Amazon dining and experience destination opens in Menlyn Park Shopping Centre
The floor stops you first. As you arrive at reception, a sweeping herringbone of water cut verde and white marble unfolds beneath a botanical ceiling installation. Each tile is individually crafted and hand-laid, the whole effect landing somewhere between arrival and immersion. It sets the tone for everything that follows.
Amazon is the new Latin-inspired dining and experience destination from Monseca Hospitality Group, now open at Menlyn Park Shopping Centre, Pretoria. Founded by Ben Stanger and Luke Dakers, alongside Heinz Rynners from the team behind Greenhouse Sandton, and Pretoria-born co-owner Estiaan Joubert, Amazon seats around 400 guests and marks the group’s most ambitious project to date.
More than just a restaurant, Amazon has been designed as an all-day destination, equally suited to slow brunches, celebratory lunches, dinner with friends and late-night drinks. It is a space that changes naturally throughout the day. Morning mimosas on the cabana deck give way to long lunches over shared plates, before dinner service settles in beneath glowing onyx bars and the energy lifts into the evening.
Stanger describes it as the group’s biggest and most expressive project yet. Dakers calls it a defining moment for the brand. For Joubert, who has spent over a decade building hospitality spaces in Pretoria, the location was always clear.
There’s nothing in Pretoria that meets in the middle,” he says. “A place with real energy where you could bring your mother for Mother’s Day brunch, host a birthday lunch, celebrate a bachelorette with the girls over cocktails, and come back the same night for dinner and a party. That’s Amazon.”
Brunch has already become one of the restaurant’s defining offerings. Weekends centre around live music, relaxed afternoons and groups gathering over bottles of bubbly and shared plates. It works equally well for girls’ catch-ups, bridal brunches, birthdays, baby showers and long Sunday lunches that turn into dinner.
The brunch menu leans generous and comforting. The Amazon Breakfast Board arrives with crispy bacon, chipolata sausage, grilled halloumi, smashed avo, homemade baked beans and eggs cooked to order, while Eggs Benedict layers smoked salmon, avo and hollandaise onto toasted English muffins. Smoked Salmon Toast, Breakfast Burritos and house-made tropical granola offer lighter options. Warm Brazilian pão de queijo, airy cheese rolls baked fresh daily, are served to every table from lunch onward.
The concept is Greenhouse 2.0 in Stanger’s own framing, but one that puts far more emphasis on the food. Drawing on Brazilian and South American flavours with a Japanese influence running through the menu, the kitchen moves naturally from brunch and lunch into dinner and late-night dining.
Chef Siya Mlaba, whose 15 years across London, New York and Mexico inform the menu, puts it simply: “We’ve paid close attention. Every dish is a taste of somewhere, made completely our own.”
That approach shows throughout the menu. Starters move from crispy chilli lime squid with avo salsa and charred corn, to roasted bone marrow with grilled bread, panko prawns glazed in tamarind turmeric, lamb riblets finished over flame and charred corn ribs served with whipped peri peri butter.
The raw bar introduces brighter dishes, including sea bass ceviche cured in citrus leche de tigre, and Tuna Laqueado with passion fruit, pineapple salsa and sesame. The sushi menu combines Japanese technique with South American flavours through salmon and tuna rainbow rolls, crispy rice deluxe topped with sriracha mayo, and wagyu tableside flambé nigiri finished with oscietra caviar and truffle mayo.
For mains, the hardwood-fired picanha remains one of the kitchen’s standout dishes, served with burnt sage butter and smoked salt, alongside smoky peri peri chicken basted over hardwood coals, grilled queen prawns, flame-grilled sea bass with shimeji mushrooms and béchamel, and premium steaks paired with creamy mash, coconut rice and crispy baby potatoes.
Desserts continue the South American influence with warm churros served alongside dulce de leche and dark chocolate sauce, grilled pineapple with rum caramel, and a Brazilian pavê layered with espresso-soaked biscuits and dulce de leche cream.
The cocktail list takes its names from the Amazon itself: the Toucan, the Iguana, Forrest Town and Tropic Thunder. Each is built on bespoke syrups made exclusively for the venue, from green melon to spicy jalapeño. Daniel Rismani, Head of Operations at Monseca, says the brief was always to create cocktails that looked beautiful but still delivered on flavour. General Manager and sommelier Lawrence Mukosi, WSET Level 3 certified, carries the same approach through a wine list designed to work from brunch through to dinner.
The design, by award-winning Wesley Bremer of Soda Custom, with Heinz Rynners heavily involved throughout the creative and design process, uses solid wood, onyx, brass and verde marble throughout. The result references the rainforest without becoming theatrical. Three backlit onyx bars glow amber across the venue. Behind the main bar, a living green wall of rooted plants actively oxygenates the space. Large butterfly artworks, carried over from Greenhouse, anchor the main dining room.
The private dining room, bookable for twelve, is lined with woven textures and a statement carpeted wall running from floor to ceiling, giving the room a warmth and quiet entirely separate from the main restaurant.
“These finishes bring richness to the space while maintaining a timeless elegance,” says Bremer. “Our job was to keep the Greenhouse DNA and evolve it.”
Outside, the cabana deck overlooks a fountain, where live music, relaxed brunches and long afternoons are already becoming part of the restaurant’s rhythm. Inside and out, every section of the venue carries its own mood and pace, giving guests reason to stay from morning into late evening. A VIP lounge called Tribe is currently in development at the rear of the venue.
From the earliest previews to the doors finally opening, Stanger says that despite it being the hardest project the group has undertaken, what they have built here exceeds anything that came before it. From day one, the market understood it, and that kind of response cannot be manufactured.
Bookings essential. Walk-ins welcome.
Amazon Menlyn is located at Menlyn Park Shopping Centre, Pretoria, and welcomes guests Sunday to Thursday 10am – 11pm and Friday to Saturday 10am – 2am.
To view menus and make bookings, visit https://www.amazonmenlyn.co.za
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Words and images provided.
