Amaru occupies a dramatic space within Souk Madinat Jumeirah and takes its name from a double-headed serpent dragon believed to travel between worlds. Over the course of our dinner, the restaurant appeared to move through several worlds of its own. Cosmic projections swept across the towering columns, revealing ancient carvings one moment and electric blue constellations the next. From our high table, my plus one and I watched the imagery grow increasingly vivid as the evening progressed, heightening the mysticism of the circular dining room each time we looked up.
Music was intricately woven into the experience, with a DJ playing throughout the night from a booth overlooking the room. Providing the soundtrack on Saturday was the brilliantly named DJ Tough Guy, whose upbeat set gave dinner the energy of a proper night out. The changing projections and the music kept the room animated from our first course to the last.
We tried the Chef’s Signature Journey, a multi-course sharing menu priced at AED 950 per person and available for a minimum of two guests. Designed to introduce diners to the full breadth of Amaru’s Latin American cooking, it moves through cold and hot starters, seafood and Wagyu mains, accompaniments and two desserts. The dishes draw from Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Colombia, giving first-time diners the opportunity to explore far more of the menu than they could reasonably order à la carte.
Hot & Cold Starters
The meal was served in stages, with cold starters before moving through hot plates, mains and desserts. Staff introduced each dish as it reached the table and short pauses between sections gave us time to enjoy each part of the menu without losing momentum.
We started with Guac-Guac from Mexico, made with fresh avocado, heirloom tomatoes and mixed totopos. It was a fresh, generous opening, though the Pacific Gold ceviche that followed quickly claimed my full attention. Wild sea bass and calamari were served in tiger’s milk with rocoto, which brought a glorious hit of heat to the broth. I love ceviche and have eaten many versions of it but this was the best I have ever had.
The remaining cold starters maintained that standard. Kamchatka king crab was paired with Peruvian yellow potato, avocado and ají amarillo, while scallops from Tierra del Fuego came with shiso, scallop emulsion and yuzu pearls. The crab was rich and beautifully presented and the scallops had a freshness that worked very well with the citrus notes of the yuzu.
The hot starters opened with pão de queijo, a Brazilian cheese bread made here with mozzarella and Parmesan, then finished with topinambur gel and truffle pearls. Each piece was perfectly baked and tasted exceptionally fresh.
The Amaru salad was one of the evening’s more unexpected highlights. Baby spinach, persimmon, avocado, Manchego, kiwi and roasted asparagus came together in a combination that was fresh, slightly sweet and full of texture. On a menu containing king crab, scallops and Wagyu, a salad could easily disappear into the background, yet we kept returning to it between the richer dishes. A chef is doing something right when the greens inspire this much enthusiasm.
Wagyu anticucho followed, with tenderloin skewers marinated in ají panca and served with rocoto and chimichurri. The meat was tender and deeply flavourful but it was the smoke from the grill that defined the dish and introduced the fire-led cooking that would continue into the mains.
Mains
The Patagonian Ancestral brought us back to seafood with Chilean sea bass cooked over fire and served with white miso, anticuchera, coriander potato foam and quinoa. The fish was beautifully cooked, with the miso and anticuchera adding savoury depth while the foam kept the dish light. It was rich without being heavy and easily held its own after the Wagyu anticucho.
Amaru then brought out a 300-gram chargrilled Wagyu rib-eye with yuzu ponzu, Maras salt and chimichurri. The beef had everything I wanted from a steak cooked over fire: a deeply charred exterior, a tender centre and enough smokiness to stand up to the sauces.
The accompaniments were given just as much consideration. Chargrilled asparagus came with shiso cress, pickled white radish, asparagus purée and tenkatsu, which added a welcome crunch. The mashed potatoes were folded with thyme and roasted corn, while the yuca introduced us to crisp, charcoal-cooked cassava served with a rocoto dip. The latter was my favourite of the three, largely because of the smoky red pepper sauce.
Dessert
Dessert began with Amaru’s churros, fried until golden and served with slow-cooked dulce de leche and a bold 75 per cent dark chocolate sauce. They were crisp, indulgent and especially good with the dark chocolate, whose bitterness balanced the sweetness of the dough and dulce de leche.
Then came the dulce de leche fondant, the dessert of my dreams. Breaking into its warm centre and pulling the molten dulce de leche through the cold banana and passion-fruit sorbet would already have been enough, but underneath the sorbet was a layer of popping candy that crackled and burst with every spoonful.
Warmth gave way to cold, sweetness met sharp fruit and the soft fondant was interrupted by sudden flashes of fizz and crunch. Each sensation amplified the next until the dessert began to resemble the closing bars of a song, swelling higher and higher towards its crescendo before, boom, everything faded to black. It was a sublime finale to a meal that had spent two and a half hours building towards it.
