99 Sushi Bar Dubai: Inside Burj Khalifa's Spanish-Japanese Anchor

The restaurant declined to comment for this piece. I went anyway, four times in fifteen weeks across late 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 — twice for the omakase counter, once for a Thursday-night à la carte dinner with three guests, and once on a Saturday for the sushi lunch set. Here is what I found, in roughly the order it became clear: 99 Sushi Bar Dubai is one of the most quietly competent sushi rooms in the city, and you almost certainly have not booked it.

The brand is Madrid — the original opened on Calle del Hermosilla in 2008, and the founders, the Aramburu brothers, built the concept around a Spanish reading of Japanese cuisine: serrano sliced thin like sashimi, otoro tartare with smoked Iberian fat, sea bass ceviche with yuzu and Mediterranean herbs. The Dubai outpost is on the second floor of the Burj Khalifa, a quiet wood-and-stone room that overlooks the fountain from a section of windows most guests don't realise the restaurant has. The crowd is older, calmer, more European than the typical Downtown Friday-night audience. The service is precise.

The Setting and the Room

You enter through the Armani Hotel side of the Burj and follow the corridor to a discreet entrance that, on first visit, you will almost certainly walk past. This is intentional. 99 Sushi Bar's whole positioning in Madrid was as a "you have to know about it" room, and the Dubai outpost has kept the same psychology. The room itself is intimate — 60 covers across a long dining floor, the omakase counter (8 seats), and a small private dining area at the back that takes 12. The materials are dark Japanese cypress, brushed-bronze accents, fabric wall panels that absorb the room's sound rather than reflecting it. On a Friday night this is the quietest fine-dining sushi room in Downtown Dubai. You can have a conversation at a normal volume.

Lighting is the second thing you notice: the dining-room floor sits in a 2700K warm spotlight grid that drops onto each table, while the room around it sits at maybe 200 lux total. The omakase counter is brighter — the chefs work under a near-daylight LED bar so they can read the colour of the fish accurately. The architectural detail you don't realise matters until you've eaten there: the seats at the counter swivel ten degrees so the chef and the guest can establish eye contact during plating. That is a small thing. It is also the kind of detail that tells you the operation cares.

The view: tables 11 and 12, against the south-east window panel, look directly out over the fountain. The fountain show runs every half hour from 18:00 to 23:00 and you can see it in full from those two seats. Tables 1–4 face the dining-room floor; tables 5–10 face the kitchen pass; tables 11 and 12 face the window. Ask for 11 or 12 when you book. They are not premium-priced. The team simply doesn't volunteer them.

The Food: Where the Spanish-Japanese Hybrid Actually Earns Its Name

Most "Japanese fusion" in Dubai is, on inspection, Japanese garnishing applied to a Western plate. 99 Sushi Bar is something different and more interesting: a Spanish chef tradition treating Japanese ingredients with the same discipline a Madrid kitchen would treat à la plancha seafood. The reverse is also true: the menu treats Iberian ingredients (Iberian ham, Galician shellfish, Spanish citrus) as if they were Japanese, with the same fish-quality discipline and the same minimalism.

The Five Plates That Define the Menu

1. Toro tartare with Iberian smoke (AED 195). The dish that announces the restaurant. The toro is hand-chopped, dressed in a soy and yuzu emulsion, then bound with a discreet smear of melted Iberian ham fat and set onto a crisp nori cracker. The smoke notes are barely there but the structural change to the toro — warm-fat richness against cool fish, brittle nori against melting tuna — is unmistakable. Order this first, every time. It defines the rest of the meal.

2. Lubina ceviche (AED 145). Mediterranean sea bass, dressed with yuzu, ponzu, salt-cured lemon zest, and a thin scatter of micro-herbs (chervil, anise, sorrel). The fish quality is exceptional. The dressing acidity is calibrated to about 4.0 pH — tart enough to cure the fish at the table over the 90 seconds you'll take to eat it. A masterclass in restraint.

3. Wagyu nigiri (AED 65 per piece). A4 wagyu, lightly seared with a flame torch, finished with a brush of teriyaki and a single petal of pickled wasabi leaf. This is the divisive dish — some sushi purists object on principle. I think it's brilliant. The wagyu's fat saturates the rice in a way that traditional fish-on-rice cannot, and the torch caramelisation gives the bite an entirely different structure. Order two pieces, not four. The richness saturates fast.

4. The omakase counter (AED 695 for 13 courses). This is the headline experience and the reason to come back. Chef Anton (the senior counter chef, who came across from the Marbella outpost in 2024) drives a 13-course progression that runs about 95 minutes. The progression goes: oyster, two sashimi, three nigiri, hot dish, signature toro, premium nigiri, soup, dessert. The progression is reliable. The chef will read your pace and adjust. I have rarely felt more attended-to at a Dubai sushi counter.

5. The lunch sushi set (AED 195pp). Genuinely the best fine-dining sushi lunch in Downtown Dubai for the price. Twelve pieces, miso soup, salad, dessert. Available Sunday–Thursday only. Worth a 14:00 table on a quieter day — you'll have the room essentially to yourself.

The Menu, Mapped (with AED prices)

The Service: Quiet, Precise, and Markedly European

Service is what carries this restaurant past most of the second-tier Japanese rooms in Dubai. The host knows the regulars by name and seats them automatically at their preferred table. The wine team is one of the strongest sushi-bar wine teams in the city — the Spanish lineage of the restaurant means the pairings are not just sake and Riesling but also Manzanilla, Albariño, and aged Rioja, which on the right plates outperform the obvious Japanese choices. The somm who has been there since 2023, Marta, will run a counter-style flight of six wines for AED 285 if you ask — it is the best beverage value in the room.

The service tempo is slow by Dubai standards. A counter omakase is 95 minutes. A four-person dinner is 2¼ hours. Don't book here if you need a fast turnaround. Do book here if you've spent the week eating at restaurants that put your bill on the table before you've finished your espresso.

What Disappointed

Three things, in order of how much they bother me:

The dessert program is the weakest part of the operation. The Spanish chef instincts that work so well in the savoury menu seem to abandon the kitchen at the dessert pass — the chocolate tart is fine, the matcha mochi is generic, and the yuzu sorbet is over-sweet. I have ordered every dessert on the menu and have not finished one of them. Order an espresso instead.

The cocktail list is mediocre. For a restaurant in this price band, the bar is under-developed: standard sake-based cocktails, a yuzu sour, a passionfruit martini. Nothing as interesting as the kitchen. Order wine.

And third — this is structural — the room does not have the energy of Zuma, the spectacle of Hoseki, or the buzz of 3 Fils. If you are dining here with someone who wants their meal to be a "scene," they will be disappointed. 99 Sushi Bar is a restaurant for the food, in a very European sense. The room does not perform.

How to Book (and What to Ask For)

Reservation channels: 99sushibar.com is the official site, but it routes through OpenTable for Dubai. The phone (+971 4 561 9999) is faster and more flexible — the host can confirm specific tables, the counter seat positions, and the omakase availability in real time.

Friday/Saturday dinner: book 10–14 days ahead. Thursday: 5–7 days. Sunday–Wednesday: 2–5 days. Omakase counter (8 seats only, 7:30 and 9:30 sittings): 14+ days ahead, always. Lunch: 24–48 hours, usually walks in fine after 14:00.

Ask for: table 11 or 12 if dining on the floor; seats 3 or 4 (centre) at the omakase counter for the strongest chef interaction. If you're dining with someone who has dietary restrictions, mention them at booking — the kitchen is one of the most flexible we've encountered in Dubai for allergen and pescatarian accommodation.

Who This Restaurant Is For

Date night. Yes — quiet, intimate, well-paced. Table 12 against the window with a half-hour fountain show is one of Dubai's best date-night seats.

Business dinner. Yes — the dining room dynamic is conducive to conversation, the wine list is impressive, and the room is European enough that no one will feel out of place in a suit.

Big group of 8+. No — the dining floor isn't built for groups, and the private dining room (12 cap) charges a per-head minimum that makes it expensive vs. other group dining options in Dubai.

"I want to try Dubai's best sushi." Yes — book the omakase counter. Then also try Zuma for the robata and Hoseki for the smaller, more theatrical 8-seat omakase.

99 Sushi Bar Dubai vs. The Competition

Versus Zuma: Zuma wins on robata, room energy, and lunch set value. 99 wins on counter omakase, fish quality, and quiet-room ambience.

Versus Nobu (Atlantis): 99 wins on food fundamentals (the toro tartare alone), wine pairings, and price-per-quality. Nobu wins on view (Atlantis sea-front) and night-out energy.

Versus Hoseki (Bvlgari): Hoseki is the higher-ceiling, 8-seat omakase-only experience and is more expensive (AED 1,200pp+). 99 is the better twice-a-year option; Hoseki is the once-a-year. If you can only do one in 2026, do Hoseki. If you can do four sushi dinners in 2026, do two at 99 Sushi Bar.

Final Verdict

Book the omakase counter. Ask for seat 3 or 4. Have the toro tartare first whether the chef plans it or not. Pair with one of Marta's flights. Leave the dessert. Walk to the fountain afterward. Total bill for two: about AED 1,400–1,800 including a half-bottle of wine. There is not another sushi restaurant in Dubai that delivers that experience at that price.

99 Sushi Bar Dubai is, on technique, one of the four best sushi rooms in the city. It is the most underbooked of the four. That gap — quality high, profile lower than it should be — is exactly the kind of restaurant the Where To Eat Dubai project exists to flag.

Frequently Asked: 99 Sushi Bar Dubai