Dubai, UAE | July 8th, 2026
What is Paccheri alla Justin Bieber? The pasta dish Dubai can’t stop talking about
There’s a dish on the menu at il Pastaio Dubai that guests don’t just order – they ask about it first. Wide, ridged tubes of paccheri, coated in a deep orange-red sauce that sits somewhere between marinara and cream, finished with a generous dusting of Parmesan. The name on the menu reads Paccheri alla Justin Bieber. Most people assume it’s a marketing gimmick. It isn’t.
Where the dish actually came from
The story starts at il Pastaio in Beverly Hills, the original restaurant behind the il Pastaio name. Justin Bieber was a regular there, and over time he started requesting a custom version of paccheri – an orange-red sauce, off the standard menu, made the way he liked it. He ordered it often enough that the kitchen staff knew it by heart before it ever had an official name. Eventually, the restaurant did what most kitchens do when a dish earns its place: they put it on the menu and named it after the person who made it famous.
That’s the part most people don’t know. It wasn’t invented for Instagram. It was invented because one customer kept asking for it, and the chefs kept saying yes.
Why it’s on the menu in Dubai
il Pastaio Dubai, located at Al Habtoor City, carries the same DNA as its Beverly Hills counterpart – the same celebrity following, the same kitchen philosophy, and the same handful of dishes that made the brand recognizable in the first place. Justin Bieber and Gigi Hadid are among the names associated with the restaurant here too, and the Paccheri alla Justin Bieber made the journey from California to the city alongside other signatures like the Spaghetti al Caviale and the Tomahawk ai Ferri.
So what makes a Beverly Hills dish work in a fine dining setting thousands of miles away? Mostly, it comes down to not changing it. The sauce is still built on the same ratio of tomato to cream, the pasta is still imported rather than substituted for something local and cheaper, and the Parmesan still goes on generously rather than as a garnish.
How the dish is actually made
Paccheri itself is a deliberate choice. It’s a large, smooth tube – wider than rigatoni, open at both ends – which means it holds sauce differently than a thinner pasta would. The shape isn’t decorative. It’s functional: the wide opening lets the sauce sit inside the tube as well as around it, so every bite carries the same balance of cream and tomato rather than pooling at the bottom of the plate.
A few things set it apart from a standard tomato-cream pasta:
• The sauce is built slowly, with the tomato base reduced before the cream is added, rather than the two simply mixed together
• The pasta is cooked to hold structure under a heavier sauce, which thinner cuts can’t manage as well
• Parmesan is added at the table or just before serving, so it melts into the heat of the dish rather than sitting on top as a finishing touch
It’s a simple-sounding dish that’s easy to get wrong, which is partly why it became a signature in the first place – not every kitchen bothers with the extra step of reducing the base properly.
What it says about il Pastaio’s approach to Italian cuisine
The Paccheri alla Justin Bieber is one dish among several that reflect what il Pastaio is trying to do as a fine dining restaurant: take Italian food that has real provenance – a real story, a real kitchen, a real customer – and serve it without diluting it for a new city. The Trio Tartare and Branzino al Sale follow the same logic. Nothing is reinvented for Dubai’s audience. It’s brought over intact, because the appeal was never the novelty. It was the consistency.
For anyone exploring Italian cuisine in Al Habtoor City, the paccheri is a reasonable place to start – not because of the name attached to it, but because it’s a fair representation of how the kitchen treats every dish on the menu: imported ingredients, traditional technique, and very little shortcut-taking. The celebrity story gets people through the door. What keeps them coming back is usually the part nobody mentions on social media – the sauce itself.
Location: Al Habtoor City Boulevard, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai
Contact: +971 54 791 3320 | 04 379 1382
Email: reservations@ilpastaiodubai.ae
