Grill your own food at Sumbiya

Walking into Radisson Blu's corridor-shaped, intimate Sumbiya feels like entering a small eatery in a Tokyo side street. Wood and pebbles abound, booths and low-sunken tables make up the seats and the air is filled with the delectable smell of freshly grilled food wafting up from every table. Every table? Yes - this is Dubai's only yakinuku restaurant, a Japanese tradition that means each table has a sunken coal grill in the centre of it on which you can cook up whichever type of meat you choose. It's different, and we like it! After oohing and ahhing over the extensive menu, and checking out the all-you-can-eat buffet of fresh meats, seafood, salads and sweet treats, we opted to go à la carte (mostly because we knew if we unleashed ourselves on the buffet we'd eat our week's worth of calories in one go). The restaurant boasts both Korean and Japanese dishes, so we started with nibbles from both - Kim chi, a tangy, peppery cabbage dish that's normally served as an accompaniment to meat (so we saved it at the table to add to the later dishes), and Edamame, warm steamed green soybeans that are so delicious they only need a touch of salt. After that we welcomed a steaming bowl of Kim chi soup that had a touch of spice and an assortment of fresh seafood thrown in. This was one of the stars of the meal and the rich, clear broth is now firmly on our list of foods we'd travel to Deira for. It was now time for the main event and the yakinuku grill was fired up - which also acted like a heater in the middle of the table, explaining why the restaurant's temperature was at pashmina-wearing levels of cold when we first walked in. The tradition of yaki (grilled) nuku (meat) grills began in Japan in 1871 after a rather odd thousand-year ban on eating red meat was lifted by the Emperor - and after generations of prohibition, grilling meats became a craze. Despite the fact it's red meat we have to thank for such a restaurant, we were most tempted by the seafood platter and decided to share it, and were pleased when a platter of lobster, prawns, scallops, salmon and more came out. We were a little nervous about using the grill, asking the waiter how long each type of seafood should go on for, but after a while we like to think we mastered the perfect cooking time for a scallop, and the ideal technique for searing salmon. The fish was all fresh, and the meal was remarkably full of flavour considering the only seasoning we had were a few Asian dipping sauces.