The Travel Critic

We’ve all been there.

You trek down a glorious stretch of coastline, lured by turquoise water and the promise of a lazy afternoon, only to find the same tired formula waiting at the end of it. A beach shack at the back. Sunbeds at the front priced somewhere between “luxury experience” and “small family hatchback”. Cocktails sold at ten times the cost of the identical bottle sitting in the mini-market thirty metres away. And behind it all, a restaurant serving a parade of yellow food: yellow chips, yellow chicken, yellow burgers, yellow disappointment.

It’s the sort of place where culinary ambition goes to die.

Amoodi is not that place.

The first clue is that somebody has clearly cared. The restaurant itself is beautiful: stylish, elegant and noticeably more sophisticated than anything else around it. Not in an ostentatious way. It simply feels like a place designed by people who understand that a beach restaurant doesn’t have to look as though it was assembled from driftwood and regret.

Then there is the service. Beach restaurants usually operate on the assumption that you’ve already paid for the view, so why bother with hospitality? Not here. The staff move with the confidence and attention you’d expect from the latest fashionable opening in Soho. They’re warm, professional and somehow manage to make everything feel effortless.

But let’s be honest. Nobody remembers the chairs.

The food is where Amoodi really separates itself.

Sushi.

Good sushi.

I can scarcely believe I’m writing those words about a beach restaurant.

Sushi is one of those things that is alarmingly easy to get wrong. It requires restraint, confidence and ingredients that have no place being hidden away at the back of a beach bar. Yet somehow Amoodi pulls it off beautifully. Fresh, balanced, precise and genuinely delicious.

And it doesn’t stop there.

The standout for me was the 24-hour pork belly, which is, quite frankly, some of the best pork belly I’ve eaten anywhere. Rich without being heavy, meltingly tender but still possessing enough texture to remind you that cooking is a craft and not merely a process. It is the sort of dish that silences a table for a moment because everyone is too busy eating.

Throw in cocktails that are actually worth ordering, rather than merely tolerating, and a view of the sun slipping behind the mountains as the sky turns impossible shades of gold and pink, and something rather special happens.

You arrive expecting a beach bar.

You leave wondering how on earth one of the best meals of your holiday happened to be served a few metres from the sea.

Amoodi isn’t just a great beach restaurant.

It’s a great restaurant that happens to be on a beach.