The Best Omakase Restaurants in Dubai 2026

Seventeen seats, a chef whose family has made sushi for 160 years, and fish that leaves Tokyo’s Toyosu market and lands on the counter within a day: that is omakase in Dubai at its ceiling, and its name is Hōseki. Here is the honest problem with the category in this city. Dubai has dozens of rooms that print the word “omakase” on a menu, and exactly two counters that mean it. Below are the four you can actually book as omakase in 2026, ranked, then the chef’s counters worth your evening for other reasons, and the famous rooms where “omakase” is a line item rather than a promise. Prices and booking mechanics are verified for the season.

How Dubai actually does omakase

Toyosu logistics did for Dubai what they did for every serious sushi market outside Japan. Fish auctioned in Tokyo on a Monday can be served on a Gulf counter within seventy-two hours, and the two best rooms here run their own licensed processing inside that market to make the chain airtight. The result is a small, sharp scene: two Michelin-recognised counters, one accessible Edomae room, and a scattering of tasting menus that borrow the language. The Dubai dining guide maps the whole city by occasion, our definitive sushi guide explains the Edomae vocabulary these chefs work in, and the Japanese restaurants worldwide guide sets Dubai’s best against Tokyo, New York and Singapore.

The counters that matter, ranked

1. Hōseki — Jumeira Bay Island

Masahiro Sugiyama, Tokyo-born and trained at the legendary Sushi Kanesaka, is the sixth generation of a sushi family whose line runs back 160 years, and he sits seventeen guests at a pale-timber counter inside the Bulgari Resort on Jumeira Bay Island. The evening opens with a seasonal kaiseki passage — hot dishes, a delicate soup, marinated preparations — before the nigiri sequence takes over: aged Toyosu tuna, Hokkaido uni, amberjack and sweet shrimp, the rice temperature reset course by course. It runs AED 1,100 to AED 1,600 a head across roughly two and a half hours, holds one Michelin star since the Dubai Guide’s inception, and appears on the World’s 50 Best Discovery list. Our editors score it 9.5 for food, the highest in the city. Not for a group who wants to talk to each other; the counter is built so the only conversation that matters is the one with Sugiyama.

2. TakaHisa — Bluewaters Island

Two master chefs, two counters, one address on the first floor of the Banyan Tree at Bluewaters. Takashi Namekata spent fifteen years inside Tokyo’s multi-star Ukai Group before taking the sushi side; Hisao Ueda, a Hokkaido native who holds a UAE Golden Visa for his wagyu expertise, runs the Ozaki beef counter. TakaHisa is the only Japanese restaurant in the 2025 Michelin Guide Dubai, carries three Gault and Millau toques, and ranks number 23 in MENA’s 50 Best 2026. The omakase is the only way to eat: 14 to 18 pieces from Namekata, otoro nigiri aged seven days, Hokkaido uni with Oscietra caviar, and a torched A5 Ozaki wagyu strip finished with Hatta honey from the hotel’s own garden. Expect AED 800 to AED 1,400, which for Toyosu-grade fish is the best value on this list. Not for diners who need theatre — the room is blond wood, soft light and no music, on purpose.

3. 99 Sushi Bar — Downtown Dubai

The Madrid group Grupo Bambú exported its Edomae format to the ground floor of The Address Downtown, a short walk from the Burj Khalifa fountains, and it has been Downtown’s default Japanese table since 2020. This is omakase with the edges rounded for a European palate: rice served slightly warmer, cuts a touch larger, wasabi applied with discretion. Sit at the counter and the Fuyu tasting menu runs about AED 1,299 for two, built on the Toro tartare with Oscietra caviar, Kobe sashimi with ginger ponzu, and a black cod miso that ranks among the city’s best. Everyday spend lands at AED 450 to AED 900 a person, and our editors give it a 9.0 for food with an 8.2 for value — the most bookable serious counter in the centre of town. Not for the purist chasing a Ginza-strict sequence; this room chose polish over severity and the market rewarded it.

4. SUSHISAMBA — Palm Jumeirah

An omakase you book for the altitude as much as the fish. On the 51st floor of The St Regis Dubai The Palm, SUSHISAMBA wraps a scarlet-lit sushi counter and a robata grill in 270 degrees of glass over the West Crescent, with a live samba band five nights a week. The cooking is Nikkei — the Japanese-Brazilian-Peruvian language that migrated from Osaka to São Paulo a century ago — so the counter omakase, which pushes past AED 1,200 a head, sits alongside yellowtail tiradito with yuzu and the torched Samba Roll rather than a silent Edomae flight. Everyday spend is AED 500 to AED 900, and our editors score it 9.0, most of it earned by the room. Order it for the sunset and the theatre. Not for anyone who wants to hear the chef explain the fish — the band, by design, wins that argument every night.

The chef’s counters that aren’t omakase, but book anyway

Two of Dubai’s best counters are not omakase at all, and pretending otherwise would insult them. Moonrise, Solemann Haddad’s twelve-seat rooftop chef’s table above Eden House in Al Satwa, took a Michelin star within eighteen months of opening in 2022 and cooks what Haddad calls “Dubai food” — Middle Eastern larder, Japanese technique, French grounding — for AED 850. His pani-puri “Explosion” of foie gras, date syrup and saffron is the single most talked-about bite in the city. It is the best solo seat in Dubai; it is simply not a sushiya. Kinoya, Neha Misra’s Bib Gourmand izakaya in The Greens, ranked number three in MENA’s 50 Best 2025, puts you at a counter over yakitori, tempura and donabe for AED 150 to AED 350 — the highest value score we have given any Dubai room. Book either for a counter evening; just don’t book them expecting nigiri, course by course.

Where “omakase” is just a menu line

Three famous rooms sell the word without the format, and the gap is worth knowing before you spend. Zuma Dubai in DIFC is an izakaya around a robata grill — superb shared plates and a sushi counter, but the rhythm is sharing, not a chef-led progression. Nobu Dubai, on the 22nd floor of Atlantis The Palm, runs a signature tasting from AED 595 that leans on the black cod miso and yellowtail jalapeño; it is Japanese-Peruvian, refined and reliable, and it is a tasting menu, not omakase. Netsu at the Mandarin Oriental Jumeira is Ross Shonhan’s warayaki straw-fire steakhouse with a sushi counter attached — the bluefin ordering is genuine, the room is not built as an omakase counter. All three are worth booking. None is the answer when the word “omakase” is what you actually came for.

Booking notes

Every top counter here takes a deposit or prepays at booking, and the seat counts are small, so the calendar is the whole negotiation. Hōseki, at seventeen seats, books out weeks ahead in peak season from October through April — go through the Bulgari Resort concierge. TakaHisa releases counter seats through SevenRooms two to three weeks out, and weekends move fastest. 99 Sushi Bar is the flexible book of the four and the right entry point for a first-timer testing whether the genre is theirs. For the occasion maths — when the AED 1,600 counter is the right spend and when it is showing off — our impress-clients guide and our solo-dining guide do the reasoning, since a great omakase seat is often the best table in any city for eating alone.

Keep reading

The same editors rank the best omakase counters in Tokyo, Singapore’s essential omakase rooms, and the best Japanese restaurants in Dubai beyond the sushi counter.

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