Meet Chef Ariana Bundy, Ariana’s Persian Kitchen, Atlantis The Royal Dubai

A few months later, as Bundy was settling into her new life in the San Francisco suburbs, she received another call – this time from the Investment Corporation of Dubai. The call was an offer of her own restaurant in the soon-to-be opened Atlantis The Royal, asking her to fly back to do a 10-day pop-up restaurant. “Absolutely not, I am not doing it,” she said adamantly. “We had just moved with our container of furniture, and our son was already enrolled in school. I wasn’t going back.” She agreed to host a lunch in lieu of the pop-up. It was so well received, that Ariana changed her mind – she decided to take on the restaurant project.