One year ago, Kima Izakaya opened with a very simple idea: to build the kind of restaurant its founders would genuinely want to go to themselves.
A place where food quality came first, the music was a little too loud, the service felt genuine and guests didn’t need to question their life choices when the bill arrived.
After spending most of their careers in hospitality, founders Tastil Gonzalez Moure and Pawel Kazanowski realised they kept having the same conversation. There were plenty of great restaurants in Dubai. Plenty of beautiful restaurants. Plenty of expensive restaurants.
But where was the place they would actually choose to go on their day off?
The kind of place where they could sit for hours, order far too much food, chat to the table next to them over the soundtrack of a busy dinner service and leave already planning when they would come back.
That’s the restaurant they wanted to build.
Not because they thought they had discovered some revolutionary idea. Quite the opposite. They simply believed great hospitality has always been about the same things: great food, community and making people feel welcome.
So they focused on the things that mattered most: better fish rather than nicer walls, better ingredients rather than bigger marketing budgets, and better hospitality rather than shinier fit-outs.
The goal was to create a place with soul. A neighbourhood izakaya where people could drop in for lunch, stay for dinner or sit at the counter with a bowl of donburi and a cold drink without breaking the bank. One year later, that original idea hasn’t changed.
Guest favourites like Beef Tataki, Yellowtail Jalapeño, Salmon Aburi and Carpaccio still sit alongside the comfort food classics at the heart of every good izakaya; donburis, gyoza, takoyaki and dishes designed to be shared, argued over and occasionally fought for around the table.
More importantly, a community has formed around Kima.
The regulars who come every week. The guests who recommend it to friends. The suppliers who believed in the concept from the beginning. And the team who care about Kima as much as the founders do, because they know it’s theirs too.
As Pawel and Tastil explain: “The best meals we’ve had in our lives weren’t always in the fanciest restaurants. They were in places with soul, personality and people who genuinely cared. That’s what we wanted Kima Izakaya to be.”
The first year has been incredible, and Kima is only just getting started.
