Palazzo Versace Dubai isn’t shy about design, so it’s a small surprise that its signature Italian restaurant plays things relatively straight. Vanitas sits on the ground floor of the hotel’s East Wing, looking out over Dubai Creek, and it has built a reputation as one of the more reliable fine-dining Italians in the city rather than a gimmick dressed up in gold trim. If you’ve seen the restaurant mentioned around Dubai’s dining pages recently, it’s usually attached to a set-menu price. Here’s what’s actually true about that, plus everything else worth knowing before you book.
Where to find it
Vanitas is inside Palazzo Versace Dubai on the Jaddaf Waterfront, on the Dubai Creek side of Al Jaddaf rather than the Downtown or Marina cluster most fine-dining lists default to. The nearest metro stop is Al Jadaf on the Green Line, roughly a five-minute taxi from the hotel entrance. If you’re driving, valet parking is available at the resort and is included with most of the dining offers below.
The food
The kitchen works classic Italian rather than fusion: fresh pasta made in-house, wood-fired pizza, seafood, and a menu that leans on herbs grown in the hotel’s own garden. Reviewers consistently single out the lobster pasta and the cacio e pepe, and the calamaro scottadito (charred squid) turns up often enough in write-ups that it’s worth ordering on its own merits. The orto starter — broccoli with seared vegetables, seaweed crisps and edible flowers — gets credit for looking as considered as anything else in a Versace-branded room. Other dishes that regularly get a mention: wild chicken ravioli, branzino, and beef carpaccio.
[VERIFY: current head chef and full current à la carte menu — the most detailed public menu breakdown we could find dates to a 2022 relaunch under chef Luca Crostelli, and Vanitas is the kind of restaurant that refreshes its menu seasonally, so treat specific dish names as indicative rather than a guarantee of what’s on the table tonight]
What the set menu actually costs
This is where it gets messier than most write-ups let on, and it’s worth being upfront about it rather than repeating a number that may no longer hold.
The widely shared “3-course set menu from Dhs200” promotion ran from 25 June to 8 August 2026 — a summer offer covering a starter, main and dessert with soft drinks and valet parking included, water, mocktails, alcohol and gratuities excluded. That window has closed. If you’re booking now, don’t expect to walk in and pay Dhs200 for the same thing without checking first.
What we can confirm is currently running, or was very recently:
- Ladies Day (Wednesday–Friday): AED 199 per person for a 3-course set menu at lunch or dinner, including three glasses of wine or soft drinks. Ladies only, per the hotel’s own terms.
- Sicilian Night (Tuesdays, 7pm–11pm): a sharing-style Italian menu from AED 250 food-only, AED 279 with soft beverages, or AED 459 with a house beverage package. Expect prawn carpaccio, tuna tartare, arancini, penne alla Norma, sea bass, grilled octopus and Sicilian cannoli, with a trumpet player and resident DJ for atmosphere.
- Standard 3-course set menu: [VERIFY: AED 450 per adult] — this is the figure listed on Dubai’s official experiences booking platform outside of any promotional window, though other listings have quoted figures as low as AED 150, which suggests either a stale listing somewhere or a genuinely different, lower-tier offer. Ring the restaurant directly and confirm before you commit.
- À la carte: recent diner reviews put a typical dinner for two at around AED 800 before drinks, which lines up with Vanitas sitting in the “$$$$” fine-dining bracket on most review platforms.
Short version: if a set-menu price is the reason you’re booking, call or check the live listing on the day. Hotel promotions here rotate by season and by day of the week, and the gap between the cheapest advertised figure and the standard rate is wide enough to matter.
Hours and booking
Dinner service runs daily from 6pm to 11pm, with last seating at 10.30pm. [VERIFY: lunch hours — the hotel’s own restaurant page currently states Vanitas is closed for lunch, while its own booking platform and several third-party listings advertise a lunch seating from midday to 4pm with last orders at 3.30pm. Confirm which applies before planning a daytime visit.]
Book through the hotel’s SevenRooms system, via Dubai’s official experiences platform for set-menu tickets, or by calling +971 4 556 8805. Advance booking is generally required for set-menu deals — often at least a day ahead — and cancellation policies vary by channel, so check the fine print on whichever platform you use. Vanitas, like most hotel restaurants on Eid, National Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, New Year and Ramadan, tends to suspend standard set-menu offers during those periods in favour of separate holiday menus.
Dress code and house rules
Smart casual or traditional local dress is the standard. Children under six aren’t permitted, and those between six and eleven need to be supervised throughout — worth knowing if you were planning a family celebration rather than a date night.
What actually sets it apart
Palazzo Versace’s brand is maximalism, but Vanitas doesn’t lean on it as hard as you’d expect. Reviewers repeatedly note that the Versace influence is present in the gilding and the red velvet seating without swallowing the room, and that the restaurant is priced closer to a solid neighbourhood Italian than the five-star mark-up its address suggests. The Dubai Creek outlook is the other differentiator: most of the city’s big Italian names cluster around Downtown or the Marina, so a waterside table at Al Jaddaf, with French windows and a proper terrace, is a genuinely different setting rather than another skyline view.
Good to know before you go
- Rating: 4.8 out of 5 across more than 1,100 reviews on Tripadvisor, ranking within the top 400 restaurants in Dubai out of nearly 11,000 listed.
- Cuisine: Italian, with strong seafood and pasta sections.
- Vibe: Romantic and intimate rather than a scene — better suited to anniversaries and quiet celebrations than a big group night out.
- Service: Mostly praised, though a handful of more recent reviews flag inconsistency on busier nights, so it’s not flawless every visit.
Vanitas earns its place on Dubai’s Italian shortlist on food and setting alone. Just don’t book on the strength of a headline price you saw somewhere online without checking it’s still live — this is one restaurant where the deals genuinely change by the day of the week.
