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LILA Wood-fired Taqueria, Dubai: A Slow Revolution in Dubai’s Mexican Dining
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LILA Wood-fired Taqueria, Dubai: A Slow Revolution in Dubai’s Mexican Dining
LILA Wood-fired Taqueria’s thoughtful, casual Mexican dining glints with the promise of great things to come.
LILA Wood-fired Taqueria, 786 Jumeirah Street, Umm Suqeim, Jumeirah 3, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. All information is true as of publication. You can find the latest information on LILA Wood-fired Taqueria’s Website or call them on +9714 282 0005.
LILA Wood-fired Taqueria’s Menu: snacks and light dishes: AED 35 - 60, tacos: AED 55 - 75; mains: AED 190 - 325; salads and bowls: AED 55 - 60; desserts: AED 40. LILA Wood-fired Taqueria is unlicensed.
Written by Liam Collens // Find other reviews here
The Highs
The Lows
The Highs
The Lows
LILA Wood-fired Taqueria steps towards resetting Dubai’s relationship with ‘Mexican food’
Mexican food – often maligned or misrepresented as Tex-Mex – is known, by many, from take-home kits dispensing sachets of red mush and grit. Then there’s your restaurant chains offering red or green rice and talking a big game about their barbacoa. You know the ones. A cashier will enthusiastically upsell an ice cream scoop of guacamole, like they have shares in the stuff.
If this is your entire experience of Mexican food, then prepare to have your horizons broadened. There’s a lot of exuberant chatter about LILA Taqueria these days. More nimble food cognoscenti waxed lyrical about it. Both Shaw and I even chatted with Helen Farmer on DubaiEye back in February (but we did not actually meet). Now having grazed here, it’s clear why. But, as usual, all the vivacious noise needs both context and control.
As I told a friend, LILA Taqueria is good. It’s the kind of thoughtful, casual dining that glints with the promise of even greater things to come. How exciting. It’s well-priced (especially in Jumeirah) and there’s an attention to both detail and flavour that immediately sets it apart from inferior imitators that serve saccharin salsas with as much in common with a fresh tomato as I do with Scarlett Johansson.
Yet LILA Taqueria’s tomatillo salsa sings with freshness. Their steadfast determination to import blue and yellow Mexican corn and then grind LILA’s own masa used to handmake fresh tortillas – later served under blankets of judiciously layered tacos – is the kind of culinary sincerity that finer establishments – with longer menus, fancier spaces and fat marketing departments – do not achieve.

Lila Wood-fired Taqueria is based on Jumeirah Street in Jumeirah 2 near the Burj Al Arab.
LILA Taqueria is a casual restaurant. Make no mistake about it. Yet, Dubai’s frothing food scene does overstate creating unfair expectations. Such chronic hyperbole is irresponsible. (I’m not talking about Foodiva, her review is balanced as usual). I’m talking about social media. Remember Kinoya’s opening ? Arguably, Fusion Ceviche too. So no matter what else you read: LILA Taqueria is not fancy. Its menu admirably hovers around 20 dishes. From what we ate, it does those things well. Better than most. Some are even best in class. It’s not the best meal of your life, but it’s not trying to be – and that suits me fine. Lila Taqueria is your classic, exciting neighbourhood restaurant. And, we need more of this in Dubai, so bring it on.
LILA Taqueria, at its best, deftly wields bright acid, spice and herbaceous eating between its fingers without pomposity. The street-style quesadilla with crispy duck carnitas flirts audaciously with what you sense is the restaurant’s true calling. A duo of blue corn masa, taco-like handhelds folding together confit duck carnitas and just enough herby salad prissiness (AED 70). It’s only a seasonal menu special – such structures I admire – but if Chef Shaw does not keep these quesadilla on her menu, our friendship will end as quickly as it began! The Baja-style crunchy fish tacos made with wild-caught hammour are daintily battered and fried (AED 68). This taco trio comes together with the crunch of shaved cabbage and a lime mayo’s soothing respite from the arbol hot sauce. Such spirit-level balancing make for Dubai’s best fish tacos. I said what I said.


Lila Wood-fired Taqueria’s street-style quesadilla with crispy duck carnitas and their Baja-style crunchy fish tacos.
If this is your entire experience of Mexican food, then prepare to have your horizons broadened. There’s a lot of exuberant chatter about LILA Taqueria these days. More nimble food cognoscenti waxed lyrical about it. Both Shaw and I even chatted with Helen Farmer on DubaiEye back in February (but we did not actually meet). Now having grazed here, it’s clear why. But, as usual, all the vivacious noise needs both context and control.
As I told a friend, LILA Taqueria is good. It’s the kind of thoughtful, casual dining that glints with the promise of even greater things to come. How exciting. It’s well-priced (especially in Jumeirah) and there’s an attention to both detail and flavour that immediately sets it apart from inferior imitators that serve saccharin salsas with as much in common with a fresh tomato as I do with Scarlett Johansson.
Yet LILA Taqueria’s tomatillo salsa sings with freshness. Their steadfast determination to import blue and yellow Mexican corn and then grind LILA’s own masa used to handmake fresh tortillas – later served under blankets of judiciously layered tacos – is the kind of culinary sincerity that finer establishments – with longer menus, fancier spaces and fat marketing departments – do not achieve.
Lila Wood-fired Taqueria is based on Jumeirah Street in Jumeirah 2 near the Burj Al Arab.
LILA Taqueria is a casual restaurant. Make no mistake about it. Yet, Dubai’s frothing food scene does overstate creating unfair expectations. Such chronic hyperbole is irresponsible. (I’m not talking about Foodiva, her review is balanced as usual). I’m talking about social media. Remember Kinoya’s opening ? Arguably, Fusion Ceviche too. So no matter what else you read: LILA Taqueria is not fancy. Its menu admirably hovers around 20 dishes. From what we ate, it does those things well. Better than most. Some are even best in class. It’s not the best meal of your life, but it’s not trying to be – and that suits me fine. Lila Taqueria is your classic, exciting neighbourhood restaurant. And, we need more of this in Dubai, so bring it on.
LILA Taqueria, at its best, deftly wields bright acid, spice and herbaceous eating between its fingers without pomposity. The street-style quesadilla with crispy duck carnitas flirts audaciously with what you sense is the restaurant’s true calling. A duo of blue corn masa, taco-like handhelds folding together confit duck carnitas and just enough herby salad prissiness (AED 70). It’s only a seasonal menu special – such structures I admire – but if Chef Shaw does not keep these quesadilla on her menu, our friendship will end as quickly as it began! The Baja-style crunchy fish tacos made with wild-caught hammour are daintily battered and fried (AED 68). This taco trio comes together with the crunch of shaved cabbage and a lime mayo’s soothing respite from the arbol hot sauce. Such spirit-level balancing make for Dubai’s best fish tacos. I said what I said.
Lila Wood-fired Taqueria’s street-style quesadilla with crispy duck carnitas and their Baja-style crunchy fish tacos.
LILA Wood-fired Taqueria’s restaurant space is small, come early.
We arrive moments before 1 pm to a quiet restaurant but, within moments, we are surrounded. First timers, repeat customers, friends, families and acquaintances in a sliver of a restaurant space upstairs. Shaw knows most by name; some don’t need a menu – it’s so etched into their core memory.
Chef Shaw Lash floats and mingles between the kitchen and the restaurant floor. She is the essential ingredient to LILA Taqueria’s success; the eponymously-named restaurant bears the nickname she adopted during her stint in Mexico. Shaw hails from Austin, Texas, but her craft was honed during her time in Mexico. That, and working under lauded chef Rick Bayless in Chicago and together with the late Diana Kennedy MBE. Both Shaw and her husband, Tarek, later opened LILA Taqueria. Shaw credits Tarek with the al pastor spit in LILA Taqueria’s entrance that churns out rounds of LILA’s lamb tacos al pastor with grilled pineapple and sliced radish after 3 pm ‘until sold out’ (AED 68). Tarek’s Syrian origins associate the spit with shawarma and the rest is history. The lamb tacos are LILA’s most popular dish. Form an orderly queue.


Some of Lila Taqueria’s seating faces an open-plan kitchen. There is more seating along a bench-like sofa with a bright window at the end.
Chef Shaw Lash floats and mingles between the kitchen and the restaurant floor. She is the essential ingredient to LILA Taqueria’s success; the eponymously-named restaurant bears the nickname she adopted during her stint in Mexico. Shaw hails from Austin, Texas, but her craft was honed during her time in Mexico. That, and working under lauded chef Rick Bayless in Chicago and together with the late Diana Kennedy MBE. Both Shaw and her husband, Tarek, later opened LILA Taqueria. Shaw credits Tarek with the al pastor spit in LILA Taqueria’s entrance that churns out rounds of LILA’s lamb tacos al pastor with grilled pineapple and sliced radish after 3 pm ‘until sold out’ (AED 68). Tarek’s Syrian origins associate the spit with shawarma and the rest is history. The lamb tacos are LILA’s most popular dish. Form an orderly queue.
Some of Lila Taqueria’s seating faces an open-plan kitchen. There is more seating along a bench-like sofa with a bright window at the end.
...that, and a 650g carne asada that my cardiologist shall never know about, especially when I deny all knowledge after my next cholesterol test.
LILA Wood-fired Taqueria’s food
We order. Temptation lies everywhere. Perhaps tuna tostadas with locally-sourced yellowfin tuna crudo and avocado (AED 58)? Mrs EatGoSee’s aversion to red meat means the carne asada Oaxacan-style remains on the menu – a dish of Australian grass-fed ribeye with fried plantain, black beans and more. (Another reason to come back – and come back I will).
Rounds of food arrive following our baja tacos and quesadilla duck carnitas. Mrs EatGoSee orders the queso fundido because anything melted cheese and smoky mushrooms are not safe around her (AED 58). Shaw offers the extra of housemade lamb chorizo on the side, because such things are not safe around me (AED15 extra).
The pescado ‘a la talla’ offers whole red snapper – caught daily off Fujairah – stained rosy red with guajillo marinade and pale green from the herb-rich green chilli marinade. The entire butterflied fish is grilled over oak then served with spring onions, also grilled to release their supple sweetness, plus a bowl of luxuriantly-smooth black beans and a springy avocado-tomatillo salsa (AED 195). Good luck finding a grilled fish served whole in any of the big-name hotels within inches of LILA Taqueria at this price. The firm, mild snapper whispers with smoky oak. Personally, I would like another liberal ladling of marinade for extra punchiness, but reasonable people will disagree and one could argue it would over power the fish; but I’d love to find out myself.
Three lengthy crispy churros rolled in cinnamon sugar arrive with their sea salt caramel dipping sauce are the only dessert on LILA Taqueria’s menu (AED 40). You need not worry. You would have ordered these anyway. Again, I would like more cinnamon but this speaks to my inclinations.



Lila Wood-fired Taqueria’s pescado a la talla with black beans; the queso fundido with the lamb chorizo on the side; churros with sugar, cinnamon and sea salted caramel; the receipt from our lunch.
This part of town is hardly close to me but, as I told Shaw, those duck carnita quesadillas are ‘holy shit’ good and would lure me back alone. That, and a 650g carne asada that my cardiologist and I shall never speak of. See, even I remember the menu now. I will come back to Lila Taqueria and, hopefully, there will be seats available.
Anyone nearby including hotel guests within easy distance. Casual dining lovers. Mexican food fans looking for a taste of the real things.





Lila Wood-fired Taqueria’s concise menu; decor elements and more photos of their tortillas, baja fish tacos and the pescado a la talla.
Rounds of food arrive following our baja tacos and quesadilla duck carnitas. Mrs EatGoSee orders the queso fundido because anything melted cheese and smoky mushrooms are not safe around her (AED 58). Shaw offers the extra of housemade lamb chorizo on the side, because such things are not safe around me (AED15 extra).
The pescado ‘a la talla’ offers whole red snapper – caught daily off Fujairah – stained rosy red with guajillo marinade and pale green from the herb-rich green chilli marinade. The entire butterflied fish is grilled over oak then served with spring onions, also grilled to release their supple sweetness, plus a bowl of luxuriantly-smooth black beans and a springy avocado-tomatillo salsa (AED 195). Good luck finding a grilled fish served whole in any of the big-name hotels within inches of LILA Taqueria at this price. The firm, mild snapper whispers with smoky oak. Personally, I would like another liberal ladling of marinade for extra punchiness, but reasonable people will disagree and one could argue it would over power the fish; but I’d love to find out myself.
Three lengthy crispy churros rolled in cinnamon sugar arrive with their sea salt caramel dipping sauce are the only dessert on LILA Taqueria’s menu (AED 40). You need not worry. You would have ordered these anyway. Again, I would like more cinnamon but this speaks to my inclinations.
Lila Wood-fired Taqueria’s pescado a la talla with black beans; the queso fundido with the lamb chorizo on the side; churros with sugar, cinnamon and sea salted caramel; the receipt from our lunch.
LILA Wood-fired Taqueria, Would I Come Back?
This part of town is hardly close to me but, as I told Shaw, those duck carnita quesadillas are ‘holy shit’ good and would lure me back alone. That, and a 650g carne asada that my cardiologist and I shall never speak of. See, even I remember the menu now. I will come back to Lila Taqueria and, hopefully, there will be seats available.
LILA Wood-fired Taqueria, Who Should Come Here?
Anyone nearby including hotel guests within easy distance. Casual dining lovers. Mexican food fans looking for a taste of the real things.
Lila Wood-fired Taqueria’s concise menu; decor elements and more photos of their tortillas, baja fish tacos and the pescado a la talla.
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