Dubai’s brunch culture, for all its opulent excess, has long been a theatre of repetition. The white tablecloths, the dutiful jazz trio mangling an Adele ballad, the lukewarm sushi station winking at you with the faint smell of refrigeration – it’s a ritual so polished that it has become a parody of itself. So, when a Madrid-born bar, acclaimed as one of the World’s 50 Best, plants its flag in Business Bay and announces a Saturday brunch that pointedly discards the buffet, the bottomless rosé, and the stuffy seating charts, one leans in. It’s called Brunch Like No Other, and on 13 June, I went to discover whether the name was a provocation or a promise.
Arriving at The Opus by Omniyat is, in itself, an exercise in recalibrating expectations. Zaha Hadid’s deconstructivist masterpiece carves a void through the centre of the building, a liquid-shaped absence that makes the surrounding glass appear to melt into the Dubai sky. Inside, Salmon Guru unfolds across three distinct psychological landscapes: a tropical fever dream wrapped in 1960s cane and rattan, an electric Asian night market humming with neon and mischief, and a comic strip brought to life, where pop-art panels and oversized speech bubbles remind you that, here, even the walls possess a sense of humour. This is not a space designed for passive consumption; it is an immersive embrace that asks you to leave your inhibitions at the coat check, preferably next to someone’s Bottega Veneta pouch.
The brunch, set on an enclosed terrace, cleverly solves the challenge of June heat with integrated air conditioning that whispers rather than blasts, allowing guests to enjoy the sensation of being outdoors without the midday perspiration that typically transforms a linen shirt into a performance piece. Standing packages begin at AED 275, a figure that feels almost mischievous in a city where a single sushi roll and a flute of indeterminate bubbles can easily approach the same price. For those who prefer to lounge with a greater degree of nonchalance, sofa seating and Champagne upgrades rise to AED 675, placing the experience firmly in the Goldilocks zone between accessible indulgence and considered luxury. The format is fluid: pass-around bites replace the clichéd buffet scrum, while house music pulses at a tempo that suggests the afternoon harbours ambitions far beyond polite conversation.
I began with a cocktail whose name I will not reveal – partly because the theatre of its arrival is integral to the pleasure, and partly because describing a clarified, glowing liquid served with a theatrical puff of smoke feels rather like explaining a magic trick. Diego Cabrera, the alchemist behind the original Salmon Guru in Madrid, has long championed a philosophy in which mixology is less about alcohol than emotion. His drinks – at once whimsical and technically pristine – carry names such as Electric Kool-Aid and The Walking Dead, each one a miniature narrative in a glass. On a terrace populated by Gen Z tastemakers dressed in Jacquemus and millennial connoisseurs favouring understated Fear of God, the cocktails function as much as social currency as the watch on your wrist.
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By 5:30 p.m., the atmosphere shifts with the arrival of the main DJ, and the enclosed terrace becomes a dance floor that defies the sun’s stubborn presence. The after-brunch party, which continues until 8 p.m., is a masterclass in transforming afternoon hedonism into evening revelry without ever giving you the opportunity to check your phone for dinner reservations. House music, followed by something deeper and more urgent, fills the space. It is the sort of cultivated chaos that appears effortless but has clearly been engineered with the precision of a Swiss movement – appropriate, given that Cabrera’s accolades include a No. 23 ranking on the World’s 50 Best Bars 2024 list and the title of Best Bar in Spain.
What is genuinely refreshing about Brunch Like No Other is its self-awareness. It does not pretend to be a refined garden party for people who would rather be elsewhere. It acknowledges that a certain segment of Dubai’s luxury crowd has grown weary of performative grazing and Champagne flutes that seem to multiply like guilt. Instead, it offers a knowingly irreverent antidote: a standing, swaying, occasionally raucous affair where the only agenda is having a good time, and the only table you will miss is the one you were never assigned.
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As the terrace filled and the bassline thrummed through the soles of my loafers, I glanced towards a neighbouring sofa where a group of friends were arguing playfully over the provenance of a particularly surprising canapé. Nearby, a couple danced as though it were midnight rather than 6 p.m. on a Saturday. In the distance, beyond the glass, the Dubai Water Canal shimmered, entirely indifferent to our small rebellion. And for a few hours, the tired brunch script was gleefully torn apart and rewritten in neon ink.
Salmon Guru Dubai’s new ritual takes place at The Opus by Omniyat in Business Bay. Brunch Like No Other runs every Saturday from 1:30 p.m., followed by DJ-led after-parties from 5:30 p.m. until 8 p.m. À la carte dining continues afterwards for those not yet ready to surrender the evening. For a city that delights in reinvention, this one feels timely, quietly subversive, and entirely worthy of a standing ovation – or, at the very least, a reservation.
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