Zuma

Small plates held to the pass

Small plates leave the pass in waves at Zuma in DIFC, Dubai, inside a kitchen language built for pace rather than ceremony. The format belongs to Rainer Becker, the German chef-turned-restaurateur who co-founded the brand with the London businessman Arjun Waney after the two met at their hairdresser’s in the early 2000s. Becker had worked in Germany and Australia and spent six years in Tokyo, and the idea he brought back was specific: a contemporary Japanese restaurant drawn from the informal izakaya, where dishes arrive continuously for sharing, built to reach Western appetites without patronising the tradition. Waney provided the capital and the business judgment.

The first Zuma opened in Knightsbridge in 2002 and was meant to be the only one. Demand from travelling guests turned it into a group, and Dubai followed Hong Kong and Istanbul, opening in September 2008 at Gate Village 06 as the brand’s first UAE address. It marked ten years in 2018 and now sits at number 19 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, a number that matters here only because the food still has to land plate by plate rather than as a plaque on the wall.

Robata smoke, sushi rice, shared plates

The method is structured around movement between stations. Sushi leaves one bench, teppanyaki comes off another, and the robata grill gives the menu its heat, smoke and timing. The dining format lets a table move through small plates, à la carte and a tasting menu without forcing one sequence on every guest. That flexibility is part of the craft. It requires a pass that can hold luxury ingredients and direct flavours without slowing the room.

The signatures make the point plainly: spicy beef tenderloin, black cod miso, wagyu beef, rock shrimp and crab salad. The spicy beef tenderloin is held as a benchmark across Zuma kitchens, a dish whose identity depends on repetition as much as appetite. Black cod miso works in another register, built on sweetness, char and patience. None of this depends on ornament. The discipline is in keeping the food generous, polished and immediate while the room stays in motion.

A room built around the bar and the bench

The room in Gate Village 06 does not separate the craft from the atmosphere. The sushi bar, teppanyaki open kitchen, central drinks bar, high tables and elevated seating create a floor where the work is visible in fragments: a cut of fish at the counter, a plate moving through the pass, a cocktail set down under soft light. Colourful sake bottles sit within the bar’s architecture, not as decoration alone, but as a reminder of the beverage program’s place in the restaurant.

As service deepens, the room gathers volume. Chatter, music and the bar scene press against the kitchen’s need for timing, which is exactly the tension this address has traded on since 2008. The useful close here is not a promise of what comes next, but the plate that keeps returning to the pass: spicy beef tenderloin at Zuma Dubai.