مطعم قصر مسافي

Qasar Masafi Restaurant

Useful Information

Location:	Masafi, Ras Al Khaimah. On Hwy E89 Dibba-Hasafi Road north of Masafi. (25.326937, 56.167702)
Open:	All year daily 8-23. [2024]
Fee:	free. [2024]
Classification:	Cave House
Light:	Incandescent
Dimension:
Guided tours:	self guided
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:
Address:	Qasar Masafi Restaurant, Masafi, Ras Al Khaimah, Tel: +971-50-510-7646.
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

Description

مطعم قصر مسافي (Qasar Masafi Restaurant) is a popular Arabic Pakistani restaurant with good quality and moderate prices. There is a sort of barbecue station in the restaurant, and there is a backyard with tables. The green grass of this "beergarden" is plastic, a result of the climate. They offer tandoori, biriyani, kahari, dumplings, and harees. This seems to be a typical local restaurant somewhere between fast food and barbecue. The furniture is plastic garden tables and chairs. For Europeans, it definitely takes some getting used to.

But the reason why we listed this site is called 1000 year old cave. It is located in the backyard, on the right side behind a sort of wooden wall. The restaurant was built between the road and a limestone hill. The slope is very steep, even vertical at some points. Its unclear how the cave was formed, but natural caves are much older than 1,000 years. We guess there was a small cave which was extended many years ago. It is now a single, rather spacious room which is sufficient as a cave house. The floor is flat with some sort of pavement, a rather recent addition. There are several items in the cave which seem to form a sort of small museum.

Unfortunately, we were not able to find any detailed description of the cave. In the era of smartphone pictures and small movies, we found a lot of such material, but it seems the owners do not really explain the whereabouts of the cave. The name "1000 year old" is not explained and most likely nonsense.

In the entrance section of the cave is a rack where unglazed clay tea mugs are stored. We could not find out how this actually works, but customers write their names on their mug and then leave it on the rack. The mugs have an extraordinary shape, which is almost like a cone with the opening facing upwards. As they are unglazed, you can write your name on them with a felt-tip pen.