Before the first house in Dubai there were months of watching how the city eats, when, and with whom.
The easy way to open abroad is to copy the house that works at home and wait. The group has seen that fail too many times, from the outside, to try it.
The hour the city eats
Dubai does not keep the hours of Cancún or of Madrid. Dinner starts late and runs later, weekends fall on different days, the summer empties the terraces and the winter fills them. A menu, a staff rota and a purchasing plan built for another city fail here in the first month.
We look at the building, the neighbourhood and the hour the city eats.
Three brands, not one
That is why three houses are going and not one: Osaka, Ilios and Sra. Tanaka. Each answers a different occasion, and each arrives with its own kitchen team and is run by the group. The office in Dubai works alongside the ones in Mexico City and Nassau, so the city is not learned from a distance.
The rest is what the group has always done: open, listen for a season and adjust without losing the spine of the house.
