Jun’s, the multi-award-winning Downtown Dubai restaurant, has launched a new 10-course tasting menu by Chef Kelvin Cheung. Priced at AED 560 per person, it draws on his Chinese heritage, North American upbringing, classical training and life in the Middle East. A full vegetarian tasting menu is available for AED 490 per person, with its own interpretation of every course.
The menu travels through Belgium, Chicago, Hong Kong, Mexico, the Philippines and Palestine, following Chef Kelvin’s memories. Some courses return to the food he grew up eating, while others start from a person, a place or a small detail that stayed with him. Together they tell a story of family, resourcefulness and nostalgia, and of the cultures behind his Third Culture Cooking.
The Courses
The meal opens with Pani Puri, one of Jun’s best-known signatures, here with lobster, tamarind, Macanese sauce and agua. It sets the tone for a menu that moves easily between familiar flavours and surprising pairings.
Sea Bream recalls Chef Kelvin’s first cooking job in Belgium, at a restaurant with its own fish pond. When a guest placed an order, he would catch the fish, butcher it in the open kitchen and cook it in front of diners, turning the bones into a fumet finished with butter. Today’s version serves dry-aged sea bream with whipped bone broth butter made from the fish bones, pickled grapes and gamtae seaweed. It reflects an early lesson: respect the whole ingredient and waste as little as possible.
Fun Cheung is a playful nod to his surname and to cheung fun, one of his favourite dim sum dishes. Rice noodles are made in-house, as thin and delicate as possible, and paired with amaebi (Japanese sweet shrimp) and a house-aged soy sauce infused with coriander stems, ginger and garlic. House-made youtiao adds the crunch he always wanted in shrimp cheung fun.
Pequod’s Deep Dish Pizza goes back to his Chicago childhood. What he loved most was the dark, crisp edge where cheese, tomato and drippings caramelised against the pan. That becomes sourdough focaccia with fresh mozzarella, cheese foam and lacto-fermented tomatoes, served over a concentrated “pizza fond”. Guests tear the focaccia by hand and drag it through everything, recreating the pleasure of the pan’s caramelised remnants.
Mama’s Dolma Elotes begins with a promise years in the making. Chef Kelvin’s wife grew up eating tamales every Christmas in Las Vegas and had long asked him to make them. After tasting Chef Salam Daqqaq’s dolmas, he saw in the grape leaf and rice the tamales he still owed her. The dish wraps Chinese-style glutinous rice and house-made Wagyu longanisa in a grape leaf, with Hokkaido scallop, elote purée and a braising liquid inspired by Mexican tortilla soup. Crispy longanisa adds texture, and a smoky oil made from charred leftover corn husks continues the menu’s careful approach to waste. It blends Middle Eastern, Mexican, Chinese and Filipino references, but at heart it is a husband finally making his wife her Christmas tamales.
Funions is an unapologetically playful take on a favourite North American snack. A miniature onion latke and crisp onion ring are layered with butter-poached king crab, sour cream and onion sauce, scallion oil and fresh ikura. Several expressions of onion recreate the salty crunch of the original, while the crab and ikura add sweetness and briny depth.
Chilaquiles in K-Town brings Mexican and Chinese comfort-food references together in a tortilla hot-and-sour soup with masa dumpling, lobster and quail egg.
Mapo Tofu closes the savoury courses. Chef Kelvin ate it several times a week growing up, a practical family meal with plenty of tofu and sauce, a little meat and enough spice and umami to keep everyone reaching for more rice. At Jun’s it becomes the centrepiece, with tofu made fresh to order, claypot rice, Wagyu mapo gravy, beef tenderloin and grilled Omani prawn. The gravy gets its depth from Jun’s house-fermented bean paste, made with edamame, chickpeas, black beans, three types of chilli and ginger, and aged for three and a half years. The prawn is brushed with koji sambal and topped with a crisp typhoon shelter-style crumble inspired by Hong Kong’s fishing culture. For all its detail, the dish stays true to its source: a little meat, lots of tofu and sauce, and enough flavour to demand more rice.
Keri Chaat joins two summer memories from opposite sides of the world. Eating raw mango chaat on the streets of Bombay, Chef Kelvin was taken straight back to Chicago, where fruit vendors cycled through the neighbourhood cutting fresh fruit to order and seasoning it with Tajín, chilli and lime. The same balance of sour, salt, heat and spice appeared in both places. At Jun’s, the idea becomes a raw mango sorbet coated in house-made chaat masala, served with puffed rice tossed in ghee and spices for crunch.
Palestinian Olive Oil is the final plated dessert. It began at home, when Chef Kelvin’s wife started buying olive oil from an older Palestinian woman. They loved it so much that they bought it in ever larger quantities, both to stock their kitchen and to support its maker. On the menu, the oil becomes ice cream, paired with olive caramel, dark chocolate ganache and a freshly fried churro, with a last pour of the oil to bring back its fruitiness and gentle bitterness.
Petit Fours are a collection of Chef Kelvin’s favourite “snackies.” A date and caviar tart uses salinity to balance the sweetness of the dates he has come to appreciate in the Middle East. Ma Lai Goh, a steamed dim sum sponge cake and one of the hardest recipes he learned in his father’s kitchen, is made with sourdough discard and brown sugar, slowly fermented, steamed and filled with salted duck egg yolk custard. Jun’s gummies, a fortune cookie and a brown butter chocolate chip cookie complete the selection.
The Vegetarian Menu
The AED 490 vegetarian menu is built with the same care and storytelling rather than as a set of substitutions. Highlights include:
- Pani Puri with mushroom in place of lobster
- Melon replacing the sea bream, with whipped kombu butter, pickled grapes and gamtae seaweed
- Fun Cheung with king oyster mushroom
- Mama’s Dolma Elotes with hearts of palm and walnut crumble
- Funions with jackfruit and ponzu pearls
- Chilaquiles in K-Town with paneer instead of lobster
- A vegetarian Mapo Tofu served with pumpkin and typhoon shelter eggplant
A Personal Menu
The new tasting menu shows Jun’s approach at its most personal. It finds meaning in the overlooked edges of a pizza pan, a family meal designed to stretch the groceries, a Christmas request from his wife, and an ingredient that links his Dubai home to a Palestinian producer. Each course stands alone, but together they form an intimate account of the people, places and flavours behind his cooking.
For a more compact option, Jun’s also offers Short Story Volume 4, which features a selection of dishes from the full tasting menu.
Chef Kelvin Cheung’s Tasting Menu at Jun’s: Details
- Location: Jun’s, Downtown Dubai
- Tasting menu: AED 560 per person
- Vegetarian tasting menu: AED 490 per person
- Availability: Daily, with no prior booking required
