Experience pleasant and flavorful moments in one of the best restaurants of our beautiful Pipa beach.
Inside a gallery on Avenida Baía dos Golfinhos, at number 764, there is a white wall hand-painted with a blossoming branch, a red circle and the name of the house lettered in brushstrokes. Around it, red columns, woven pendant lamps and light wooden armchairs with striped cushions. It is a sushi lounge that opens every night of the year, and the place only comes to life from six in the evening.
Message them and ask for a table tonight
| Type | Sushi |
|---|---|
| Area | Galeria Pipa Mar, Avenida Baía dos Golfinhos, Praia da Pipa |
| Address | Av. Baía dos Golfinhos 764, Praia da Pipa, Tibau do Sul (RN) |
| Hours | Every day, 18:00–23:00 |
| Service | Evenings only. It does not open for lunch on any day |
| Seating | Dining room and open gallery with armchairs |
| Contact | +55 84 98150-8644 |
| @sushipipalounge |
Four of them, and they open the table: breaded squid, tempura ebi with prawn, gyoza and grilled salmon sashimi, which arrives in eight slices. The first three are fried and the fourth is seared fish: they are there so you can order one while the rest of the meal takes shape.
The house format is the combinado, a sharing platter: a round wooden board with two risers lifting part of the selection, and on top an assortment built to pass around the table. The board in their photos holds hossomaki of tuna and salmon rolled in nori, breaded pieces under a dark sauce, pieces coated in sesame and in green herb, rolls topped with salmon and flaked almond, slices of raw salmon on the upper riser, and pieces wrapped in pink soy paper with cream cheese and spring onion.
What that mix tells you is that the kitchen runs both temperatures on one board: cold raw fish and hot fried pieces, side by side. For a table of two or three, the usual travelling party, one board covers six or seven different preparations without ordering anything else.
Wasabi and pickled ginger sit in the middle, and the service arrives with chopsticks on a ceramic rest and a dark placemat, the detail that sets the table.
Alongside the board, the house serves temaki: the filled nori cone, eaten whole and by hand. Their photos show one with salmon, cream cheese, spring onion, dark sauce and a crumb topping, served on a black plate with its wasabi and a dish of soy sauce beside it. It is the individual order par excellence and works well as a starter before the board.
On the side there is thinly sliced cucumber with sesame, served cold on a white fish-shaped dish. It is the sharp counterpoint that resets the palate between pieces, and it is worth ordering alongside the platter rather than after.
The printed menu is split into four blocks and it runs long: twenty temaki, thirteen uramaki — the roll with the rice on the outside and sesame, eight pieces — seven hossomaki of eight pieces, and five niguirisushi, two pieces each.
The filling that keeps coming back is cream cheese with spring onion, and everything else is built on that base: Filadélfia with salmon, Salmão Skin with grilled salmon skin, Spice Tuna with pepper and mayonnaise, Ebiten with breaded prawn, Alcapone with sun-dried tomato and rocket, Tropical with tuna and avocado, California with mango, cucumber and kani, plus octopus and white-fish versions. The niguiri are salmon, salmon skin, tako octopus and white fish.
Two practical details. Temaki can be ordered without rice, in every version except the prawn and octopus ones, which is the way out for anyone eating low-carb. And the wall panel adds four categories the printed menu does not show: gunkan, hot, combinados and duplas especiais; worth asking about when you order.
The wine list is the surprise here: eleven reds, nearly all Argentine and Chilean — Benjamin, Trapiche, Alfredo Roca, Trivento, Latitud 33, Norton DOC, Altos Las Hormigas, DV Catena, Luigi Bosca and Rutini — plus four whites: Santa Helena, Santa Rita and Casillero del Diablo. They are poured by the glass and by the bottle.
Beer covers the international and Southern Cone labels — Stella Artois, Corona, Heineken, Quilmes and Patagonia — and there are seven cocktails: caipirinha, caipiroska, caipifrutas, caipi Absolut, gin and tonic, cuba libre and fernet with coke. Alcohol-free there are fresh juice, espresso, still and sparkling water, soft drinks and energy drinks.
The restaurant sits inside a gallery, and that shapes everything else. You do not step off the street into a dining room: you step into a passage of white walls, with a tiled floor, exposed wooden beams overhead and columns painted red marking the way through. The pendant lamps are woven fibre and throw a warm, low light, and a large pink lamp is visible from the entrance.
The entrance wall is painted by hand: a blossoming branch, a red circle crossing it and, below, the name of the house in brushstrokes. Colourful canvases hang beside it. It is the Japanese reference made by hand, brushstroke by brushstroke, and it is what makes the entrance recognisable from the far end of the passage.
Before the tables there are light wooden armchairs with striped cushions, set on the gallery floor among the plants. That is the lounge half of the name, and it gets used: you can sit there with the evening coming in through the passage, before moving to a table. Further in, the dining room, with round tables and the orange light of the lamps.
It opens seven days a week, 18:00 to 23:00. The fact most often misread is the other one: it does not open for lunch on any day of the week. This is an evening house, five hours of service, and the whole plan is built around that.
Opening all seven days is what makes it dependable on a short trip. In Pipa a good share of kitchens close one or two days, and Monday takes the worst of it: here Monday runs like Saturday. If you arrived on a Sunday night or Monday came up free, this is one of the kitchens that will be working.
Within the evening, the hour changes the place. At six the gallery is quiet and the armchairs are free; later the dining room fills and the light drops. If you want a table and time for a long board, come early; if the atmosphere is what you are after, the moment is after nine. Either way, keep the closing time in mind: service ends at eleven.
It is on Avenida Baía dos Golfinhos at 764, inside the Galeria Pipa Mar. That changes how you look for it: there is no frontage on the pavement, there is a gallery, and the restaurant is inside it. The reference that works is the painted wall with the branch and the red circle, visible from the passage with the name lettered above.
You can walk there from the centre of the village along the avenue itself, the main street and the one that carries the evening's movement. From Praia da Pipa you come up along the same avenue, and from the centre of Pipa it is a short walk, the kind you make after dinner without thinking about it.
If you are arriving from Natal, from the airport or from another beach along the coast, look at the transfer options: the avenue is walkable end to end, so once you are in the village you will not need a car for this one.
For a table of two or three who want to share one board and taste several preparations in a single round, instead of each ordering a plate.
For anyone looking for an evening out with atmosphere rather than just dinner: the gallery, the armchairs and the low light are part of it.
And for whoever lands in Pipa on a Monday and finds half the village resting: here you can have dinner all seven days of the year.
No. It opens in the evening only, 18:00 to 23:00, every day.
Yes. It serves all seven days of the week, with the same hours.
Service runs until 23:00.
The combinado, which arrives on a round wooden board with risers and mixes cold raw-fish pieces with hot breaded ones. For the table there is also sliced cucumber with sesame.
Yes, in a nori cone, served on an individual plate with wasabi and soy sauce.
Av. Baía dos Golfinhos 764, inside Galeria Pipa Mar, Praia da Pipa, Tibau do Sul (RN). The restaurant is in the passage, not on the pavement.
Message them on WhatsApp at +55 84 98150-8644 and ask whether there is a table, especially in high season and if there are more than two of you.
Yes. There are wooden armchairs with cushions among the plants in the passage, before the dining room.
ESPAÑOL
PORTUGUES
