Satwa

Satwa is the dense, low-rise district wedged between Jumeirah and Sheikh Zayed Road, and it is where a large part of Dubai actually eats. Ravi is the name outsiders know — a Pakistani kitchen that has been open since the seventies and still fills its plastic chairs after midnight — but the whole of 2nd December Street and Al Satwa Road runs on the same economics: shawarma counters, Lebanese juice shops, Filipino canteens and Keralan tea rooms, almost all of them cash-friendly and none of them expensive. Al Diyafah’s tailors and the fabric shops behind them are the other reason people come, usually to have something copied. There is no Metro station in Satwa itself; World Trade Centre and Emirates Towers are the nearest, both about fifteen minutes’ walk away.