Hudson & Rye Brings the New York Deli to DIFC

DIFC houses a civic institution of restaurants where the wagyu arrives with lore. On June 30th, into this temple of the expense-account dinner, comes a New York deli, all towering sandwiches and paper napkins, called Hudson & Rye.

The deli is the work of a team of New Yorkers, led by founders Emma Zabinsky Csillag and Daniel Ross-Leutwyler, who have set out to recreate the Manhattan original in full with the food, the clatter, and the neighbourhood institutional feeling where everyone turns up. The name is both anods to the Hudson River and to rye bread, the foundation of any deli sandwich worth the name. It will trade seven days a week inside DIFC Square, the district's newest development, dealing in the canon you would hope for, from a properly stacked Reuben to a slab of New York cheesecake.

For anyone who has never queued in one, the New York deli is a specific and beloved institution with fixed non-negotiables including cured beef piled to improbable heights, rye bread with heft, mustard, pickles on the side, and dense cheesecakes. Half the appeal is the food and half is the atmosphere, the bustle and the banter and the feeling that the counter has seen everything and is unbothered by any of it.

The ambition does not stop at a single room because the founders have talked about as many as ten branches across the UAE within five years, a very Dubai response to a very un-Dubai idea.