Dubai is the easiest city in the world to smoke a good cigar in, and one of the hardest to choose where. Here is how the lounges sort themselves by district, what each kind is good for, and where you will find the Manila cigar first.
A few rules of the city before the addresses. Cigar lounges here are almost always indoors, air-conditioned to a chill that is kind to the leaf and unkind to bare arms, and open late: four in the afternoon to two in the morning is common. Most are inside hotels, which means the humidor is serious, the service is trained, and the prices are hotel prices. Dress codes exist and are enforced with a smile. And the humidor matters more than anywhere else, because between the outside heat and the inside cold, a cigar left in a car for an afternoon is a cigar lost.
DIFC, for after the office
The financial district has the highest concentration of cigar lounges in the city, most of them in the towers around Gate Village. They fill from six with people who have just left a desk and empty around midnight. Expect deep armchairs, a whisky list that runs to several pages, and humidors where the four origins sit side by side. This is where the Manila cigar opened first, in a lounge that put the Robusto Maduro on its menu from the opening night.
The Palm, for the evening
The hotels of Palm Jumeirah keep cigar bars that look out at the water, and they are at their best after dark, when the temperature on a terrace drops to something a person can sit in. Longer cigars suit the place: a Toro, an hour and a quarter, and the lights of the Marina across the bay. Our second partner is a hotel cigar bar here.
Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim, for buying
If you want to take cigars home rather than smoke them on the spot, the boutiques along Jumeirah Beach Road are where the serious humidors are. They sell by the box and by the stick, they will keep a box aside for you, and the good ones will tell you when a cigar is too young to smoke. Ours are here in boxes of twenty-five and gift boxes of ten.
Downtown and the Marina, for the view
The lounges around the Burj Khalifa and along the Marina trade on the view, and the view is worth it. They are busier, louder and more mixed than DIFC, and better for a cigar with friends than for a cigar with a book. We are not there yet. We will be.
“Ask for the humidor before you ask for the menu. If they hesitate, order a drink and go somewhere else for the cigar.”Advice from a Dubai sommelier · we keep it
Where to find the Manila cigar
Three places at the opening: the DIFC lounge, the hotel cigar bar on the Palm, and the Jumeirah boutique. Their addresses, hours and the cigars each one carries are on the Find page, which is updated as new partners open. If you run a lounge and want to be on that map, the wholesale page explains how it works.
