Dubai Restaurants, Eat, Fine Dining, Japanese Restaurants

Taiga, Dubai restaurant review, ‘But what if €600 is just dinner?’

Dubai Restaurants, Eat, Fine Dining, Japanese Restaurants
November 10, 2026

Taiga, Dubai: What If 600 Is Just Dinner?

Rare ingredients, a master at the grill and a price built for the few. I have been to teppanyaki bars before, but this felt like the first time.

The Highs

The Lows

The Highs

The Lows

Teppanyaki chef beside a Japanese beef grading certificate and seasonal vegetable basket at Taiga Dubai — The provenance theatre begins before a pan is lit: a grading certificate, propped like a diploma.

Taiga Japanese Restaurant is the TakaHisa Group’s 19-seat omakase teppanyaki and third act in a slow-moving coup to conquer the island of Bluewaters, following its sensational TakaHisa Japanese Restaurant debut and a boutique-like Japanese supermarket, Maison Shibuya; the latter is next door to Taiga, where I eyeballed my soon-to-be dinner lounging in a fish tank moments before passing through Taiga’s doors.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Taiga is pricey. Very pricey, and if you don’t want to know what such privileges will set you back, look away now.

The “nine-course Chef’s Signature Teppanyaki Course” costs AED 2,500 per person. This puts it among the very top of Dubai’s best restaurants like Hoseki, FZN and TakaHisa.

Illuminated TAIGA Japanese Restaurant entrance and signage at night, Bluewaters Dubai — Taiga keeps its voice low for Bluewaters: copper panels, a lit doorway, no shouting

I consider this special-occasion pricing, not the kind of cash I casually drop on a Tuesday.

But what if it were?

What if I were Mugabe’s favourite nephew and the sole beneficiary of a not-so-small diamond mine in Zimbabwe? Or an oil field somewhere in the North Sea?

What if €600 is just dinner?

It is too easy to walk into an expensive restaurant, huff about the price, and press submit, especially when (it will surprise approximately no one) Dubai is teeming with the ultra-rich. It turns out they too eat dinner, so Taiga, like any restaurant, should be judged on its own terms. So, I accept an invitation, and embrace the life of the 0.00001%.

Dom Perignon Vintage 2017 champagne poured into a glass at Taiga Dubai — The pairing opens on Dom Perignon 2017, which tells you where the evening thinks it’s going.

Taiga directly sources exceptional Japanese produce, flown in on Emirates (business class, one assumes) and left to idle in that tank next door, until my friend and I turn up to honour a spiny lobster and an abalone shortly before their sacrifice, which we observed first-hand, sat omakase-style at Taiga’s teppanyaki bar.

Taiga Dubai dining room with gilded feature wall, kanji signage and set teppanyaki tables — The room trades in gold leaf and restraint, which is a harder trick than it looks.

The sixty-plus-cover restaurant is slender and modern; once you push through doors taller than the reception is long, the dining room is clad in burnished bronze (think dusty champagne). There are elevated wine cabinets, honey-toned wood tables and supple ivory chairs; slink in and marvel as a man cranks an ice cream machine frothing with dry ice. Tonight’s flavour: fresh inky Okayama Pione grapes, the size of quail’s eggs, flown in earlier that day from you know where. Divine, if you were wondering.

It is Wonka meets John Wick.

To the right, a teppanyaki bar stretches the restaurant’s full length: minimalist, white backlit walls, acres of steel and dark marble counters decorated with certificates confirming Kobe beef grades, sourcing and even gender. In comes a bowl of fist-sized garlic, asparagus as thick as mop handles and more. All Japanese; only the truffle, foie gras and caviar are sourced from Europe.

We are told, more than once, that Taiga is Dubai’s first authentic teppanyaki restaurant, and yet a five-minute clip by foot, the Delano boasts a teppanyaki bar; then there are Hibachi, Miyako and Izakaya, before I mention Benihana and Minato.

Close-up of seasonal vegetables, asparagus, citrus and garlic in a ceramic bowl at Taiga Dubai — Before anything is cooked, the basket does the talking: asparagus, sudachi, a single rose petal

It is Wonka meets John Wick.

Semantics or not, I cannot tell you if Taiga is authentic, but I have not experienced anything like it anywhere. The room feels staged, the service professional and competent, but pull back the window dressing, and what remains is Taiga’s purpose: rare, exceptional ingredients, hand-selected, then dispatched almost five thousand miles and cooked in front of you by a quiet teppanyaki shokunin who has worked a grill for nearly three decades. Which brings me to the menu.

Taiga Dubai omakase teppanyaki tasting menu listing courses and AED 2,500 price — Nine courses at 2,500 dirhams, with the Grand Cru pairing doubling it. The number sets the expectation

À la carte options include ‘the softest part’ of wagyu tongue, Hokkaido king crab and something red and kinki. A fish, that is. We opt for that nine-course omakase menu (which runs closer to 12) of sekai sandai chinmi, or ‘the world’s three great delicacies’: caviar, foie gras and truffle. A European roster, rather than Japan’s own: uni, karasumi (dried mullet roe, think bottarga) and konowata, which, of course, we all know are salted sea-cucumber guts.

Our earlier sea acquaintances return to slip under a copper cloche, where watching our shokunin becomes intriguing, even meditative.

Our spiny lobster is halved, the tomalley or miso judiciously removed, spooned onto the flat grill, chopped and scraped with kote until soft and intensely flavoured. The chef calls it the brain, and tells us the more intelligent the lobster, the more delicious the brain, which leads me to believe the tastiest ones hide behind the others.

Cooked Ise spiny lobster tail with coral sauce and lemon on a dark plate at Taiga Dubai — The lobster returns cooked, dressed in its own coral.

That fourteen-year-old abalone we met in the tank is encased in fine sea salt, steamed slowly to a pleasing, bouncy chew, then served inside a pearly shell and spooned with a piquant clam dashi butter sauce.

It is not all seafood. Carefully seared and pudgy foie gras glistens in Awaji onion sauce, shingled with black truffle; a simple salad resets and sings with warm sesame oil; and a duo of Ozaki beef, fillet and sirloin, is meticulously cubed, seared slowly to render the unctuous fat and caramelise the edges while the core remains blissfully tender. Your back teeth are almost redundant, but for the side of simply grilled vegetables and garlic crisps. It is my standout dish. Get the sirloin, but my friend swears by the fillet.

Chef presenting a raw marbled Ozaki wagyu steak on a bamboo leaf at Taiga Dubai — The Ozaki wagyu is introduced raw, which is the honest way to show marbling like that

As we scrape our final bites of chilled mango, it is tempting to say you can’t put a price on tonight: the flames, the steaks and my body weight in Dom Pérignon and Super Tuscans, but you can put a price on it.

“Is it worth it?” is too simplistic and alienating a question, and Taiga is plainly not for most people. It is an exceptional restaurant built for exceptional circumstances, whether that means the occasion or the people sitting at the counter, and it answers a question no one asked.

What Dubai could do with more of is what happens at that grill: ingredients chosen with intent, sourced with care and cooked by someone who has spent the better part of three decades getting it right, in a city that works itself into a lather over mediocrity on the plate.

But at Taiga, this comes at a price and, for me, it is Taiga or the mortgage. If I were a Premier League footballer or a crypto overlord, this is where I would come on a Tuesday.

Chef preparing a dish tableside on a brass liquid-nitrogen trolley at Taiga Dubai — A brass trolley, a cloud of nitrogen, and the quiet suggestion that dessert is an event.

Would I Return?

As a friend says, it is cheaper than flying to Japan.

Who Should Come Here?

Fans of high-end Japanese food; teppanyaki enthusiasts; HNWIs.

Review information

Disclosure: this meal was comped, meaning I never saw the bill. Make of that what you will.

Visits: 1.

Dishes (in AED): nine-course omakase, 2500; sake and wine pairing, 2500 per person extra.

Licensed: Yes, 2017 Dom Pérignon Brut Champagne; 2020 Luce, Tenuta Luce.

Total (estimated in AED): 5000 for two, ex alcohol.

Handwash: Aēsop Reverence Aromatique Hand Wash Vetiver Root, Petitgrain and Bergamot Rind

Taiga Japanese Teppanyaki, TA015, Bluewaters Island, Dubai. Call +971 4 367 4888 or visit Taiga’s Instagram or website for the latest information

Liam is a food and travel writer based in the Middle East. He co-authored The Rise of Indian Food: Recipes Reimagined by Trèsind Studio, out now and available here. Published by Phaidon Press. Photography by Shresth Maloo. Liam owns EatGoSee and contributes to other publications. You can find Liam on Substack, Threads and Instagram.