Lunch with Kelvin Kelly: The South African chef growing his own menu in Dubai

By the time our group reached Alserkal Avenue on the last full day of a hosted media trip, we’d already worked through the greatest hits: the view from the Burj Khalifa, a beach villa lunch, more skyline than anyone should reasonably absorb in four days.

So, it says something that the meal I keep coming back to happened in a converted warehouse in Al Quoz, at a restaurant co-founded by a South African.

The Grow House by One Life sits in Alserkal Avenue, the industrial-turned-arts district that’s become shorthand for Dubai‘s creative underbelly. It’s the kind of trendy, urban, gallery-and-coffee-shop precinct that wouldn’t look out of place next to Victoria Yards in Johannesburg or a warehouse strip in Cape Town’s Woodstock.

It’s actually an apt setting for what the restaurant is actually doing, which is growing a fair chunk of its own menu on site.

A farm above the kitchen

A look inside the vertical farm at The Grow House by One Life in Alserkal Avenue. Picture: Kaunda Selisho

Upstairs from the main dining floor, under rows of grow lights, raised wooden beds hold tomato vines, chillies, and trays of microgreens and herbs.

The mini working urban farm that feeds directly into the kitchen below is a marvel to behold. It’s a small operation by farming standards, but the intent is the point; produce that travels a staircase rather than a supply chain.

Lunch arrived accordingly unfussy and fresh, and before long, our table was filled with a selection of plates chosen for us by our host. A salad thick with feta and olives, a kale salad studded with grilled courgette and dried cranberries, a wood-fired pizza with burrata and heirloom tomatoes, warm flatbread and a coconut cracked open at the table.

A fresh coconut at The Grow House by One Life in Alserkal Avenue. Picture: Kaunda Selisho

The chef behind it

That approach traces back to Kelvin Kelly, One Life’s head chef and partner, who hosted our group for lunch and walked us through both the menu and the restaurant’s philosophy. Kelly is a Johannesburg-born chef who moved to Dubai a little more than 13 years ago, working his way up through the city’s kitchens before helping build One Life into what it is today.

Now, it is a well-known group of cafés known for scratch cooking, playful branding, and a menu of dishes with names built for a raised eyebrow: think “Fennelope Cruz” and “Virgil Sollozzo, aka the Turk” sitting next to a Filthy Falafel Wrap and a smoothie called “Don’t Chia Wish Your Girl Was Cold Like Me?”

Asked why Dubai seems to produce restaurant concepts you don’t quite see anywhere else, Kelly told The Citizen: “I think because Dubai is a melting pot of not only cultures, but ethnic groups… you do have a much wider space to play in, in terms of concepts and what you come up with,” he said.

“Everything that is around the world can be brought here and I’ve said this on multiple occasions; you don’t have to get on a plane to go to Bangkok to experience great Thai food. You can experience that in this city, which is fantastic, because not other cities are like that.”

A spread of dishes picked by chef Kelly. Picture: Kaunda Selisho

It’s a fair point and one he’s clearly thought about beyond the marketing copy. Dubai, in his telling, doesn’t just import cuisines; it imports the people who make them, which is a different thing entirely.

“You have not just South Africans opening restaurants, but you have Lebanese, you have Thai people, you have people from every nation across the globe opening things and they’re bringing a little bit of where they’re from.”

Building a life, not just a menu

That last point felt personal. We learned that Kelly and his wife have built their life in Dubai, raising their two children in a city he clearly credits, at least in part, for the range it’s given him as a chef.

It’s easy to read a multicultural city as a business advantage on a spreadsheet; it’s another thing to hear it described by someone who’s actually raising a family inside that mix, in a school system and a social circle that’s likely as layered as his menu.

There’s also a South African thread underneath all of it. Kelly hasn’t hidden his roots – from the produce-first, unpretentious approach to food, to a stated interest (raised separately, outside our formal interview) in eventually bringing a One Life concept home, provided he can find a South African neighbourhood with Alserkal Avenue’s specific mix of grit and creative energy.

Whether that ever becomes more than a passing thought is genuinely unclear, and not something either of us confirmed on record, but it’s a nice thought to sit with over a plate of flatbread 10 000km from Joburg.

Some fresh produce for sale. Picture: Kaunda Selisho

A taste of home, borrowed rather than replicated

The Grow House doesn’t try to be a South African restaurant and it would be a stretch to call it one. There’s no bobotie on the menu, no boerewors roll hiding between the burgers and the Iskender kebab.

What it does have is a very South African instinct: respect for where the ingredients come from, tables built for lingering rather than turning over quickly and a founder who talks about food the way people usually talk about family.

– This trip was hosted by the Dubai Tourism Authority. Meals and activities referenced were provided as part of the hosted itinerary.