For years, a special-occasion dinner on this stretch of Palm Beach County has meant one of two things: a steakhouse or a seafood tower. That has never been a complaint about the food here. It has just been the pattern, one restaurant industry writer described the county as a place that has "long leaned on steakhouses and seafood towers for its celebration dinners." AYRE by Karma, which opened last fall inside Amrit Ocean Resort, is the first real break from that pattern that Singer Island has seen in some time. It is also the first restaurant on the island you cannot just decide to walk into on a whim, because it does not open every night of the week.
Five Nights, Not Seven
AYRE by Karma serves dinner Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday until 10 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, the dining room stays dark. If you are used to treating a restaurant's hours as background noise you check once and forget, this one asks you to actually look before you build a night around it.
That schedule matters more once you know the room is small. AYRE seats about 80 guests across a studio-style dining room and an oceanfront terrace facing the Atlantic. That is not a large footprint for a kitchen carrying this much attention, and it means a Friday or Saturday table is worth locking in ahead of time rather than assuming you can show up at 7 and get seated.
What Actually Landed Here
AYRE by Karma is the first location outside Washington, D.C. for Karma Modern Indian, which has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand since 2021. That is not a small detail for a restaurant that opened on a barrier island best known for beach clubs and resort pools. Chef Ajay Kumar, who has more than 30 years of experience in Indian cuisine, oversees the concept, while day-to-day the kitchen on Singer Island is led by chef Asif Syed.
The food follows Amrit's broader wellness framing without turning into diet food. Spices are ground in house, dishes come off the tandoor with real char, and the kitchen leans on Ayurvedic principles the same way the rest of the resort does, treating spice as something with a purpose rather than just heat. In practice that shows up as a choice between three, five and seven course tasting menus, priced at $75, $105 and $145, with optional organic and biodynamic wine pairings. If a tasting menu is not what you are after, the a la carte side includes lobster masala, paneer pesto, Amritsari snapper, chickpea and goat cheese naan, and jicama jashan. The through line across the menu is spice handled with restraint rather than volume, which is a different proposition than most of what this stretch of coastline has offered for a big dinner out.
The Resort Behind the Restaurant
AYRE did not appear in a vacuum. Amrit Ocean Resort opened in 2024 on seven beachfront acres and includes 155 wellness-focused rooms and suites along with a four story, 103,000 square foot spa, the largest in Florida. The property sits within Preferred Hotels & Resorts' L.V.X. collection, and its dining lineup now runs five concepts total, from the beachside bar Taaza to the resort's private stretch of shoreline, which spans 300 feet and 3.5 acres for events and beach dinners.
What is worth knowing if you already live nearby is that Amrit's own materials describe the resort as open to local residents, not only registered guests, for its dining and amenities. You do not need a room booked to get a table at AYRE, though reservations still run through the resort's usual channels rather than a standalone restaurant line. That distinction is easy to miss if you assume a hotel restaurant this polished is guests-only by default.
Where This Leaves the Rotation
Singer Island already has plenty of ways to spend an evening. Sailfish Marina books fishing charters and water taxi runs to Peanut Island. Ocean Walk keeps a run of casual restaurants a short walk from the sand. What the island has not had until now is a kitchen with Michelin pedigree serving a cuisine this specific, sitting directly on the beach rather than tucked into a strip of retail.
None of this changes what makes Singer Island Singer Island. The beaches are still the draw, the marinas are still busy, and the neighborhoods around Sophia and Seneca Estates still trade quiet residential streets for a short drive to the water. What has changed is that a dinner reservation on this island now comes with a schedule to check and a five night window to work around, which is a genuinely new kind of planning problem for a place that has mostly run on walk-in energy.
If you are already timing your Friday around a table at AYRE, you know this island's daily rhythm better than most guides give you credit for. John Nugent Group pays attention to the same details, the ones that do not show up on a spec sheet but shape what it actually feels like to live here. When the conversation turns to property instead of dinner reservations, we bring the same habit of noticing to that too. Contact Us anytime you want to talk about either.
