Speaker Biographies

Honoured with the One Knife Award 2025 and 2024 by the World’s Best Chef Awards, the MICHELIN Guide Young Chef of The Year Award 2022 and the Gault & Millau Future Great 2022, Chef Solemann Haddad started making waves a mere six months into opening the doors to Moonrise. Born and raised in Deira to a French mother and Syrian father, ‘home’ to Solemann means Dubai.

 

The symbiotic relationship he shares with Dubai is one he speaks of with palpable love and fondness. Haddad draws inspiration from the Middle Eastern yet multicultural influences and flavours that defined his passion for food.

The textbook definition of a third-culture kid, Chef Haddad views the food influences of his

childhood simply as “Dubai cuisine”, an amalgamation of all the cuisines he grew up eating in Dubai, particularly Middle Eastern, Japanese and French. He lives to constantly discover new flavours that are nothing short of an awakening and passes that feeling onto his diners. “Food is like music. The perfect dish is like the perfect song, with layers of perfect composition”, says Chef Haddad.