The latest menu at the Downtown Dubai restaurant brings together formative kitchen memories, family traditions, and the playful Third Culture Cooking that defines Jun’s
Dubai : Jun’s, the multi-award-winning restaurant in Downtown Dubai, introduces a new 10-course tasting menu by Chef Kelvin Cheung. Priced at AED 560 per person, the menu brings together dishes shaped by his Chinese heritage, North American upbringing, classical training and life in the Middle East. A complete vegetarian tasting menu is also available for AED 490 per person, offering its own thoughtfully developed interpretation of every course.
Moving between Belgium, Chicago, Hong Kong, Mexico, the Philippines, and Palestine, the menu reflects how Chef Kelvin cooks, inspired by his memories. Some courses return to the food he grew up eating, while others begin with a person, a place, or a small detail that stayed with him. Together, they tell a story of family, resourcefulness, nostalgia, and the cultures that have shaped his approach to Third Culture Cooking.
The experience opens with Pani Puri, one of the restaurant’s most recognisable signatures. Lobster is paired with tamarind, Macanese sauce and agua, setting the tone for a menu that moves freely between familiar flavours and unexpected combinations.
Sea Bream follows, taking Chef Kelvin back to his first cooking job in Belgium. The restaurant had its own fish pond, and when a guest placed an order, he would run outside, catch the fish, butcher it in the open kitchen, and cook it while diners watched. Nothing was discarded. The bones became fumet, which was reduced and finished with butter. In this new interpretation, dry-aged sea bream is served with whipped bone broth butter made from the fish bones, alongside pickled grapes and gamtae seaweed. The dish carries forward one of the earliest lessons of his career: respect the whole ingredient and waste as little as possible.
Fun Cheung is a playful nod to Chef Kelvin’s surname and one of his favourite dim sum dishes, cheung fun. Fresh rice noodles are made in-house as thin and delicate as possible, then paired with amaebi, or Japanese sweet shrimp, and a house-aged soy sauce infused with coriander stems, ginger and garlic. House-made youtiao adds the crisp texture Chef Kelvin always looked for in shrimp cheung fun, balancing soft and crunchy, sweet and savoury in each bite.
Pequod’s Deep Dish Pizza revisits Chef Kelvin’s childhood in Chicago and his favourite deep-dish pizza in the city. More than the centre of the pizza, he loved the dark, crisp edges where cheese, tomato and drippings caramelised against the pan. That memory becomes sourdough focaccia with fresh mozzarella, cheese foam and lacto-fermented tomatoes, served over a concentrated “pizza fond”. Guests are encouraged to tear the focaccia by hand and drag it through every element, recreating the pleasure of eating the caramelised remnants from the bottom of the pan.
Mama’s Dolma Elotes begins with a promise years in the making. Chef Kelvin’s wife grew up eating tamales with her family every Christmas in Las Vegas and had long asked him to make them for her. After tasting Chef Salam Daqqaq’s dolmas, the combination of grape leaf and rice reminded him of the tamales he still owed her. The resulting course wraps Chinese-style glutinous rice and house-made Wagyu longanisa in a grape leaf, then pairs it with Hokkaido scallop, elote purée and a braising liquid inspired by Mexican tortilla soup. Crispy longanisa brings texture, while smoky oil made from charred leftover corn husks continues the menu’s considered approach to waste. It draws together Middle Eastern, Mexican, Chinese and Filipino references, but at heart it is Chef Kelvin finally making his wife her Christmas tamales.
Funions turns one of Chef Kelvin’s favourite North American snacks into an unapologetically playful course. 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. Multiple expressions of onion recreate the salty, crunchy appeal of the original snack, while crab and ikura add sweetness and briny depth.
Chilaquiles in K-Town continues the menu’s cross-cultural storytelling through a tortilla hot-and-sour soup with masa dumpling, lobster and quail egg. The course brings Mexican and Chinese comfort-food references together in a warming, layered dish.
The savoury courses conclude with Mapo Tofu, a dish Chef Kelvin ate several times a week while growing up. For his mother, it was a practical family meal with plenty of tofu and sauce, a little meat and enough spice and umami to make everyone eat bowl after bowl of rice. At Jun’s, it becomes the centrepiece of the menu, with fresh tofu made to order, claypot rice, Wagyu mapo gravy, beef tenderloin and grilled Omani prawn. The gravy draws depth from Jun’s house-fermented bean paste, made with edamame, chickpeas, black beans, three types of chilli and ginger, then aged for three and a half years. The prawn is brushed with koji sambal and finished with a crisp typhoon shelter-style crumble inspired by Hong Kong’s boat and fishing culture. Despite its detail, the dish remains true to the memory behind it: a little meat, plenty of tofu and sauce, and enough flavour to demand more rice.
Keri Chaat brings together two summer memories formed on opposite sides of the world. While eating raw mango chaat on the streets of Bombay, Chef Kelvin was immediately transported back to his childhood in Chicago, where fruit vendors cycled through the neighbourhoods, cutting fresh fruit to order and seasoning it with Tajín, chilli, lime and Mexican spices. Despite the distance between the two cities, he recognised the same balance of sour fruit, salt, heat, spice and acidity. It was a reminder of how cultures that may appear unrelated can arrive at remarkably similar ideas through food. At Jun’s, these memories come together in a raw mango sorbet coated in house-made chaat masala, served with puffed rice tossed in ghee and further seasoning for texture and crunch. Refreshing and deeply nostalgic, the course connects Bombay and Chicago through a shared memory of summer, fresh fruit and spice.
The final plated dessert Palestinian Olive Oil places it’s namesake at the centre. The idea began at home, where Chef Kelvin’s wife started buying olive oil from an older Palestinian woman. Chef Kelvin and his wife loved it so much that they began purchasing it in increasingly large quantities, both to keep it in their kitchen and to support its maker. On the menu, the oil is transformed into ice cream and paired with olive caramel, dark chocolate ganache and a freshly fried churro. A final pour of the same olive oil brings its fruitiness and gentle bitterness back to the foreground.
The experience closes with Petit Fours, presented as a collection of Chef Kelvin’s favourite “snackies”. A date and caviar tart reflects the dates he has come to appreciate while living in the Middle East, using salinity to balance their sweetness. Ma Lai Goh, a traditional steamed dim sum sponge cake and one of the most difficult 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, ending the meal with a little of where Chef Kelvin lives now, a little of where he came from and a few things he simply loves to eat.
The AED 490 vegetarian menu has been created with the same level of thought and storytelling rather than presented as a series of substitutions. Highlights include Pani Puri; with mushroom instead of lobster, Melon replaces Sea Bream with whipped kombu butter, pickled grapes and gamtae seaweed; Fun Cheung with king oyster mushroom instead of king crab; Mama’s Dolma Elotes with hearts of palm and walnut crumble; and Funions with jackfruit and ponzu pearls. Paneer replaces lobster in Chilaquiles in K-Town, while the vegetarian Mapo Tofu is served with pumpkin and typhoon shelter eggplant.
Chef Kelvin Cheung’s new tasting menu captures Jun’s approach at its most personal. It finds meaning in the overlooked parts of a pizza pan, a family meal designed to stretch the groceries, a Christmas request from his wife and an ingredient that connects his Dubai home to a Palestinian producer. Each course stands on its own, but together they form an intimate account of the places, people and flavours that continue to shape his cooking. For those looking for a more compact version of the menu, Jun’s also offers the Short Story Volume 4 which includes a variety of dishes from the expansive tasting menu. The tasting menu is available daily at Jun’s, with no prior booking required.
