A safari park going all out for mid-term break, rare vintage accessories, two very different kinds of horror and a pizza collaboration are only the beginning this week. By the weekend, Alserkal Avenue is turning food into workshops about coffee, phyllo and memory, and on Sunday you can attend a new exhibition bringing Lana Khayat into dialogue with Etel Adnan and Helen Khal, using landscape, flowers and abstraction to think about memory and homeland. Here is what we are doing this week.

Where? Dubai Safari Park

Dubai Safari Park is officially back for its eighth season. Its first-ever Wildest Opening Week runs until October 18, timed very conveniently with the school mid-term break.

The park is home to more than 3,000 animals across around 300 species, with six themed zones, the Arabian Desert Safari included in standard admission and an optional Explorer Safari that gets you closer to lions, giraffes, rhinos and more.

Wildest Opening Week runs through October 18; the park is open daily from 9 am–6 pm.

Where? The Meld Concept, Jumeirah 1

If digging through the internet for a very specific vintage bag is basically a hobby, someone has done the hard part for you.

Gabriel Rylka, founder of luxury vintage platform Break Archive, has brought a curated edit of archive accessories to The Meld Concept for a nine-day Dubai pop-up. Rylka has built Break Archive around a very particular kind of vintage hunt — rare designer handbags, jewelry and pieces chosen less like resale stock and more like an edit.

The pop-up runs until October 18, so there are only a few days left to browse.

Where? Cinema Akil, Alserkal Avenue

Cinema Akil pairs Kane Parsons' Backrooms — the A24 sci-fi horror that grew out of one of the internet's strangest horror phenomena — with Emirati filmmaker Hana Kazim's YATHOOM as part of its Talk To Strangers series.

Kazim's 15-minute short follows a woman haunted by guilt after a fatal accident, with sleep paralysis blurring memory and nightmare. It is a particularly neat pairing with Backrooms, which takes a similarly ordinary-looking space and pushes it somewhere deeply wrong.

The screening starts at 7:45 pm, followed by a conversation with Hana Kazim.

Where? FALCONE

Two chefs, one pizza, and thankfully you get a full week to try it.

Chef Roberta of FALCONE is teaming up with Chef Hadrien of Chez Wam on a new collaborative pizza, launching this Friday. The chefs will both be at FALCONE from 3–5 pm for the first taste of it.

Can't make the launch? No problem: the pizza stays on FALCONE's à la carte menu from October 16–22, which gives you a little more time than most chef collaborations usually do.

Where? Alserkal Avenue

You could spend a surprising amount of Saturday learning about food without actually sitting down for a normal meal.

Ahead of Alserkal Avenue's upcoming What The Food festival, Off the Menu kicks off with a handful of smaller workshops and experiments across the Avenue. At Subko, there is a beginner-friendly coffee cupping built around beans from Asian farms. Piehaus is teaching The Art of Phyllo, while artist and designer Nour Hage is turning recipes and cooking memories into textile pieces for a collective installation.

You can also wander upstairs at The Growhouse by One Life, an indoor farm growing herbs, greens and vegetables while experimenting with more sustainable ways to grow food. It is open across October 17–18.

Where? Bassam Freiha Art Foundation, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

Three artists, three generations and three very different ways of thinking about Lebanon through nature. Roots Before Petals brings UAE-based artist Lana Khayat into conversation with Lebanese modernists Etel Adnan and Helen Khal, connecting works that use landscape, flowers and abstraction to talk about memory, homeland and belonging. magpie.ae

For Adnan, landscape became a way of returning to places carried in memory. Khal stayed closer to the physical world, using flowers and colour to hold emotion and the remembered light of Lebanon. Khayat picks up that thread in a new body of work, Dessine-moi un pays, le Liban (Draw me a country, Lebanon), approaching the country through botanical abstraction.

The exhibition has just opened and runs until January 17. Entry to the foundation is free.