A large venue that offers indoor table and booth seating as well as al fresco seatingnear the Dubai Fountains, Tanuki has a cool interactive robot to greet customers at the door, where he speaks and even has a menu for patrons to peruse before entering. The venue is relaxed and casual, and has lots of seating, indoors and outside near the Dubai Fountains. There are some lovely large cherry blossom trees dotting the area, as well as an open kitchen. It boasts of a Pan-Asian menu with the emphasis on Chinese and Japanese food cooked fresh.

We were served edamame and miso soup, loaded in tofu. We also tucked into Surai, or the dynamite shrimp, coated with a delicious creamy mayo based sauce.  Our salad was the EbiSando—a fresh salad made from chard leaves, shrimp, avocado, and a unagi sauce made this a really refreshing salad.

Our sushi and maki rolls consisted of their bestsellers: Tempura Nori, a crispy on the outside, saucy on the insideto the massive variety of sushi and sashi/maki rolls on offer, we opted for the Arigato—the shrimp, arugula, avocado, cucumber, and unagi sauce which was homemade. It was creamy, smooth and probably the best sushi we have ever eaten. The TanukiShinsei was another signature maki we loved.

And just when we thought we had tried every kind of sushi/maki on the plant; here comes Tempura nori which was fried and crispy, with a warm crab mix avocado, tempura, yuzu, and unagi sauce. I felt like I was in a whimsical world of endless amounts of delicious sushi.

Our mains consisted of some soul-warming dishes like seafood tyahan—a seafood fried rice with vegetables, beef teriyaki—which was beef tenderloin with stir-friend vegetables served with steamed rice, and the spicy lamina noodles—egg noodles with shrimp and chicken, with a spicy Korean sauce, mixed vegetables and furikake.

After so much delicious food, we then just had to try some East-West fusion styled desserts. One was the KuroEru—a sweet kiwi maki with banana, pineapple, and strawberries nestled in between cream cheese and almonds, as well as the luscious mango and peach cheesecake. Both desserts were balanced well in terms of sweetness and were devoured very quickly.

Visit: www.tanukidubai.com