99 Sushi Bar

Japanese Precision at the Gulf's Premium Edge

Al Maryah Island has become Abu Dhabi's clearest statement of intent in fine dining: a concentrated corridor of four-star and four-dollar-sign restaurants where the city's most formally constructed menus compete against each other and, implicitly, against their international counterparts. The Japanese contemporary category is the most instructive tier to examine here. Across the Gulf region, Japanese-influenced fine dining has bifurcated over the past decade, splitting between large-format omakase theatrics aimed at international visitors and smaller, more deliberate rooms that price and present themselves against a different competitive set altogether. 99 Sushi Bar is a one-Michelin-star restaurant in Abu Dhabi at Level 1 of the Four Seasons inside The Galleria, where intimacy and ingredient sourcing are the primary editorial arguments rather than spectacle.

That distinction matters when you are reading the Abu Dhabi market alongside venues like Hakkasan or Talea by Antonio Guida, both operating at the same price tier but with very different structural ambitions. Hakkasan imports a high-volume, internationally branded formula. Talea carries a Michelin star and a single-chef authorial identity. 99 Sushi Bar's positioning is closer to the latter, though its provenance argument runs through Spain rather than through Japan's own fine dining lineage, which is the detail that sets it apart from either peer.

The Spanish-Japanese Axis

Spanish ownership running a Japanese kitchen is less unusual than it might read on first encounter. Spain's relationship with Japanese technique, particularly around precision seafood cookery and the interplay of acidity and raw protein, has been well-documented in the broader European culinary record since the late 1990s. San Sebastián's own fish markets and the obsessive sourcing culture of northern Spain's premium dining scene share more structural DNA with Tsukiji-era Japanese thinking than either tradition typically admits. When the kitchen at 99 Sushi Bar imports seafood from Spain to serve in Abu Dhabi, it is not importing a curiosity, it is sourcing from a coastline with specific species profiles and water temperatures that produce different textural results than Gulf or Pacific equivalents.

The editorial case for this approach appears most clearly in the flamed red mullet with kumquat tiger milk, a dish that demonstrates how spice, fruit, and acidity can be held in calibrated balance rather than allowed to compete. Tiger milk is a Peruvian-derived ceviche marinade technique, its appearance here suggesting a kitchen comfortable drawing from multiple acidic traditions simultaneously. The result is described as delivering well-judged flavours, the kind of language critics reach for when restraint is doing the structural work rather than volume. For the broader Gulf Japanese contemporary category, this multi-lineage approach reflects a wider regional pattern: the Gulf's premium Japanese rooms have, in many cases, more in common with European hybrid kitchens than with Tokyo's own formalist omakase tradition.

How the Room Functions

The izakaya tradition that underpins much of Japan's social eating culture is not about ceremony, it is about sustained presence at a table, dishes arriving in a rhythm that extends the evening rather than concluding it, and drinking woven into the food rather than separated into a pre-dinner ritual. 99 Sushi Bar does not operate as a traditional izakaya, but the late dining window (last service running to midnight across all seven days) creates structural space for the kind of extended table that Abu Dhabi's Al Maryah Island audience tends to want. Lunch runs 12 PM to 3:30 PM; dinner opens at 7 PM and stays live until midnight. That evening window is longer than many of its peer venues in the building and the neighbourhood, and it reflects the social dining expectations of a room that seats guests who are as likely to have arrived from a business meeting in the hotel as from a leisure evening at The Galleria.

The tasting menu for two is the format that best demonstrates the kitchen's range. Tasting menus in this tier of Gulf dining occupy a specific social role: they convert a dinner into a shared editorial experience, where the sequence of dishes generates conversation rather than simply resolving hunger. That the menu is specifically noted for two, rather than as a solo or large-table format, reinforces the intimate-room argument. Parallel venues in the city operating at the same price tier, including LPM Abu Dhabi and Erth, are structurally better suited to group dining. 99 Sushi Bar's format logic runs tighter.

Wine programme leans classically minded rather than contemporary natural. In a city where many Japanese-inflected restaurants default to sake lists or pan-Asian drinks programmes to match the kitchen's register, a wine selection constructed around classical references signals a room that treats the front-of-house programme as an argument equal to the food. That alignment with Le Bernardin in New York City or 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana in Hong Kong in terms of format discipline is notable, though 99 Sushi Bar operates at a different scale and with a different kitchen vocabulary.

Planning Your Visit

Restaurant operates daily across both lunch and dinner. The Galleria at Al Maryah Island is a direct destination by Abu Dhabi standards, accessible by car, taxi, or the island's pedestrian links from the broader waterfront. Given the $$$$ price positioning and the tasting-menu emphasis, booking ahead rather than walking in is the sensible approach, particularly for weekend dinner slots.

99 Sushi Bar occupies a specific and deliberate position: Euro-Japanese sourcing intelligence, an intimate room, and a format built for two rather than for crowds. That is a considered editorial stance in a market where the incentive is almost always to scale up.