Ithaa Undersea Restaurant at Maldives offers the ultimate super-luxurious super-fine dining experience five metres underwater, with underwater indulgence.
Luxury is generally measured in terms of privacy, rarity, and unrepeatable moments. Few restaurants in the world do all three as effectively as Ithaa Undersea Restaurant, five meters under the Indian Ocean at Conrad Maldives Rangali Island. Eponymously named for its “mother of pearl” appearance, it’s not only a restaurant — it’s an entirely submerged, 180-degree hemispherical glass dome of ocean fantasy with Michelin-standard cuisine.
Only 14 per table, seats Ithaa, the globe’s first underwater all-glass restaurant, built to offer fantasy-like sensory input. Ascending in a spiral staircase from an overwater pavilion, you are inside a sunlit capsule through which reef sharks, parrotfish, and manta rays glide majestically around the glass walls. Eating in an aquarium — but you are inside.
The menu is a roll call of indulgent elegant treats. Every six- or seven-course tasting menu is crafted exquisitely by hand, marrying Maldivian ingredients and Euro-style presentation. Oscietra caviar served with smoked lobster medallions, line-caught reef fish with champagne gel and saffron foam, or Angus beef tenderloin in truffle demi-glace are some of the delicacies to choose from. Even the humblest of things — bread and butter, for example — are high-ended: foie gras brioche and sea salt churned-up butter is just one small extravagance that never ceases.
It’s not the food or even its relative unavailability that gives Ithaa an edge over other upscale dining, however. It’s the drama of the sky. About halfway through the meal, a sea turtle will swim beneath your table. The light subtly changes as the sun moves across overhead so the ocean itself can be integrated into the rhythm of the meal.
Dinner tables are in short supply and competed for — typically reserved weeks in advance by high-end holidaying tourists and honeymooning couples who’ll shell out for that brief guilty indulgence “bucket-list” treat. For indulgences by day, Ithaa also provides lunch and champagne brunch, and for those by night, the complex is a site for host-hostess dinner party soirees by couples or small groups.
From the soft-glowing lights to the only silence shattered by the gentle whisper of the waves, every detail has been so meticulously designed with a purpose to create an experience of magic, elegance, and remoteness. It is not about the ingredients really — it is the way the world simply disappears the instant you’re under water.
For those who are not looking for the best food but also the best experiences, Ithaa is a one-of-a-kind adventure — a second suspended between ocean and luxury.
