High Society Dubai Review: The Lana's 30th-Floor Case for Restraint

By the WhereToEatDubai editorial team · Published 25 May 2026 · Last visited May 2026

On a Wednesday evening in mid-May 2026, thirty floors above Marasi Drive, a table of four next to us sent back a bottle of champagne — not because anything was wrong with it, but because, having seen the list, they'd changed their minds and wanted something better. The sommelier didn't blink. With 118 labels on the champagne list, the deepest in Dubai, High Society Dubai is built for exactly that kind of indecision.

Here's the honest framing for 2026: this city does not need another designer rooftop. Business Bay alone has a dozen high-altitude venues where the view does the cooking and the kitchen coasts. So when The Lana — Dorchester Collection's first hotel in the Middle East — handed its 30th floor to French chef Jean Imbert, our expectation was a beautiful room with a beautiful bill. We were half right. It is beautiful. It also happens to cook far better than it needs to, which is the rarest compliment a rooftop can earn here.

The Room: Why This View Beats Taller Ones

Dubai has higher restaurants, but height isn't the same as composition. From High Society's terrace the Burj Khalifa sits dead ahead across the water of Business Bay, far enough away to fit in a single glance, close enough to fill it. You're not looking down at the city through glass; you're sitting in front of it with the breeze moving. After 6pm the floor goes adults-only and the energy shifts — less pool-day chatter, more low light and the gradual switching-on of the skyline.

The practical advice, learned the slightly painful way: the rail-side tables facing the Burj are the first to go, and the sunset seating is the whole point. Book for around 6:30pm, ask for the terrace rail when you reserve, and arrive fifteen minutes early so the golden hour doesn't happen while you're in the lift. If you're planning a proposal or a milestone dinner, say so — the team quietly choreographs around it, which is very Dorchester.

Jean Imbert's Menu: Short, Confident, Better Than It Needs to Be

Imbert — the Michelin-starred chef whose name carries Plaza Athénée weight in Paris — has written a menu that reads almost suspiciously simple: carpaccios, salads, a handful of pizzas and grills, light Japanese and Mediterranean accents. The point becomes clear a few plates in. Nothing on the menu exists to be photographed; everything exists to be finished.

Budget honestly: this is a Dorchester rooftop, and a proper evening — a couple of plates each, dessert, a bottle from the shallower end of those 118 champagnes — lands in the AED 300–600 per person range depending entirely on how the wine list treats you. There are cheaper skylines in this city; our budget dining guide exists for those nights. This is the other kind of night.

The Champagne List Is the Thesis

One hundred and eighteen labels. We counted twice. It's the largest champagne collection in Dubai, and it functions as the venue's actual mission statement: High Society isn't trying to be a restaurant with a bar attached or a club with food. It's a champagne terrace with a serious kitchen, and once you read it that way the whole operation makes sense — the light plates, the ice creams, the unhurried service rhythm that assumes you're staying for the skyline's full costume change from daylight to glitter.

If champagne isn't your lane, the cocktails are polished and the soft package holds up — this is also, quietly, one of the better rooftop date-night plays in the city for non-drinkers, because the view and the desserts do the heavy lifting.

Day Mode: The AED 750 Pool Pass, Decoded

By day, High Society runs a rooftop pool club from 10am to 6:30pm. The pass is AED 750 per guest — steep until you read the fine print, because the full amount is redeemable against food and drink. Functionally you're pre-paying your lunch and your loungers in one number, beside what might be Business Bay's calmest pool. Thursday to Saturday the rooftop carries a separate AED 150 per person minimum spend; midweek there's none, which makes a Tuesday the connoisseur's pool day. Summer 2026 has made this one of the smarter swim-and-lunch tickets in the area — compare it against the beachfront options in our Palm beach club guide if you're choosing between skyline and sand.

How It Compares: The Business Bay Rooftop Derby

Context is fair here, because Business Bay has quietly become Dubai's rooftop district and High Society didn't invent the format — it just finished it. The canal-side towers between Marasi Drive and the Downtown border hold a half-dozen high-floor venues, and most of them make the same two mistakes: they price the view as if it were a dish, and they program the music as if everyone came to be seen rather than to talk. High Society's advantage is that The Lana's DNA won't allow either. The volume stays conversational until late, the lighting is engineered for faces rather than phone cameras, and the menu is priced like a restaurant rather than a cover charge with food attached.

The honest comparison shopping goes like this. If you want a livelier, clubbier altitude night, the towers closer to Downtown will serve you better and louder. If you want the best cooking at height anywhere in the district, you're already reading about it. And if what you're actually after is the Burj view at a third of the spend, the Souk Al Bahar terraces across the water — covered in our Downtown guide — remain the value play. High Society wins the specific brief of "impressive but civilised": the night where the company matters as much as the backdrop.

The Practical File: Booking, Dress, Getting There

Reservations open well ahead and the pattern is consistent: Thursday and Friday rail-side tables disappear first, Sunday through Tuesday you can often book within 48 hours. Go through the hotel directly rather than third-party apps if you have a request — terrace position, occasion, dietary notes — because The Lana's reservations team actually reads the comments field, a vanishingly rare trait in this city.

Dress code runs elegant-casual and is enforced with Dorchester tact: no one will turn you away loudly, but shorts and sliders will feel like wearing swimwear to a gallery. Valet at The Lana is seamless; if you're coming by taxi, allow ten extra minutes for Marasi Drive's evening crawl, and if you're walking the canal boardwalk, the hotel entrance is better signposted from the water side than the road. One more timing note for summer 2026: the terrace is at its best in the hour either side of sunset — roughly 6:45pm in June — and again after 10pm when the air drops; the 8–9pm slot is the warmest and, not coincidentally, the easiest to book.

Service, Crowd and the Dorchester Effect

The crowd is exactly what you'd guess — a mix of Lana hotel guests, Business Bay's better-dressed after-work set, and couples who clearly booked two weeks out for the rail tables. What elevates it is the service: Dorchester Collection trains for a kind of frictionless attention that most Dubai rooftops imitate with volume instead. Water glasses refill without theatre. The kitchen paces courses to the sunset, not the till. On our visit the only real wait of the night was for the lift down, which felt like the building's way of suggesting one more glass.

It's worth saying plainly: at 4.2 on Google across 333 reviews, public opinion is warm rather than rapturous, and the gap is almost always price-anchored. Judged as a restaurant alone, you can eat more ambitiously for the money in DIFC. Judged as a complete evening — room, view, list, kitchen, service — very little in Business Bay assembles the pieces this well.

Who Should Book It — and Who Shouldn't

Book it for: anniversaries that don't want Downtown's tourist current, client dinners where the view needs to do twenty percent of the talking, the visiting parents you want quietly impressed, and any champagne enthusiast — the list alone justifies the lift. The daytime pass suits couples and small groups who want a full resort-calibre pool day without driving to the Palm; at AED 750 redeemable, it's effectively a prepaid lunch with a lounger attached, which is better maths than most beach clubs manage.

Skip it if: you're chasing a party (the room is deliberately not one), you're eating on a budget (be honest with yourself and go to the budget guide instead), or you want a marathon tasting-menu event — Imbert's kitchen does precision over progression, and the format rewards grazing, not pilgrimage. Families should also note the after-6pm adults-only line: this is a date venue after dark, by design.

The Verdict on High Society

Keep exploring the neighbourhood: our Business Bay dining guide maps the full area, the Business Bay date-night shortlist covers the romantic angle, and the Mediterranean cuisine hub and best date-night restaurants in Dubai list put High Society in citywide context. Watching the budget instead? The Downtown cheap eats guide is the antidote to this page.