Flour & Firewood (F&F)

There's a version of Riyadh's café boom that leans entirely on presentation, and then there's Flour & Firewood, which puts its name on the actual mechanics of the kitchen. The commitment here is literal: bread built from long-fermented dough and finished in a wood-fed oven, the kind of process that can't be rushed to fit a rendering. That single discipline shapes everything else on the menu, from the way dough is stretched and blistered to the char that shows up on roasted vegetables and mains. It reads as a bakery that grew into a full kitchen, not a restaurant that bolted on a bread program for effect. The strongest reason to go is watching that fire do the actual cooking. Loaves and flatbreads come out with an uneven, blistered crust that only happens when heat comes from real embers, and the kitchen keeps that same logic for the rest of the plate — proteins pulled off the flame with a smoked edge, vegetables blackened just enough to taste it. The open layout means you catch glimpses of the oven itself, so the smell of woodsmoke reaches the room before the food does. It's cooking you can track from fire to plate, which is rare in a city where so much kitchen work happens out of sight. Beyond the food, the place has settled into a genuine neighborhood rhythm — a spot people build a weekend morning around rather than just pass through. The light through the windows and the steady hum of conversation make it feel lived-in rather than staged. Bring people you don't mind lingering with. Order slowly, split the bread, let the fire do the rest.