The cannon fires at sunset. Or the call to prayer begins. What follows is consistent: across the city, in thousands of homes and hundreds of restaurants and hotel ballrooms and garden tents erected for the month, people who have been fasting since before sunrise sit down together to eat. The date arrives first. Then the soup. Then the spreading abundance of a meal that has been prepared with the knowledge that it will feed people who genuinely need it. Ramadan Iftar in Dubai is understood, by those who have experienced it, as the most significant cultural event the city produces — and the Iftar table as its most moving expression. This evergreen editorial explores the best Iftar and Suhoor venues in Dubai, the spiritual and cultural significance of the breaking of the fast, the etiquette of attending as a guest, and why the meal whose authority comes not from what it costs but from what it means is the one that no restaurant concept can manufacture and no year of dining in Dubai should pass without.