Guide · 6 minute read
Yacht catering in Dubai runs from AED 120 a head for canapés to AED 450 for a plated three-course menu with service staff, with a deck BBQ at AED 180 and brunch service at AED 220 in between. Bringing your own food instead costs nothing and is allowed on every boat.
Published
Cold and room-temperature pieces laid out on the aft deck, refreshed once. It suits a two-hour sunset charter or a corporate hosting where dinner is somewhere else afterwards, and it is the only menu that works properly on a boat that is under way the whole time.
For twelve people that is AED 1,440 on top of an AED 1,500 charter — roughly doubling the cost of a short sunset run, which is worth knowing before you assume catering is a small addition.
Grilled at anchor while everyone swims, which is why it only makes sense on a charter of three hours or more. It is the menu that fits a half-day best, because the cooking becomes part of the stop rather than an interruption to it.
It also scales well. A BBQ for twenty-two on the 62ft is straightforward; canapés for twenty-two involve a lot of small plates and someone circulating.
The Dubai Friday brunch moved onto the water: hot and cold stations set out on the aft deck and refreshed through a four-hour charter. It needs the length — over two hours it is just an expensive buffet — and it needs deck space, so the 55ft upwards.
This is the most-booked catering for birthdays and for groups where the food is meant to be the middle of the day rather than a course.
A served menu at the saloon table, with staff. It is realistic on the 62ft and properly good on the 85ft, which has a galley a chef can work in and a table eighteen people can sit at. On anything smaller it is cramped and the food has been held rather than cooked.
A week's notice, and a final headcount seventy-two hours out. For an anniversary, a proposal dinner at anchor or a wedding, this is the menu; for most other charters it is more formality than the day wants.
Free, on every boat, on every charter, and it is what most groups do. There is a fridge and ice aboard. A group of ten routinely produces a better spread than AED 1,200 of canapés would.
The practical limits: glass is best avoided on deck, anything that needs cooking needs to arrive cooked on the smaller boats, and alcohol is by prior arrangement and subject to UAE law.
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Leave the date and roughly how many of you there are and we will come back with the boats that are free and what each costs. No deposit at this stage.