The omakase counter at Queen is a lot like the Miami Beach restaurant itself: an over-the-top version of anything like it you’ve tried before. Expect caviar and truffles and beautifully marbled meats prepared before your eyes in a way that feels as much theater as it does dinner.
Even before debuting its omakase counter, Queen has become one of Miami’s hottest dining venues thanks in no small part to its reported $40 million build-out of the historic Paris Theater on Washington Avenue. To access the omakase room, we made our way up a curving staircase to find a chill lounge occupying what used to be the balconies. A thick curtain separates the lounge from a space no bigger than a Tokyo hotel room.
Behind the opulent counter is Max Kamakura, a Japanese-Brazilian, third-generation sushi chef who narrates the multi-course meal, talking up technique and sourcing. Some of the 15-plus items are familiar from other omakases around Miami: tuna belly as pink as bubblegum, a striped salmon roll topped with its own tangerine-colored eggs.
But then there’s the novel and new, like the foie gras melted over tuna, the oysters roasted on charcoal and the quenelle of caviar dusted with gold powder. Much of the fish Kamakura serves is, like at many omakase counters, sourced from Japan. But here, it’s aged, sometimes as long as a month, giving many of the pieces a deeper flavor and a texture closer to dry-aged steak.
It would be overscrupulous to find fault with any of this, especially the just-charred wagyu nigiri topped with creamy sea urchin and flaked with black truffle.
As the meal plays out, there’s a window at the end of the counter that looks down into the Queen dining room, where, on the night we were there, an aerialist performed in midair. But none of the club music below makes it up to the omakase space, meaning the experience of the night will depend on the people you bring or the strangers at your elbow. (For our meal, artist Romero Britto, in a suit as red as a geisha’s lipstick, happened to be sitting two seats away.)
With two seatings at 7 and 9:30pm Tuesday through Saturday, Queen requires adherence to a strict dress code of “fashionable and elegant” attire. Seats cost $275 per person, paid in advance. Add in tip, tax and cocktails, and the bill for two can surmount four figures.
Yes, there’s a steep price for entry to this omakase theater. But you will find no Miami sushi counter with a more flamboyant, decadent show than the one hovering up there above Queen.