At Izakaya Palm Hills, Cairo’s first Nikkei restaurant, the space was already alive before the food even arrived. Lanterns throwing shadows across velvety interiors, soft music threading beneath the hum of conversation, and autumn air billowing enough bite to keep you present. Izakaya has always been Cairo’s playground for fusion, but this night was something else — a meeting of two chefs whose culinary maps stretched far beyond the city.

Martin Rodriguez, the man behind Izakaya’s heartbeat, has spent seventeen years gathering dialects of food. Lima. Santiago. Tokyo. Every plate layered with the lessons of a career lived across continents. At the core, though, is something disarmingly simple: a childhood memory of his grandmother at the market, herbs clutched in her hand, teaching him that food begins with earth, not kitchen. In Cairo, he approaches Egyptian ingredients with the same instinct.
Beside him, Solemann Haddad, the chef who has made Moonrise one of Dubai’s most compelling dining rooms. At twenty-seven, already Michelin’s Young Chef of the Year, his food is equal parts precision and boldness. French-Syrian by heritage, Dubai-born, Tokyo-trained — his identity resists borders, and so does his cooking. He calls it “Dubai cuisine,” but it’s also a declaration: a vocabulary forged from the city’s layered flavours, honed through technique, driven by curiosity.

As the courses rolled out, glasses filled, emptied, and filled again. The staff narrated with the intimacy of insiders, pulling guests closer into the story behind each plate. People shifted seats, tables blurred, strangers leaned in like old friends. What began with structure loosened into something warmer, more conspiratorial — a family table disguised as fine dining.
And framing it all was Palm Hills — Cairo Food Week’s largest district partner — not just lending Izakaya a stage, but insisting on a bigger story. Hospitality here isn’t measured in square meters or facades. It’s in atmosphere. In moments where a suburban district becomes a crossroads. In spaces where food, music, and story collapse into one another. Izakaya proved the point: Palm Hills isn’t building neighbourhoods, it’s building culture.
By the end, the flavours had faded but the sensation held. Cairo as stage. Palm Hills as host. The table as map. And somewhere between Lima and Dubai, between memory and invention, the night reminded everyone in the room that heritage is not still life. It moves. It bends. And sometimes it returns — not as nostalgia, but as something entirely new on the plate in front of you.