Dubai Restaurant Menu Allergen Rules: What the Food Code Requires and How to Keep Your Menu Current

If you run a restaurant or café in Dubai, your menu is not just a price list. Under the Dubai Food Code issued by Dubai Municipality, a Dubai restaurant menu allergen disclosure is a requirement, and a menu that goes out of date is a menu that can be wrong. Here is what the code says, and the simplest way to keep up.

What the Dubai Food Code requires

When the code was published in 2013, Khaleej Times reported that it requires food establishments to “declare the most common ingredients known to cause allergic reactions when they are present in the food that is prepared or sold.” Dubai Municipality’s Food Control Department oversees it.

TableQR’s UAE menu compliance guide (published December 2025, updated August 2026) lists the nine priority allergens as crustaceans, peanuts, soy, tree nuts, sesame, fish, egg, milk and gluten, and adds that regulators and guests expect calories, halal status and Arabic plus English on menus. That guide is written by a menu software seller, so treat it as a checklist and confirm the exact wording with Dubai Municipality or your food safety consultant. We have not seen a published penalty schedule for menus, so do not assume one either way.

Where printed menus go wrong

• A recipe changes, the menu does not. A new sauce supplier or a swapped ingredient can add sesame or gluten to a dish. The printed line still says what it said last month.
• Staff answer from memory. Without a current menu, a guest with an allergy gets whatever the waiter remembers.
• Reprinting is slow. So the old menu stays on the tables for weeks.
• Single language. One printed language is cheap. Two languages doubles the print job every time.

A practical weekly routine

• List every dish and tick the nine allergens against the actual recipe, not last year’s.
• Add calories and halal status where you have verified them. Do not guess.
• Re-check whenever a supplier or ingredient changes.
• Show the allergen note on the menu itself, or a clear notice on how guests can ask. The code allows information on a menu, on digital devices or boards, or by a visible notice.
• Tell staff the menu changed the same day.

Where a digital menu helps

The point is not that a QR code makes you compliant. It does not. The point is that a digital menu is easy to correct the same day, so the version guests read is the version you checked.

The Digital Menu Card (AED 29 per card) is an NFC and QR card with your logo on one side and your menu QR on the other. It opens a live menu on dm-only.com. You edit, preview and publish from your phone, so a changed allergen note or price does not mean reprinting. The menu supports multi-language including Arabic, a dedicated page for each dish with descriptions and options, and instant sold-out control. Guests need no app.

It will not list your allergens for you. You still own the checking. But it removes the reprint delay that keeps wrong information on tables.

Bottom line

Check your menu against the allergen list this week, write down who is responsible for re-checking when ingredients change, and choose a menu format you can correct in minutes. If you want to see how the card works for your menu, message us on WhatsApp from the product page.