Dubai: When Chef Hisao Ueda arrived in Dubai in 2011, Japanese Wagyu was still a rarity.
“It was not famous in Dubai, Wagyu, Japanese beef,” he remembers. “Fifteen years before, import was difficult. Price was also high.
“Now many restaurants use Japanese beef because import is very easy,” he says. “Not only Wagyu beef, fish, vegetables, Japanese ingredients — now easily available in Dubai.”
In fact, he sources directly from Tokyo's Toyosu Market, with ingredients flown to Dubai daily, on Emirates.
A year before Ueda arrived, Chef Takashi Namekata had landed in the same city. He was 27, from Yokohama, and wanted to see what existed outside Japan.
“Dubai gave me the opportunity,” he says. “I was still young. I decided to challenge myself.”
Neither knew the Dubai-it journey their careers would take in Dubai.
Ueda had started cooking at home in Hokkaido, Japan, when he was around 10 years old, helping his mother.
“Fried rice, fried noodles, cooking rice, miso soup,” he says.
His mother was a good cook. So was his father. Asked what made a child that age interested enough to keep returning to the kitchen, Ueda searches his memory.
“I don't remember but my mother makes food very good,” he says. “That's why I, too, wanted to.”
At 16, he began working part-time at a hamburger restaurant. Culinary school in Hokkaido followed. Then came a French restaurant, two years of French cooking, a year of Italian and a year of Chinese. He was trying things out.
“French cuisine gave a good feeling, but Italian was also interesting, Chinese, too, and then Japanese. That's why I took different paths.”
Eventually, he returned to where it began - Japanese cooking.
“My mother makes Japanese,” he says. “That's why I go back to the Japanese way.”
Chef Takashi Namekata's entry into a professional kitchen was a lot less structured.
He was also 16, but he wasn't thinking about becoming a chef. He wanted some pocket money. His first job at a small local restaurant in Yokohama was making deliveries.
“I started as a delivery boy,” he says. “Then slowly, slowly, they started asking me to help in the kitchen.”
He learnt to cook. Wanting to learn more, he moved to a Kaiseki restaurant and stayed for six years. There was no culinary school. Kaiseki is a traditional Japanese multi-course dining tradition built around seasonal ingredients and carefully composed dishes.
“I learnt all the basic cooking — how to make Dashi or stock, how to make the sauce, how to cut fish, how to keep fish fresh. Very basic things but was the most important foundation.”
He was following the Japanese totem - practise makes perfect.
It was from there that a former boss connected him with the Japanese owner of Kisaku restaurant in Deira, Dubai, who was looking for a chef. Namekata took the chance.
Then came the challenge. “I needed to study how to make the same flavours in Dubai compared with Japan.”
Namekata had learnt to work with fish through Kaiseki cooking. In Dubai, he began to concentrate much more closely on sushi and seafood, taking techniques learnt in Japan and applying them to what was available. “It helped me evolve as a chef,” he says. It was one reason he wanted to stay.
A year later Ueda arrived at Kisaku. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan had coincided with a difficult period for work and business. An executive chef from Hokkaido at Kisaku spoke to him about Dubai, and Ueda took a chance.
What struck him after arriving was not only what was available in the kitchen. It was how he was regarded outside it. “In Dubai, a chef is respected.”
For a man who had been cooking professionally since his teens, the reaction from diners mattered.
“Dubai guest said, ‘This one is very delicious.’ My mind is evolving. Customer said good things to me. Of course, I grow more, make more new good food.”
The international customers were an education for a man who had mostly spent his life in Hokkaido.
“Many nationalities in Dubai,” Ueda says. “Indian people like this taste. Europeans a certain taste. All are different.”
“Opened the mind,” he tells Emirates 24/7.
Namekata's path in Dubai was a little more circuitous. He spent two years at Kisaku before moving with Chef Ueda to Tomo at Raffles in 2012. Then, he went back to Japan. He stayed for two years.
“I was still young,” he says. “I wanted to go back to Japan to get more knowledge, techniques, discover more new things to learn — to continue the chef life in Dubai.”
In 2015, he returned to Dubai and Tomo, eventually as executive chef. By 2021, he felt he had reached another turning point.
Tomo was a large, family friendly Japanese restaurant. Namekata wanted to push his work further.
“I had enough experience,” he says. “I started thinking to elevate my work.”
By then, he and Ueda had known each other for a decade.
They had worked together at Kisaku, moved with the team to Raffles and later followed separate professional paths. In the summer of 2021, they came together again with a Japanese owner and investor.
Those conversations led to TakaHisa, now located at Banyan Tree Dubai on Bluewaters Island.
The name carries the two chefs: Taka and Hisa. Namekata leads the seafood and sushi side; Ueda, the Wagyu.
Whose idea was the restaurant?
“All of us,” Ueda says. “We met each other and discussed, ‘Let's do something we couldn't do earlier.’”
One of those things was to present Omakase as they understood it in Japan.
“In Japan, the fine-dining restaurant is usually a counter and Omakase style because chef wants to use the best ingredients,” Ueda says. “Japan has four seasons, so this month and next month, the best ingredient is different. Chef wants to choose what he wants to cook. The menu depends on the chef, using the seasonal menu. There is no fixed menu. Chef chooses the best ingredients.”
And there was a bigger purpose behind bringing that form of dining to Dubai.
“To introduce Japanese food culture, Omakase is the best way,” Ueda adds.
Today, TakaHisa is included among the Michelin Selected restaurants in the 2026 Michelin Guide Dubai. And the duo now oversee an expanding restaurant group with four dining outlets: TakaHisa, TakaHisa Downtown, Ramen Hisa and the newly opened teppanyaki restaurant Taiga, with Sushi Taka also in the pipeline. Their latest achievement is Ramen Hisa’s inclusion in the Michelin Guide Dubai 2026 in the Selected category.
But when the chefs talk about what Dubai gave them, the conversation focuses on possibilities. Asked if he believes he would have had the same professional growth had he stayed in Japan, Namekata says no.
“Dubai offers more chance for me to grow,” he says. “It is very open-minded. Japan, especially the culinary industry, is very closed. Japanese cuisine is very structured.”
Dubai required him to think differently.
“Dubai is very open and mixed culture. I need to cook for many different nationalities. Everyone has a different palate, but I have to make one recipe for everyone. That flexible mind is only achieved in Dubai.”
Ueda talks about that education through Wagyu.
“Wagyu is popular now, but the knowledge of Wagyu is still not enough,” he says. “So many people think Wagyu beef, even Wagyu beef from Australia, is the same. But it is completely different.”
Even within Japan, he explains, Wagyu is not a single product.
“Hokkaido has Hokkaido Wagyu, and Kobe is Hyogo Prefecture. Hyogo Prefecture also has Kobe Wagyu, Tajima Wagyu and other Wagyu — all different,” he says. “Kobe beef is one of the Japanese Wagyu brands.”
For Ueda, that distinction matters. He wants diners not simply to eat Japanese ingredients, but to understand them. He speaks of being an ambassador for “authentic, pure Japanese food culture”. Dubai has recognised that expertise. Both chefs have been awarded UAE Golden Visas for their work in the culinary arts: Ueda for his expertise as a Wagyu master and Namekata as a sushi master.
For Ueda, the recognition carried particular weight.
“I felt more responsibility and a bit of pressure,” he says. “But at the same time, I was excited.”
And the diners are part of it.
“Dubai is the hub city, and also the tourism city,” Ueda explains. “So, here in Dubai, outside of Japan, I do authentic Japanese cuisine. Diners come, and then they go back to their countries.
“I enjoy cooking authentic Japanese for so many different nationalities, which does not happen in Japan. Maybe one Omakase counter, 10 guests. They are all from different countries.”
Dubai became personal for Ueda, too.
His future wife, Mika, was the restaurant manager when he arrived at Kisaku. She had already lived in Dubai for several years.
“It was very natural,” she says. “We work in hospitality, very long hours, and we saw each other very often.” They married here. She’s also a partner in the team.
Their business has expanded beyond the original TakaHisa, with both men now working as group executive chefs across its restaurant concepts. Their plans extend outside the UAE.
“I brought authentic Japanese technique and cuisine to Dubai,” Namekata says. “Now this is my base. Dubai is my home now.”
And when he considers what happened between the 27-year-old who arrived from Yokohama and the chef he became here, he smiles.
“Dubai made us grow in a different environment from Japan,” he says. “We had more and more chances to introduce Japanese cuisine. We really appreciate Dubai. We really like it.” Ueda agrees.
------
Anupa Kurian is a Dubai-based senior editor and writer with nearly 28 years in journalism. She has been a food editor. Anupa writes across gastronomy, culture, health, environment and the people who make a city what it is, drawn to stories that reveal themselves in the details.