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Street food from Dh1: Dubai's Ramadan festival in Karama draws crowds all night
Running until March 23, the festival has become a staple during the holy month, offering a vibrant mix of flavours that bring together locals and visitors
- PUBLISHED: Mon 10 Mar 2025, 7:26 PM
As the sun sets, the streets of old Karama come to life, bustling with activity for the third edition of the Ramadan street food festival.
The Sheikh Hamdan Colony is drawing huge crowds eager to taste authentic South Asian cuisine as businesses dish out some of the best street foods one could think of.
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Running until March 23, the festival has become a staple during the holy month, offering a vibrant mix of flavours that bring together locals and visitors alike. With eateries staying open well into the night, the streets are buzzing with energy as business owners see a significant uptick in sales and customers indulge in various traditional dishes.
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From the sizzling aroma of grilled chicken skewers to the refreshing scent of freshly brewed Sulaimani tea, visitors are spoilt for choice. The festival offers a delightful variety of food, including pickled mangoes, ice cream, ice lollies, passionfruit juice, biryani, tapioca and beef, samosas, and more. The menu showcases a mouth-watering mix of North and South Indian dishes catering to diverse tastes.
With prices ranging from as low as Dh1 to Dh15, the festival offers an affordable culinary experience for all. For just Dh12 to Dh15, visitors can enjoy a plate of biryani, while a chat serving costs around Dh10. Without breaking the bank, visitors can have a complete meal for as low as Dh20.
Good business
Homemade is participating for the first time in one of the kiosks set up at the food festival. Ranjeet Saini, who works for Homemade, said, "Here [at the kiosks], the crowd is bigger, which is good for our exposure. In the restaurant, we don't get many customers." He explained that being in the kiosks helps the restaurant gain recognition.
Saini added that they sell around 300-400 cups of kulfi chai, their bestseller, each day during the festival, which Saini said boosted their sales. “This Ramadan food festival is giving us a good elevation, where all customers are coming and taking the chai, and everything is getting tasted over here,” he said.
At the Spicy Café Mandi & Grill, worker Nabeel M noted a 200 per cent increase in customers during the Ramadan food festival. Even during the late hours of the night, business continues to boom. At 11pm, the restaurant is filled to the brim with people, to which Nabeel said, “It’s a food festival going on now, so it’s full of rush until 4 o’clock.”
The restaurant would be lively during regular days, usually only during the weekend. In Ramadan, however, seats are packed almost every day for the entirety of the month. “Because of this food festival, our business is running good,” he added.
Similarly, the ice cream and desserts shop Fruitbae recorded excellent sales during the holy month, with “many people coming from different places, like Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and other emirates to Karama,” staff Ijas Mohammed said. But, business slows down after Ramadan, with only the weekend seeing many customers.
Hind Aldah is a business reporter based in Sharjah. In her spare time, you will find her playing classical guitar, painting amateur oil paintings, or crocheting the same old scarf that leads nowhere.