Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio. The menu includes mesquite-grilled redfish called Huachinango Zarandeado, Ensalada Cesar with grilled salmon and a glass of Bodegas de Santo Tomas white wine from Mexico.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
Forgive me if I snagged on one little detail in the run-up to the new Latin American seafood restaurant called Amar at Pearl.
Was it the clever try-hard of the signage, the all-lowercase “(a)mar,” putting love and the sea en Español confluency? Or was it the adjoined mezcalería speakeasy cheerleading the owners’ proprietary Alma de Campo mezcal? Or the soft-focus sentimentalism about the owners drawing inspiration from their travels in Tulum, Oaxaca and Latin America?
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It was that last part, the part about Tulum.
Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
My memories of Tulum are a swirl of bad oysters, a sweaty fever dream of little plates at big prices and barefoot fire dancing and the smell of rotting seaweed piled along the beaches. A place where all the loud music and diesel-grade mezcal and suffocating clouds of copal smoke couldn’t cover up what an overhyped kabuki nightmare Tulum had become.
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I also remember a night under the stars at the Michelin-recommended Hartwood in Tulum, with a chalkboard menu of huachinango and costillas and langosta, with soft music and wine like a dinner with friends just meters away from the tourist pageant, and yet a world apart from it.
Amar isn’t that, either.
Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio. The menu includes, clockwise from left, Campechano seafood cocktail, a margarita made with Amar’s proprietary mezcal Alma de Campo, Ceviche Tradicional and a gin cocktail called Menage.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
It aspires to be that second thing, a stylish staycation with a strong POV that opened in September in the former home of the Italian coastal restaurant Allora. If you remember, Allora closed in the summer of 2024, another swell in a riptide of closings that set off foghorn warnings of systemic malaise at Pearl.
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Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio. The menu includes a fried avocado stuffed with shrimp, front, Ribeye Chicharron and a Paper Plane bourbon cocktail.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
It took two years for co-owners Carlos and Clarece Clavijo and Marc Villarreal to fill the space with Amar, coming as Voila Cafe replaces Arrosta, Santonia replaces Full Goods Diner, Rosso sets sights on the Cured building, and the Bludorn Hospitality Group reshapes the Carriqui space. You know, with the seasons and the turn, turn, turning.
I’ll try to convey my impression of Amar in a way that looks beyond its inscrutable presence online, where it comes off like a nightclub with snacks. I dare you to find the hours on the website or the Instagram page. Or the menu. Wait, I found it on an Amar Instagram post, the one with the dog sitting on a patio sofa. Because nothing says come eat here like a dog sitting on the furniture going, “Woof, what’s on the menu?”
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Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
Amar reimagined the L-shaped main space with the cathedral arches by flattening the drama in warm golden tones, with sheer cloth lightshades hanging from the ceiling and walls that feel like a villa behind a sunlit waterfall in a room set with broad-weave rope chairs and wooden tabletops. From there, Amar makes sideroads into an insider’s world of exclusive spaces: a wine-tasting room, a private dining room upstairs and a shadowed speakeasy with secrets to keep.
The staff navigates the tight corners of the main room and the narrow aisle in front of the alabaster marble bar in black-uniformed choreography that never stops, because one thing Amar channels with charming accuracy is the mannered, sometimes overwhelming hospitality of Mexican resort service. It’s lively in there. And loud on a full-tilt Saturday night.
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Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
The menu by chef Roger Martinez, with an assist by Paladar alum Arturo Villegas, leans hard into raw seafood in its many states of marinated prep: ceviches, campechanos, tostadas, cocktails. A mesquite grill does the heavy lifting for surf and turf, and the fryers never stop reminding us that it’s supposed to feel like a vacation.
The good news is that on its best day, Amar can make us forget just how far we are from the sea and remember how close we are to the land.
Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio. The menu includes mesquite-grilled redfish called Huachinango Zarandeado.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
Those contrasting ideas came together best with Huachinango Zarandeado. It’s a whole redfish from tail to collar, butterflied and mostly deboned, turned over the mesquite in a handled basket, brushed over and over with a sauce the color of the-devil-wears-asada, like tacos al pastor from a SpongeBob truck in Bikini Bottom. It’s a $60 indulgence, but there’s enough meat under that dusky glaze to feed the table. If only we had some tortillas. (We do not.)
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Less dramatic but equally satisfying, Amar’s Ensalada César filled the plate with a full head of Romaine lettuce cleaved neatly in half, dressed but not overdressed with a tangy chipotle Caesar variation, ornamented with croutons and the crowning moment: a clean fillet of grilled salmon. At $18, it’s the best value on the menu, a meal by itself with an option to sub shrimp or ahi tuna.
Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio. The menu includes Tuna Carnitas, right, and Ceviche Tradicional.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
All the way on dry land, Amar pulled off a molcajete filled with Ribeye Chicharrón and guacamole with the confidence of a Latin steakhouse, with marbled steak put through the fryer just long enough to make the fat crispy without desiccating the lean meat. I appreciated the fun-size bowl of tortilla chips that came with it. Too much, I think. Because those little things, the chips and salsa and tortillas, aren’t really part of the tablescape here, no matter what our San Antonio sensibilities expect.
Not that a trio of quirky salsas nor the breakaway corn tortilla at the base of a $15 single rib-eye taco satisfied that equation. Let it serve as a reminder that despite the five land-and-sea tacos on the menu, this is not a neighborhood taquería. It’s a place where you pay an entry-level entree price for a single shaving of beef with onions and guacamole.
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Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio. The menu includes a Ribeye Cachetada taco.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
But that didn’t rub me as hard as paying $29 for a deep-fried avocado. Well, it was stuffed with shrimp, you say, and resting in a kiddie pool of chipotle cream. “Stuffed” is the word in question here, and I played find-the-shrimp for most of the way through the mushy canapé, a disappointment the size and shape of a souvenir baseball.
Speaking of fried, I tried to make culinary sense of Tuna Carnitas. The first three words of the description suggested that was not meant to be: “breaded ahi tuna.” Frying destroys everything we love about good ahi tuna. The silky texture, the fresh-from-the-sea flavor, the rose-blossom color. If I wanted Tuna McNuggets, I bet I could get them for less than $23.
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Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio. The menu includes Risotto al Poblano with shrimp.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
Texture also became an issue for Risotto al Poblano. Risotto is a word we know. Risotto is a texture we know. Rice formed into a collagenous brick with a crown of shrimp isn’t risotto, no matter how you grill the shrimp. Where the risotto was too dry, the Ceviche Tradicional was too wet, with too much citrus and too many tomatoes for an acid bath that left the fish loose and mealy.
But neither suffered quite the texture fail inflicted on a fork-friendly Tamal Oaxaqueno with sweet mole sauce. So far, so good. But Amar’s seafood directive demanded its moment, and so it showed up wearing a curly blond Spirit Halloween wig of fried marlin bits. Put down the fish and step away from the net.
The moments that didn’t work at the table got some degree of deliverance from the bar, especially the smoke-and-fire of the house Alma de Campo mezcal standing in for tequila in a straightforward margarita.
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Amar is the new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant and bar that opened in September 2026 at the Credit Human building at Pearl in San Antonio. The menu includes the Tamal Oaxaqueno con Mole.
Mike Sutter/San Antonio Express-News
When the agave’s gotta give, they shake a properly bittersweet bourbon Paper Plane with Aperol and amaro, and I’m happy to see Mexican wines on the bar list, like the refreshing Bodegas de Santo Tomas chenin blanc, a white wine that shows respect for seafood.
★★ ½
403 Pearl Parkway at the Credit Human building at Pearl, 210-267-1048, amar-sa.com
Quick bite: Mexican and Latin American coastal seafood restaurant and bar at Pearl
Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Friday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday; lunch starting at 11 a.m. Monday-Friday; brunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday
Price range: Appetizers, $15-$23; soups and salads, $15-$18; oysters, ceviches and seafood cocktails, $20-$30; tacos and tostadas, $11-$15; entrees, $22-$80; desserts, $12
Alcohol: Cocktails, wine and beer
★★★★★ Excellent
★★★★ Good
★★★ Fair
★★ Poor
★ Bad
Express-News critics pay for all meals.
Respect. There it is. I respect Amar’s intentions. Can’t be an easy or inexpensive thing to repurpose anything at Pearl, nor is it easy to make people love a region, a style of food or the adventure of travel. But at some point, the vacation vibe isn’t enough, and that’s where the real work begins.
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Dining and Cooking