The Review
99 Sushi Bar arrived in Dubai from Madrid in late 2020, at the improbable moment when most international operators were retrenching. The wager paid off. The restaurant occupies the ground floor of The Address Downtown, a stone's throw from the Burj Khalifa fountains, and within months of opening had established itself as the default Japanese lunch for the Downtown business community. It has kept that position ever since.
The dining room is a study in controlled luxury — dark timber, brass accents, a long sushi counter visible from the main floor, a private bar at the back. Grupo Bambú, the Madrid-based group behind the original 99 Sushi Bar and a portfolio that includes Ten Con Ten and El Paraguas, exported the format without diluting it. The sushi itself is Edomae-inspired but calibrated for European palates: rice that is slightly warmer, fish portions that are slightly larger, wasabi applied with discretion rather than ceremony. Purists may find it polished; the market has voted with its credit cards.
The signature dishes do some of the heaviest lifting in Dubai's Japanese scene. The Toro Tartare with caviar, the Kobe Sashimi with ginger ponzu, and the sea bass ceviche with yuzu and wakame — a dish that travels across oceans the way the restaurant does — are all reliably excellent. The tasting menu, Fuyu, runs at around AED 1,299 for two people and represents genuinely strong value for the quality of fish being handled. At lunch, a three-course business menu at AED 199 per person has become quietly famous among Downtown lawyers and consultants who need a two-hour meeting with good light and no theatre.
Service is the soft edge that makes the hard edge of the food work. The team has been trained in the Grupo Bambú house style, which treats restaurants as places of discretion. Guests are not photographed without consent. Deals get closed. Contracts get signed over the coffee.
Best for Close a Deal
99 Sushi Bar is the Downtown Dubai table that takes business dining seriously. The lunch service is calibrated for meetings — pace controlled, tables spaced for privacy, the sushi format eliminating the mess factor that can derail a first-course-through-dessert negotiation. Request one of the booth tables against the south wall if you need total privacy, or the sushi counter if you want to demonstrate some connoisseurship. The AED 199 lunch menu is the highest-impact-per-dirham business option in Downtown. For evening negotiations, the private dining room seats up to twelve and has its own sound isolation.
Signature Dishes
The Toro Tartare with Oscietra caviar is the dish that most guests order as an opener — fatty tuna belly, whipped into a soft tartare, crowned with dark beads of caviar and lifted with yuzu. The Kobe Sashimi with ginger ponzu uses A5 Japanese beef and arrives so thinly sliced that it dissolves at body temperature. The sea bass ceviche, yuzu-forward and sharpened by wakame, is the most popular dish by volume. The black cod miso — obligatory in this category — is among the city's best. Among makimono, the salmon and avocado in tempura and the soft-shell crab roll set the standard.
What to Know Before You Go
99 Sushi Bar sits on the ground floor of The Address Downtown Dubai, a short walk from the Dubai Mall and facing the Burj. Dress is smart — this is a jacket-welcome room in the evening. Reservations are recommended for lunch and essential for dinner, particularly on Thursdays and Fridays. The restaurant serves alcohol. The Fuyu tasting menu (approximately AED 1,299 per couple) is the best way to experience the kitchen. Business lunch runs Sunday through Thursday. Private dining is available by request through the restaurant's website or concierge channels.
Also in Dubai, Zuma Dubai remains the reference point for Japanese in the Gulf, Sumosan offers a more scene-driven contemporary-Japanese evening, and Orfali Bros Bistro provides a Middle Eastern alternative for client lunches. For all Close a Deal tables, see our occasion guide.