Grégoire Berger:
The Spring Collection 2026

About the Restaurant

Before Dubai became a skyline, it was a city of water.

Pearl divers, fishermen, traders, wooden boats, salt, patience, and the daily negotiation between people and sea — this is the older memory that sits beneath KRAKEN. Not nostalgia. Not theatre for its own sake. Something more ancient, more instinctive: the belief that the sea is not a backdrop, but a force.

KRAKEN is Grégoire Berger’s first independent restaurant in Dubai, opened in 2025 after a defining chapter at Ossiano. Conceived under the philosophy “Where Smoke Remembers the Sea,” it explores the intersection of locality, fire, fermentation, and the marine world — a mature, elemental expression of Berger’s evolution as a chef and storyteller.

The restaurant is built as a contemporary seafood grill, where fire-led cooking, premium seafood, and elevated dining meet above the city skyline. Its luxury is not imported distance. It is proximity: the fish, the farms, the heat, the city, the Gulf — all of it pulled closer to the plate.

At KRAKEN, Berger’s vision is carried daily by Executive Chef Robin Höfer and the kitchen team, translating the restaurant’s philosophy of fire, locality, fermentation and the sea into each service. This gives the restaurant a living rhythm: Grégoire Berger as the author of the world, and Robin Höfer as one of the key culinary voices bringing that world to the plate.

Spring Inspiration

For Nature’s Premiere, the spring inspiration is introduced through KRAKEN’s kitchen by Executive Chef Robin Höfer, whose menu translates the restaurant’s philosophy into seven focused movements: oyster, tuna, cobia, crab, octopus, kingfish and wild strawberry.

The restaurant’s own Spring Collection submission says it simply: “At Kraken, we take our inspiration from the region and its surroundings.” The team fishes, works closely with farmers in Dubai, and creates dishes rooted in locality, sustainability and seasonality.

This is the new chapter of KRAKEN expressed in spring: the sea as source, the region as discipline, and flavour as emotional architecture.

The opening oyster is paired with olive roulette, wakame and samphire — salinity layered against bitterness, iodine and coastal green. Yellowtail tuna becomes “pizza,” sharpened by piquillo and pistachio. Cobia is served with ao shiso and calamansi, moving between Japanese freshness and citrus brightness.

Then the menu becomes more atmospheric. Crabuccino brings Tom Kha, tapioca and curry leaf oil — a dish that sounds almost playful, but carries the precision of a kitchen that understands how comfort, perfume, shellfish, spice and texture can become theatrical without becoming loud. Octopus tacos follow with seaweed mole and tomato chutney, pulling the marine world into heat, smoke and acidity.

The dry-aged kingfish is perhaps the clearest declaration of the restaurant’s identity: kingfish, herbal sauce, kale. It is minimal in wording, but it suggests everything KRAKEN wants to defend — ageing, patience, Gulf waters, restraint, and the refusal to hide product behind unnecessary ornament.

The closing wild strawberry with yogurt and basil returns the menu to brightness. Not grand pastry. Not theatrical excess. A clean final note: fruit, acidity, cream, herb.

This is a spring menu with salt in its bones. It does not chase delicacy as prettiness. It finds delicacy inside strength: shell, scale, smoke, citrus, herbs, flame and the sudden sweetness of fruit after the sea.

Spring Menu Gallery

A visual journey through Grégoire Berger’s Taste of KRAKEN for Nature’s Premiere:The Spring Collection 2026.