Em Sherif Café Lusail

The Verdict

Em Sherif was opened in Beirut by Mireille Hayek in 2011 and has built a reputation across the Levant for the most considered fine-dining Lebanese cooking outside a private home. The Lusail Boulevard café — the brand's third Qatar address after the original Em Sherif and the Em Sherif Sea — opened in 2024 with 110 covers across a softly-lit dining room, an outdoor terrace, and a small private dining room that seats 14.

The kitchen runs the brand's signature 28-mezze tasting menu (served family-style, USD 95 per person, no choice), which is the cleanest introduction to Lebanese cooking available in Qatar. À la carte focuses on the kibbeh program (raw, fried, and labneh-stuffed), the lamb-shoulder ouzi (slow-cooked with rice, almonds, and pine nuts, served whole for groups of four or more), and the sea-bass kibbeh nayyeh which is the kitchen's most-photographed dish.

The wine list is small but well-edited toward Lebanese (Château Musar, Ixsir, Massaya) with French and Italian backups. Pricing runs USD 80–130 per person without alcohol. The room's signature occasion is a team dinner: the family-style format, the long shared tables in the back, and a kitchen that can scale a 28-mezze service to a party of 18 without losing its rhythm.

Why It Works for Team Dinner

Team dinners work at Em Sherif because the entire menu is structured around shared mezze — there is no individual-plate option for the tasting menu, the kitchen sends 28 small dishes for the whole table at a co-ordinated pace, and the format breaks down any seating-chart awkwardness within the first half hour. The 14-cover private dining room handles board-level dinners; the back banquettes scale to teams of 18.

Signature Dishes

Hummus Beiruti; lamb-shoulder ouzi; sea-bass kibbeh nayyeh; the Em Sherif tasting menu (28 mezze, served family-style); the rose-water knafeh.

Also in Lusail

For the broader Lusail picture, see our full Lusail dining guide. Related rooms at this level: LPM Restaurant & Bar (French Mediterranean (Côte d'Azur)), Bagatelle Lusail (French Bistronomy). For the team dinner cross-city picture, see our Team Dinner directory. Travelling on? Consider Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi for your next leg.