nikita and I are craving that giant sea bass, around Dh200 later we're usually still very happy, with the fish gone, the gloves discarded and, crucially, enough left over for next month's food adventure.