Back to the Root

Levantine and Brazilian home cooking, portioned to your calories and delivered every morning in Abu Dhabi.

What this is

Back to the Root is a meal plan service run out of our own kitchen in Abu Dhabi. You tell us what you are eating for, we work out the calories and protein your body is asking for, and then you build your own week from our menu - up to three main meals and two snacks a day, on as many days a week as you want. We cook it, weigh it, label it with the actual numbers, and a driver brings it to your door.

Nothing is chosen for you unless you ask for it to be. The planner can suggest a week from your numbers, and you can change every dish in it.

How the numbers are worked out

The calorie figure comes from the Mifflin St Jeor equation - the same formula used in clinics. It estimates what your body burns at rest from your sex, age, height and weight, multiplies that by a factor for how much you train, and adjusts for the goal you picked. Protein is set from your body weight and that goal.

It is an estimate, not a medical opinion. We are not doctors or dietitians, and if you are pregnant, diabetic, recovering from illness or under a doctor for anything, take their number over ours.

Signing in with Google

You can create your account with an email address and a password, or with the Continue with Google button. If you choose Google, we receive your name, email address and profile picture - nothing else. We never receive your Google password, your contacts, or anything else in your Google account.

We use that only to sign you in and to keep your plan, your orders and your delivery details attached to the right person. It is not sold, and it is not used for advertising. The full detail is in our privacy policy, and you can delete your account and its data yourself from your account page at any time.

The food

The kitchen is halal. Every lunch and dinner box has one protein, one carbohydrate and one vegetable in the plan price; breakfast and snacks have a protein and a carbohydrate. Soup, fresh juice and electrolytes are optional bundles and are never added to a bill on their own.

We will keep an ingredient out of your boxes if you tell us to, and that exclusion is printed on the box and read out at packing. The same kitchen handles nuts, peanuts, dairy, gluten, egg, soy, sesame and seafood, so we cannot promise a trace free environment and we will not pretend otherwise.

Delivery

We deliver inside Abu Dhabi. Morning windows are 06:00 to 09:00 and 09:00 to 11:00, and there is an evening window from 17:00 to 20:00. Delivery is included in the plan price, and you can follow each box on the tracker from the kitchen to your door.

Who's behind it

Dani Hanna, owner. A gym enthusiast long before a restaurateur. Dani built Back to the Root because the food he wanted to eat while training didn't exist yet: home-cooked, the taste he grew up with, weighed against real macros instead of guessed at.

Chef Roberta Summer, head chef. A former jiu-jitsu coach who traded the mats for a kitchen of her own, and has run a meal-plan kitchen before this one. Same discipline, different mat: real food, properly weighed, nothing cut for convenience.

Who we are, formally

Back to the Root is a trading name of Back to the Root Restaurant L.L.C S.P.C, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Email [email protected] or call 055 543 3454. We answer complaints within five working days.