Food & Beverage

Ouma

Dubai, UAE

Raw sushi and a hot kitchen in one menu library — closing with giant sushi inside the Dubai Frame.

Art Direction
Food Photography
Campaign Film
Social Content

The Brief

A full menu library for a Dubai Japanese restaurant — sushi and maki alongside a hot kitchen of curry, noodles, sizzling beef and tempura — shot so that raw fish and a smoking iron plate could sit in one body of work without either register cancelling the other.

The Approach

Raw and cooked want opposite light.

Nigiri and toro need a low, hard key that holds the sheen on the fish and keeps the grains of rice separate; a sizzling plate needs somewhere for its smoke to go, and smoke only reads against a dark ground. The menu also spans two rooms — a near-black studio table and a sunlit terrace where palm shadows fall across the stone — so one set had to admit both without looking like two different restaurants. Almost everything is caught mid-motion: sesame still in the air, soy leaving the pot, a roll under the knife.

What we did

The execution.

Art Direction

Two registers, one house. A low-key black set for the knife work and the raw fish; a daylight terrace pass for the way the food is actually eaten.

Food Photography

The menu end to end: sushi and maki, toro nigiri under caviar, tempura-fried rolls under spicy mayo and unagi glaze, katsu curry, chilli garlic noodles, sizzling beef on iron, prawn tempura, crunchy salmon salad and sliced beef over fried rice — plus one overhead flat-lay on a teal sweep that carries the whole menu in a single frame.