After the success of CLAP, fellow Beirut-born restaurant and lounge Amelia has landed in Dubai and we’re far from complaining. The Paris of the Middle East knows how to party and we’re down for the Lebanese capital’s rollicking nightlife of Mar Mikhael to course through Downtown Dubai.
Having opened in summer 2022 at the Address Sky View, Amelia’s Dubai outpost has a sensational interior style that’s a novelty for Dubai: steampunk-chic. This edgy aesthetic is a first for Dubai, a city where Instagrammable nightlife venues are nine out of ten times opulent. Amelia understands the Dubai brief and blends industrial machinery with a certain amount of glamour and sophistication. In Beirut, the OG Amelia’s venue pulls off this aesthetic to the tee, as its set in a 500-year-old building.
So, how does it manage a retro look in 50 years young Dubai?
Here’s how: a vintage-style biplane’s massive front propeller roosts dramatically above the bar. The DJ booth is cleverly hidden away behind a faux piped organ and framed by a dramatic gothic archway.
Burnished metal and leather accents cover the high chairs of the downstairs dining area by the bar, which is flanked by wooden flooring and cosy booths furnished with leather couches.
Head upstairs, and a more glamorous dining room lit by LED archways and industrial compass-like elements hanging from the ceiling, and plush velvet chairs line up against the tables.
What to eat, drink, and do at Amelia
Once your eyes have drunk in the sheer grandeur of the venue, you can do some actual drinking – the menu boats innovative mixology, so expect clever cocktails that have been crafted with the precision of a chemical experiment.
It’s not all liquid diet. The elaborate menu’s got plenty of bite and plenty to bite featuring dishes from Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei cuisine with hints of Mediterranean elements.
You’ll definitely want to fuel up on food. If the music the venue’s resident DJs are going to be belting out is anything to go by, you’ll be footloose and dancing for hours on end to genres such as lounge, deep tech, Afro and progressive house music.
Amelia has wasted no time teaching Dubai how to have a rocking night out. So, are you ready to come fly with them?