Yas Bay has a new Japanese pizzeria and that’s not a typo…

Yas Bay Waterfront has recently launched a slew of new taste experiences on our fair capital, and we’re doing our best to try them all. Purely for your benefit of course. We are nice like that.

And one of the new restaurants has a name we became familiar with while exploring the foodie haunts of Dubai’s D3 district, Akiba Dori. It’s a Japanese pizzeria, a kitchen concept that we at least admit seems to be the result of a random fusion food generator, but dismissing it as such is a mistake that would take time.

We’re here at the Pier 71 location on this bright but breezy winter afternoon, to see if the brand’s second wave can recreate the unique gastronomic magic of the original.

Space

Akiba Dori has a style all his own, eclectic and characterful, a hot mix of Atari pixels and neon Anime. We choose a table in the open-air seating area facing the water, behind us a separate bar divides the terrace-side facade of the place, we’re told it serves trendy mixology and licensed sips in the evening.

The menu

The main savory section of the menu is divided into “street food” and “pizza” categories. The street food offers a range of Osaka-style light bites – katsu sliders, tataki slices, salmon rice, wasabi prawns and rock prawns with spicy mayonnaise. We select tuna tataki (Dhs66) and wagyu gyoza (Dhs64).

Presentation is such an important part of dining theater these days, and the tuna tataki plays its part superbly. It’s sleek, precisely gripped with a chisel-cut fault line, and it rumbles with a sea meat flavor. The tataki is served with truffled soy, adding another choral line to the upper-tongue harmony.

And so on for the gyoza. You know that feeling, where you put something in your mouth and your brain goes “wait, we might have something here”, the olfactory dashboard lights up and you immediately fall mad and hopelessly in love with a bite of food.

This, dear reader, is what is happening at the moment. It’s a juicy culinary incantation of deliberate umami, and is only enhanced by smothering the pink-fleshed interior in the accompanying tangy sauce.

The pizza arrives, as we shyly stuff the last gyoza, like a gerbil, inside a cheek. Here, the pizzas are made with Japanese flour, and therefore, singularly light. It is a coincidence for us, because the order of the double starter is always a risky strategy.

We chose the truffle layers, which are sprinkled with Italian herbs, shimeji mushrooms and stracciatella (a kind of burrata dairy dish). This particular plate won’t replace our favorite pizza (a space still occupied by the Diavola 2.0) from Akiba Dori’s Wheelhouse, it’s a perfect demonstration of how Japanese and Italian foods blend together perfectly. Fire-cooked earthy carbs brush the forest musk from the mushrooms. The truffle-infused dollops of stracciatella are substantial (a little too much in our humble opinion) and offer a fresh leaf for the palate.

The verdict

When asked if this cross between east and west works, we direct you to the friendly condiment of spicy olive oil and soy sauce placed on each table. It is symbolic. Although born of very different food dynasties, they go hand in hand, arms stretched across the ocean. Akiba Dori makes the fusion of Japanese and Italian cuisine a manifest destiny.

Rating: A-

Yas Bay, Yas Island, open daily from noon to midnight. Tel: (04) 770 7949, @akibadori

Images: provided

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