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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 11.10.26

The past is a great memory and a terrible business plan.

This week, Miami’s past is up for sale. The Cameo is coming back as a supper club with a 5 a.m. license, and I go back to the nights when Romain Zago was a bottle host at Mynt. Playboy is buying the Freehand and turning the most democratic hotel on the beach into a club you have to apply to. Rockstar is throwing Vice City a real party in Wynwood, with Travis Scott and Cardi B on the bill. And no, Jensen Huang isn’t moving here. But would you really be surprised?

Meanwhile, the future is going up fast. Aman and Novak Djokovic just unveiled a 1,049 foot tower on Brickell Bay that sells longevity instead of nightlife. ICA Miami is doubling its space in the Design District and still charging nothing at the door. Miami Dade will now take Bitcoin for property taxes, just never touch it. An Edgewater lot went up four times in seven years without a building on it. And a Michigan car dealer just sold his Palm Beach compound for nearly $100 million, which is 1,600 Tahoes, if you’re counting the way I am.

The bigger theme: Stop trying to recreate what worked. Create what comes next.

On My Mind: Stop Trying to Recreate What Worked. Create What Comes Next.

The past is the past, and it’s not coming back.

I love talking about good memories. I lived a lot of them. I helped build some of them. Miami in the 80s, the 90s, and the 2000s was great.

But it’s not the Miami of the future.

The Delano is a different Delano. China Grill is not what it once was. And the Cameo is going to have a lot of problems if it tries to be Mynt or CroBar.

Hanging on to the past is a trap. It feels safe because it already worked. But it worked for a city that doesn’t exist anymore, with people who’ve moved on, at prices nobody pays now.

Nostalgia is a great memory and a terrible business plan. Honor the past. Build what comes next.

BEACH BUSINESS

Jensen Huang to Miami.

In light of recent developments Jensen Huang has decided to relocate to Miami. JK, but would you really be surprised?

The Cameo Is Back. Just Don’t Call It a Nightclub.

I remember a long, long time ago when Mynt was the best club in the world, and Romain Zago was the bottle host.

Those were some of the best nights out of my life. They were legendary. It was the European coast brought to Miami Beach with a futurist point of view and excess we could hardly comprehend. It was the height of the Shore Club and Ed Hardy (kind of embrassing, the Ed Hardy part).

Then Roberto moved on and Romain took over. He ran it successfully for a long time. He got reality TV famous, and things got a little less cool. He had his run.

Now he’s going to try to rekindle the flame. But this is a different town, and he’s doing it a different way.

I’m ready to cheer him on as he rolls the dice in a very very big way.

The Cameo Theater has been dark since 2019. On November 3, the Miami Beach Planning Board voted 7 to 0 to let it go late again, with service until 5 a.m.

But read the application closely. This isn’t the Cameo coming back. It’s the Cameo growing up.

The Plan

The applicant is Mainro Miami Holdings, led by Zago. He sold Mynt in 2024 and went west to open MainRo, a club and restaurant in Hollywood, California. MainRo is the template. Real estate investor Michael Konig appears to be a partner, according to the filing.

Read more

She walked into the Moore to meet me in a big hat with a bigger smile, and within ten minutes we were arguing about AI, Darwin and whether this generation has any grit. Then we got to real estate, and she was the most precise person in the room.

Thirty years in. Born in Pittsburgh, Barnard for college, then Parsons for a master’s in architecture in her late 20s, because contractors kept nodding at her and building something else.

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THE WEEKENDER: 11.06.26

Miami is still being built, and this week the question is who gets to build it.

A 300 foot Live Local tower just landed in Sunset Harbour, the second in a matter of weeks, on the site of Office Depot. Foster + Partners on the drawings, a longevity spa in the amenities, and $2,800 studios for workforce housing. Sunset Harbour might get the density it needs to support the businesses.

Then I sat down with Alison Greenfield, the developer who turned the old Miami Heart Institute into the Ritz Carlton Residences and is now building Mirai with Kengo Kuma in the Design District. We got into foreclosure auctions, the five ring circus of development, why AI can’t teach you to think, and her answer to Live Local.

SUNSET HARBOUR GETS A 2nd LIVE LOCAL TOWER

Sunset Harbour just got its second Live Local tower proposal in a matter of weeks. This one would rise 300 feet on the site of Office Depot.

EOS Wellness Real Estate Miami filed plans for a 44 unit building at 1771 West Avenue, designed by ODP and Foster + Partners. It tops out at 325 feet at its highest point. The land sold last year for $28.5 million.

How do you get 300 feet in a city that capped this area at 150? Live Local lets a project build to the tallest height allowed within a mile. Miami Beach lowered that cap in April 2024, but state law freezes the number at whatever was allowed in July 2023. Back then, it was 300.

The breakdown: 18 workforce units at up to 120% of area median income, with studios topping out around $2,800 a month. 26 market rate condos, up to four bedrooms. The site could hold 86 units. They filed for barely half.

The theme is wellness. Multiple pools, a longevity spa, recovery rooms, physical therapy and aesthetics. Street level gets 6,391 square feet of retail, with 117 parking spaces in the podium. And unlike other recent Live Local fights on the Beach, there’s no historic building in the way.

I’m pro density. Sunset Harbour businesses live and die by who’s around in August, and more full time neighbors is good for every shop on the block. But let’s call this what it is. A $2,800 studio is market rent. A 44 unit wellness tower by Foster + Partners is a luxury condo using a housing law to get its height. That’s not a scandal. It’s the law working exactly as written.

What’s Good Podcast Episode #31: Allison Greenfield, the developer behind the Ritz Carlton Residences Miami Beach on adaptive reuse, Live Local, and Mirai, her new project with Kengo Kuma.

Most developers talk about square footage. Alison Greenfield talks about soul.

She walked into the Moore to meet me in a big hat with a bigger smile, and within ten minutes we were arguing about AI, Darwin and whether this generation has any grit. Then we got to real estate, and she was the most precise person in the room.

Thirty years in. Born in Pittsburgh, Barnard for college, then Parsons for a master’s in architecture in her late 20s, because contractors kept nodding at her and building something else.

The Courtroom Steps

Her first deal was a studio on Columbus Avenue and 82nd Street, bought at a foreclosure auction. Five percent in cash that day, the rest in 30 days. She didn’t have the rest. She flipped it in 30 days.

That’s still how she runs her company. “There is no plan B. Plan B is execute plan A.”

She was in college in her early 20s, needed a better apartment and had no intention of moving back to Pittsburgh, so she signed up for the real estate licensing class at the Hotel Pennsylvania, across from Madison Square Garden. That’s where she met Ophir Sternberg. He looked at the coffee in front of her and asked if she was drinking it. She told him to go ahead. He drank it, and that was the start of a partnership that lasted almost 30 years. They began in New York, working residential deals, and she figured out fast that she couldn’t sell something she didn’t believe in. So they started buying their own, beginning with that studio on the courtroom steps. Over three decades the business stretched from New York and New Jersey to Florida, and it all traces back to one cup of coffee she gave away. As a coffee guy, I respect the origin story.

Her PhD in Getting Shit Done

She came to Miami around 2007, waited while nothing penciled, then bought while everyone else was licking their wounds. That run led to the building I drive past every day: the Ritz Carlton Residences Miami Beach, the old Miami Heart Institute.

She calls it the largest adaptive reuse project South Florida has seen. Pilings from the 1930s King Cole Hotel sat under pilings from every decade after, none of them talking to each other. Sixty layouts across 111 units. A full year negotiating with neighbors before she ever went to the city, a 21 page set of covenants, and approval on first reading. Seven years from start to sellout. She calls it her PhD.

It’s the least efficient building imaginable. That’s exactly why people love it.

The Five Ring Circus

Her model of development is five rings running at once: the deal, the financing, entitlements and architecture, construction, and marketing. The developer is the ringmaster. If one ring fails, the project fails.

The great developers, she says, are the Rosetta Stone between the numbers and the design. Investors need their money back. Architects need someone to tell them who the building is for. The job is translating in both directions. When it works, you get what the Italians call beauty.

Mirai with Kengo Kuma

Her Design District project with Kengo Kuma is built around a scale drop. The neighborhood’s flagships run 5,000 square feet and up. Hers are 1,000 square foot modules you can combine, built for brands that want a Design District address without paying $6 million a year in rent. She met Kuma at a dinner party and told him exactly that. Opening winter 2028.

The bigger play is Second Avenue. She sees it as the Design District’s Madison Ave to its Fifth Avenue: one way, tree lined, walkable. Sant Ambroeus is taking the first corner, she wouldn’t say who’s taking the next corner, only that it’s impressive. I believe her.

Live Local

I wrote about Live Local this week. She’s pro density, like me. But 120 AMI is basically market rent today, so the affordability shows up years later as buildings age. Her answer to losing character is design: keep the facade, build the tower inside it, light it beautifully. Domino Sugar in Williamsburg is the model.

On AI

She calls herself a humanist. AI can get you the grade, but it can’t teach you to think. You think, then you write, then you speak. Those three make you successful. Entry level jobs will shrink, and the winners will be the people who can pitch, build relationships and bring taste.

I told her taste is not for sale. She said, “There you go.”

THE TEN QUESTIONS

1. What’s your name and what do you do? Alison Greenfield. Real estate developer.

2. How long have you lived in Miami? Twenty years.

3. Where do you live? The Upper East Side. “We got the bay, we got the parks, we got it all.”

4. How do you take your coffee? She doesn’t. English Breakfast or a London Fog, a little milk, a little sugar. I’m working on her.

5. Hidden gem? Kayaking Little River out to the picnic islands in Biscayne Bay. Manatees if you’re lucky.

6. What do you love most about Miami? “It’s now. We are in it, and I don’t think we’re going to be out of it in my lifetime.”

7. How do you share your creativity? “I build buildings and raise children.”

8. How do you define success? “The best projects are the ones where everybody wins.”

9. What do you believe? “I believe in humans.”

10. Favorite quote? “If” by Rudyard Kipling. She didn’t have her glasses, so I read the whole thing on camera.

MR. MIAMI TAKE

New York, LA and London are concrete. You can add a little piece and call it a career. Miami is clay. It keeps forming, and one person can still reshape a neighborhood. Craig Robins did it here. Alison did it on the old Heart Institute site, and she’s about to do it again on Second Avenue.

She said it better than I could: Miami is to the 21st century what New York was to the 20th.

Keep your SPF high and your standards higher.

That’s what’s good, Miami.

Keep your SPF high and your standards higher.

See you at the beach.

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What’s Good for Business: 11.5.26

This is What’s Good for Business. Miami is the best place in America to build a business right now, and this newsletter exists to help you do it.

Every week you’ll get one piece of Good Advice you can use right away, the Good News every owner in this city should know, and the biggest story in our world. This week, that story is something I’ve been building for a long time.

Let’s get to it.

Good Advice: Find the Empty Seat

Try this. Pick your category and add “Miami” to it: coffee, pilates, real estate law, med spa. Now name three businesses in it that show up every week with a real person on camera, saying something with a point of view.

Most owners can’t name three. Some can’t name one.

In a finished city, every category has a leader who got there twenty years ago. Miami isn’t finished. The people here are new, the money is new, and the categories are still forming. Whoever starts talking first, and keeps talking, becomes the default.

I saw this with What’s Good Miami. Nobody owned the city’s taste, so we claimed it by showing up every week until people started treating us as the authority.

Your move this week: Answer three questions about your category. Who leads it? Who’s loudest? Who’s missing? If the third answer is “nobody like me,” that seat is yours to take.

Good News: Amendment 3 passed. Here’s what it means.

On Tuesday, Florida voters passed Amendment 3 with 62% of the vote. It needed 60%.

If you own your home: The homestead exemption grows to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, then adjusts for inflation. It applies to the part of your tax bill that doesn’t go to schools. One analyst estimates eligible homeowners will save about $1,300 in 2027 and about $2,700 a year from 2028 on. People who move to Florida from next year on have to live here five years before they qualify.

If you own commercial property or rentals: This is the part most coverage skips. The yearly limit on how much your taxable value can rise drops from 10% to 5%. That makes your tax bill more predictable.

If you rent your space: Your landlord’s tax increases just got capped at half what they were. Bring that up at your next lease renewal.

The catch: A state analysis estimates local governments could lose nearly $5 billion statewide at first, growing to about $12 billion a year over time. Most of that hits in 2028. Watch how the city and county fill the gap, whether that’s fees, permits or cuts to services.

Good News: Wynwood Offices are Empty, for now.

Wynwood’s office market is sitting at roughly a third empty, the hangover from the neighborhood’s tech boom cooling off a few years back, and now the big wildcard is Ken Griffin’s $2 billion Carnegie Mellon campus landing on the old Moishe Mana megasite nearby. The bet is that a research university with Griffin’s money behind it pulls in faculty, grad students, and spinout companies who need office space, filling the glass boxes that tech startups vacated. It is not a guaranteed fix, a university campus does not automatically become a leasing engine on its own timeline, but it is the first credible demand story Wynwood has had in a while, and it gives WGM a clean “can one deal save a neighborhood” angle with a real number attached.

Introducing The Miami Marketing Course

What’s Good for Business exists to help Miami entrepreneurs reach new customers. So we built something for them.

The Miami Marketing Course is a 30 day course for South Florida entrepreneurs who want to own their category. I’ll teach you my Marketing Method. It’s the one I ran as a CMO for multibillion dollar brands and used to build three companies in Miami. Then I’ll support you while you run it yourself.

Thirty days to learn the method. Sixty to see it work. Ninety to own your category.

Miami is transforming.
And you can be a big part of its future.

Almost every category here is missing a leader.

It’s a small town with the most powerful people in the world.

You can become a big fish in a small pond. No old guard to get past.

What worked there won’t work here. Outsiders and traditionalists are dead before they start.

One thing works, and I’ve proven it. I didn’t read it somewhere. I built three companies with it. You have to do it to know it

Your voice is the product, and it has to be yours. One step a day, with me, for 30 days.

We start Monday, January 18, 2027.

Founding Cohort members get:

• The full 30 day course, one step a day, with me

• The Founders Hat, a Do It Blue cap with Miami embroidered in mint, shipped to your door. Only the Founding Cohort gets one.

• A signed copy of The Age of Ideas, the book the method comes from

• Founder pricing, locked. When the price goes up, it doesn’t go up for you.

The Founding Cohort Preview Price is $497. It goes up on December 1st, and seats per cohort are limited.

[Reserve Your Seat at alanphilips.com]

Until January, look at your category in Miami. Who leads it? Who’s loudest? Who’s missing? That’s where we begin.

Keep your SPF high and your standards higher. We love you Miami.

Thats What’s Good,

Alan Philips

For less than the cost of your matcha, subscribe to get full access. Cement your status as an insider and support your community. We love you Miami.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 11.03.26

The off season is over. Miami is open for business again.

On My Mind is a toast to everyone who survived the slowest summer in years, and an open invitation to the rest of the country to get here before it gets cold. Publix might be opening a bar in Kendall, and I have questions. The Wall Street Journal is mad that the Design District got good. Kith is putting more money into its original Miami Beach flagship instead of moving on from it.

The Canes survived a Halloween scare in Chapel Hill and head to Notre Dame on Saturday. Klay Thompson remembered he is Klay Thompson. And two giant rooms open this week: La Pecora Bianca at Merrick Park today, and Motek By The Sea at the W Fort Lauderdale on Thursday.

The bigger theme: in Miami, the people who stay and invest through the slow season are the ones who win when the city fills back up.

On My Mind: You Survived the Off Season. It’s Party Time.

That was a tough one.

Slow Tuesdays. Empty Wednesdays. Owners standing at the door at 8pm wondering if the people were ever coming back. Restaurants closed. Inflation kept climbing. Milk, electric, staff, rent, all of it up, while the customer walked next door to save a quarter.

But look at you. You made it past Halloween.

Jeff Bezos is coming back to town. Lauren Sánchez is about to go on a spending spree. Billionaire time is back.

Meanwhile, the temperature is dropping in the Northeast and the political noise is getting louder everywhere else. Which means it’s time for everyone to do what they always do when the rest of the country gets cold and cranky.

Come to Miami.

The most exciting, most fun, nobody cares who you are or what you did place in the world. You can be anyone here. You can start over here. You can make it here.

It’s go time. Opportunity is knocking.

Change the zoning, build a Christian Louboutin branded condo on the beach. Spend $500 a person on dinner at Gaia. Get lost on an afternoon boat trip with people you don’t know. Open a restaurant. Launder and live lavishly.

You only live once. Tis the season to be Miami.

BEACH BUSINESS

Where Shopping Is a Pleasure, Until Someone Passes Out

Publix wanted a higher quality crowd, so they decided to close Starbucks and open a bar.

Read more

I walked into a new restaurant this week that has everything. Great operators, a beautiful build, food I would go back for. I would also bet the rent is north of $50,000 a month. That is a lot of espresso martinis.

That is the math of eating out in Miami right now. Milk costs more. Electric costs more. Staff costs more. And your customer will walk to the coffee shop next door to save a quarter. This was one of the hardest restaurant summers in recent memory, and not just here.

The Heat Index is not a list of the best restaurants in Miami. It is a list of the restaurants that matter most right now: the rooms people are talking about, booking, and texting their friends about. We build it with The Leftovers, Matt Meltzer, Erin Michelle Newberg and Ollie Fowler. We argue it out on the podcast, and the result is a ranked list of the restaurants generating the most heat in the city. Every spot is tagged. Best of Best is the elite. On Fire is the momentum. Classic is the institutions that still hold the room. New is the openings that earned a place fast. No placement is for sale. Taste is not for sale.

Every pick is judged against nine rules. Is it built to last or just trending? Are the people behind it actually in the building? Does the craft earn the return visit? Does the price earn its keep? Did Miami make it? Would you tell a friend about it without being asked? The list changes every volume because the city does. The Preheating Index tracks the ten rooms that just opened or are about to, the ones most likely to show up next time. When a restaurant drops off, it hasn’t failed. The heat just moved. So does Miami.

Season is weeks away. Which means The Heat Index is back. Not the best restaurants in Miami. The ones that matter most right now.

I recorded this edition with The Leftovers, Matt Meltzer and Erin Michelle Newberg. Ollie Fowler was frolicking in Massachusetts. She is the one who keeps us honest, and it shows.

For less than the cost of your matcha, subscribe to get full access. Cement your status as an insider and support your community. We love you Miami.

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WHAT’S GOOD? THE LEFTOVERS: RESTAURANT HEAT INDEX, VOL. 03

I walked into a new restaurant this week that has everything. Great operators, a beautiful build, food I would go back for. I would also bet the rent is north of $50,000 a month. That is a lot of espresso martinis.

That is the math of eating out in Miami right now. Milk costs more. Electric costs more. Staff costs more. And your customer will walk to the coffee shop next door to save a quarter. This was one of the hardest restaurant summers in recent memory, and not just here.

The Heat Index is not a list of the best restaurants in Miami. It is a list of the restaurants that matter most right now: the rooms people are talking about, booking, and texting their friends about. We build it with The Leftovers, Matt Meltzer, Erin Michelle Newberg and Ollie Fowler. We argue it out on the podcast, and the result is a ranked list of the restaurants generating the most heat in the city. Every spot is tagged. Best of Best is the elite. On Fire is the momentum. Classic is the institutions that still hold the room. New is the openings that earned a place fast. No placement is for sale. Taste is not for sale.

Every pick is judged against nine rules. Is it built to last or just trending? Are the people behind it actually in the building? Does the craft earn the return visit? Does the price earn its keep? Did Miami make it? Would you tell a friend about it without being asked? The list changes every volume because the city does. The Preheating Index tracks the ten rooms that just opened or are about to, the ones most likely to show up next time. When a restaurant drops off, it hasn’t failed. The heat just moved. So does Miami.

Season is weeks away. Which means The Heat Index is back. Not the best restaurants in Miami. The ones that matter most right now.

I recorded this edition with The Leftovers, Matt Meltzer and Erin Michelle Newberg. Ollie Fowler was frolicking in Massachusetts. She is the one who keeps us honest, and it shows.

Twenty two restaurants that matter right now. Ten about to break. And one argument about Italian food we could not stop having. The full list lives at heatindex.whatsgood.miami.

AND HERE IS THE LIST….

22. Teo Teo. The Caracas Bakery team’s rotisserie in MiMo, right next door to the bakery. Whole chickens, four sauces. You are competing with Publix chicken, a beloved product, so it has to be a lot better to earn the premium. I think it will be.

21. Manoli. Greek on Main Highway in the Grove, next to Ariete. The team behind it took a hit with Ceia, which food people loved but Portuguese is a once a month cuisine in America. Greek is an every week cuisine. Old school Miami guys who stayed in the game and came back with the right idea. I am rooting for them.

20. Flight West. 350 whiskeys and a charcoal oven on Sunset Drive. We sent our intern Ben, who has better taste than most food critics in town. His review: “It slaps.” One of the best upscale meals he has had in South Florida.

19. Barra Callao. Twelve seats of Peruvian Nikkei in North Miami Beach. Ceviche one notch above everyone else. Subtle, fresh, not drowning in leche de tigre.

18. Pho Nam. The Tam Tam crew’s old school Saigon noodle shop on Flagler. Ten years ago you could barely find pho in Miami. Tam Tam is a big reason that changed.

17. Gigi Rigolatto. The Paris and St. Tropez dining room picked the Delano for its first American address. Beautiful, monstrous, well heeled crowd, very expensive. The burger they send to the pool is one of the best in Miami. I will be honest: this spot is a gift. I want them here because I want them to be good. This season they have to earn it.

Read more

Friends,

After years of work, today we are introducing What’s Good for Business, everything you need to market your business in Miami, from the people who know Miami best.

The best thing that can happen to a Miami business isn’t an ad. It’s a friend saying “you have to go.”

People have asked us for years how to buy that. The answer has always been the same: you can’t.

Not on The Heat Index. Not on The Good List. Not in a review.

Every pick is made on taste, and taste is not for sale.

That’s exactly why we’re launching What’s Good for Business.

Trust is the asset

The wall between editorial and commercial isn’t a limitation. It’s the whole point.

It’s why 5x more people than average open this email.

It’s why 66% of what we publish gets shared.

And it’s why the businesses we partner with actually grow.

Trust that is earned gets you believed.

Miami Runs on Word of Mouth

Miami is a big city that acts like a small town. Nobody finds the next great restaurant from a billboard. They hear about it from a friend.

What’s Good is that friend, to a monthly audience of millions of people.

Story Beats Advertising

People don’t buy products. They buy how something makes them feel, and who they become when they choose it. The difference between a business people walk past and one they tell their friends about is the story.

We’ve spent our careers telling those stories for hotels, restaurants and real estate. We built What’s Good to tell them for Miami.

The Audience that Decides

This isn’t local media. Founders, CEOs, owners, operators. Readers in Miami, New York, LA and London. The people who decide where this city eats, stays, invests and builds.

We’re Selective

We back what we believe in. If we wouldn’t send our friends there, it’s not a fit. That’s what makes a partnership worth something.

WHAT WE OFFER

Title Partner

Per Quarter
Be the only business in your category sponsoring WGM for the quarter, with presented-by recognition and a monthly original video across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and Substack.

The Feature

Single Piece of Content
Show Miami what makes your business worth discovering, with an original video and newsletter placements that bring your story to WGM’s audience.The

The Launch

6 Week Program
Introduce your business to Miami with a campaign built around your opening. Build anticipation, share your story, and give people a reason to visit.

The Campaign

8 Week Program
Build familiarity with Miami audiences through two months of original videos, newsletter placements, and a dedicated offer for WGM subscribers.

Small Business Social

Growth for SMB’s
A bespoke growth strategy and all the content you need to promote your business from a single two-hour shoot, plus a Breakthrough Offer sent to WGM subscribers.

The Miami Marketing Course

30 Day Course to Transform Your Business in Miami
A 30 day course for South Florida entrepreneurs who want to own their category. Thirty days to learn the method. Sixty to see it work. Ninety to own your category.

Most partnerships include an exclusive offer for What’s Good subscribers, a reason to visit, book or buy.

BOOK A MEETING & START GROWING

Most advertising asks you to trust it. This works because you already do.

Built something worth sharing? Let’s tell Miami together.

Keep your SPF high and your standards higher. We love you Miami.

Thats What’s Good,

Alan Philips

For less than the cost of your matcha, subscribe to get full access. Cement your status as an insider and support your community. We love you Miami.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 10.27.26

This week’s issue is about what things cost in Miami and what they’re actually worth.

The Heat traded half the roster for Giannis and are 0 and 4, so I have some notes for the chef. The St. Regis Sunny Isles just landed a $463 million loan on land that cost $113 million in 2014. Tom Brady is opening a card shop at Miami Worldcenter that sells cardboard with his face on it, and is reportedly dating another Victoria’s Secret model. Revolve, an online store, is opening a real one at Aventura Mall.

Meanwhile, $12 on Uber Eats now gets you a Pubbelly sushi roll, and I explain who’s paying for it. (It isn’t you.) Pasta e Basta is headed to Mary Street in the Grove, Teo Teo is roasting the best excuse to stay home in MiMo, and Misha’s Cupcakes closes its storefronts after 21 years and keeps baking anyway.

The bigger theme: in Miami, the price is never the point. The story is. Whatever you pay above the cost of the thing is the value of the idea, and this week everybody is betting on ideas.

On My Mind: Rice, Beans, and Giannis

The Miami Heat are 0 and 4. Watching them play is about as inspiring as a meal at a Cuban restaurant.

In June, Pat Riley traded Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, the 13th pick and two unprotected first rounders for Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis. ESPN called it one of the biggest trades in NBA history.

Four games in, here’s what we got for it. The Timberwolves beat them by 25 at home. The Pistons beat them by 17, also at home. Then Charlotte, which isn’t an NBA game so much as a wellness check. And then Dallas made it four.

In January, Giannis becomes eligible for a $275 million extension. At that price, we’d better start seeing some Kobe beef, caviar and champagne. Maybe that’s why they brought in Dorsia.

Courtside at Kaseya costs more than a month’s rent in Brickell. For that money I want a show. Right now I’m sitting through a timeshare presentation.

Spo, you’re the best chef in the league. Stop serving us rice and beans.

BEACH BUSINESS

Revolve Opens Its First Florida Store at Aventura Mall

Somewhere a journalism professor just felt a chill. Revolve is opening a store at Aventura Mall, and I’m covering it like it’s a moon landing.

Read more

Dorsia Goes Courtside with the Miami Heat

Dorsia just got the best table in Miami. It’s on the hardwood.

The Miami born, members based technology platform signed a five year deal with the Miami HEAT to become the team’s Official Hospitality Technology Partner and open The Dorsia Club at Kaseya Center. It’s the arena’s most exclusive lounge, open only to courtside ticket holders. Levy Restaurants runs it with Michelin starred chef Jeremy Ford, and Dorsia brings in guest chefs to cook special menus at select home games.

The food is good. The access is the real story. Eligible Dorsia members can now buy courtside seats and suites through the app. Some bookings come with pregame warmups, a spot for your kids in the High Five Club with the players, and free throws on the court after the final buzzer. Dorsia also plans private five on five games, two dinners on the court, and premium seats for concerts all year.

“Great hospitality is about more than getting someone through the door,” said founder and CEO Marc Lotenberg. “It’s about what happens once they’re inside.”

Mr. Miami Take

Dorsia started as a way to get a table at Carbone. Now it’s selling something much bigger: moments money usually can’t buy. Your kid high fiving Bam Adebayo isn’t a reservation. It’s a memory. That’s the business now. Miami built this company, and Miami is where it keeps raising the bar.

What’s Good Podcast Episode #29: Kobi Karp, Architect Behind Everything in Miami. The Surf Club. The Shore Club. The Raleigh. And sooooo much more.

Kobi Karp has had his hands on almost every neighborhood in this city. The Surf Club. The Shore Club. The Raleigh. The Ritz and the Sagamore. Fisher Island. If you’ve stood somewhere in Miami Beach and felt something, there’s a good chance he drew it.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 10.20.26

This week’s issue is about a city changing faster than anyone can keep up with, and I’m going to help you keep up.

In November, we are launching The Good List, my picks for what’s actually worth it in Miami, with no placements for sale. Stephen Starr opens Pastis at The Nora in West Palm and is turning the old Neiman Marcus on Worth Avenue into a restaurant Palm Beach had to be promised isn’t a chain. Russell Galbut pulls three Live Local towers off the table as Miami Beach fights Tallahassee for control of its skyline.

The Dolphins keep losing and keep getting worth more, with a fresh stake sold at a $12.5 billion valuation. Meanwhile the Canes are No. 1 for the first time in more than two decades, and Giannis opens his first season in Miami on Wednesday. And I got a first taste of A Pasta Bar in Sunset Harbour, where a saffron and bone marrow tagliatelle is the dish of the fall.

The bigger theme: Miami is growing into the most important city in the world faster than anyone can imagine. I can’t wait to watch this season’s metamorphosis.

On My Mind: The Good List Is Coming

Drive down I-95 and count the personal injury lawyers. Every one of them is “the best.” There’s a billboard, a plaque and an award from an organization you’ve never heard of, paid for by the lawyer on the billboard.

That’s most best of lists in Miami. A placement fee, a sponsored post, a friend of a friend. Nothing on them surprises you, and nothing on them costs anyone anything.

This city is full of superstars, and it’s full of shady people who look exactly like them and claim to be superstars. Same billboard. Same Instagram. Same velvet rope. From the outside, you can’t tell the difference. That’s our job.

So in November, I’m publishing The Good List. It’s my picks for what’s actually worth your time, your money and your Saturday night in Miami.

Each week takes one part of a good life here:

• Eat Good: coffee shops worth crossing town for, pizza worth the carbs, dinner reservations worth the trouble

• Feel Good: spas worth the splurge, the best recovery, yoga, the workout classes worth leaving your routine for, and the doctors worth knowing

• Live Good: the best hotels for a staycation, and the memberships that are actually worth it

• Good People: the chefs, developers, founders, lawyers and creatives raising the standard in this city

In most categories, I’ll name The Best and The Contender. Agree or argue. That’s the point.

The rules are simple. Nobody can buy a spot. Partners never pick winners. If I have a relationship with a place, I’ll tell you.

Mr. Miami Take: Anyone can buy a billboard that says “best.” Nobody can buy a spot on this list. Taste is not for sale. In November, it becomes a list. Together, we’ll make sure the good guys win and the assholes think twice.

BEACH BUSINESS

West Palm Rising: Nora Hotel & Pastis Open, More Coming from Starr to Worth Avenue

Today The Nora Hotel opens in West Palm Beach. It has 201 rooms from BD Hotels and Sean MacPherson at 1135 North Railroad Avenue, Florida’s first Sisley Spa, and a lobby bar called Jack’s, done by GACHOT in pecky cypress.

On the ground floor sits Pastis.

This is Pastis number five. Keith McNally opened the original in the Meatpacking District in 1999, and it closed in 2014. Starr brought it back in 2019 and has since taken it to Miami, DC and Nashville. The West Palm location runs more than 13,300 square feet indoors and out. It comes with Pastis Privé for private events, and Starr also handles room service for the whole hotel.

The hotel isn’t finished filling up. Mama Hospitality has the roof with Lillys, which includes a pool, a full bar called Bar Lilly and a casual Cafe Lilly. No date yet.

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Carlos is the founder and CEO of Rosso Development and the former president of condo development at Related Group. By his own count he has had his hands on roughly 20,000 condos in South Florida. “It’s an absurd number,” he told me. He’s right. Now he is building the Standard Residences and Midtown Park, which is about to double the size of a neighborhood most people couldn’t find on a map twenty years ago.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 10.12.26

This Week’s Issue

This week’s issue is about a city that’s still being shaped, and I am going to teach you how to put your hands on it.

Miami is clay, not concrete, which means the best version of almost every category here doesn’t exist yet. On Ocean Drive, The Tides reopens in November after nine dark years, with just 45 keys and a second chance to decide what the street stands for. In Boca, Michael Dell is selling condos at The Boca Raton for $9 million and up, but what he’s really selling is a club membership that passes from grandparents to grandchildren.

With 50 days to Basel, a Coconut Grove dealer is headed to prison for fake Warhols, while a new survey shows the biggest spenders in art are Gen Z: young, mostly inherited money, private, and buying straight from artists on their phones. Two chefs who trained under Robuchon and Jean Georges are opening Anako in Little River, and I’m calling it one of the best openings of the year before I’ve had a bite. Clay Conley is putting Imoto right next to Buccan on Miracle Mile.

The bigger theme: in Miami right now, the people who win aren’t fighting over territory somebody else already owns. They’re claiming ground nobody has stood on yet.

ON MY MIND: Miami Is Clay, Not Concrete

Lincoln Road is being rewritten. Brickell is building.
Mana now has what he needs to finish downtown.
North Beach was never. Now it’s just around the corner.
The Grove is back, and more expensive than ever.

Here is what I figured out about this city.

New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London. Most of the great cities of the world are concrete. Ours is not.

Concrete cities are finished. The categories are claimed. The leaders are installed. The rooms were built before you got here, and your whole career is spent asking permission to sit in one of them.

Miami is not finished.

It is still clay. Still wet, still soft, still taking the shape of whoever shows up and presses hardest.

It is the fastest growing capital and cultural market in America, and almost every category is still looking for a leader.

Not a competitor. A leader.

Think about your own category for a second. The best version of it in this city probably does not exist yet.

Which means you are not fighting for share. You are claiming ground nobody has stood on.

That is a completely different game, and almost nobody here is playing it on purpose.

Concrete sets. Clay waits for hands.

Choose your lane. You too can dominate your category.

I am going to teach a course on it. Sign up for the waitlist at HERE.

BEACH BUSINESS

Ocean Drive gets Legendary Tides Hotel Back in November

The Tides at 1220 Ocean Drive reopens in November, nearly nine years after Hurricane Irma shut it down in 2017. Nine years of a landmark Art Deco hotel sitting dark on Ocean Drive is finally over.

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He’ll tell you that himself. When I asked what he wants people to say about him at his funeral, he didn’t hesitate: “No is just a starting place.” He thinks it might end up on his tombstone. I think it already explains everything.

Lee founded the Food Network South Beach and New York City Wine & Food Festivals. He’s Chief Communications Officer at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, and he’s the closest thing this city has to a godfather of food. He’s also an old friend and I have been looking forward to sitting down with him since I started What’s Good Miami.

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Good Company Interview: Lee Schrager, Founder of South Beach Wine & Food Festival

Lee Schrager has never met a no he couldn’t turn into a yes.

He’ll tell you that himself. When I asked what he wants people to say about him at his funeral, he didn’t hesitate: “No is just a starting place.” He thinks it might end up on his tombstone. I think it already explains everything.

Lee founded the Food Network South Beach and New York City Wine & Food Festivals. He’s Chief Communications Officer at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, and he’s the closest thing this city has to a godfather of food. He’s also an old friend and I have been looking forward to sitting down with him since I started What’s Good Miami.

Lee grew up in Massapequa. I’m from Great Neck, different sides of the tracks according to him, but the place instilled in us a very similar hustle. He moved to Fort Lauderdale at 15, then went to the Culinary Institute of America with Anthony Bourdain, who later wrote the foreword to his first cookbook.

His externship story shows the whole man in one scene. He wrote to Glorious Food, the society caterer of the era, over and over and never heard back. He was in the city for a different interview when he walked past their 72nd Street townhouse, saw a window full of lemons, and walked in on a chaotic Saturday asking for the chef by name. The chef said, “You want the job? Start right now.” So he did. Within months he was working events for the Rockefellers, for Jackie Onassis and for the opening of the Kennedy Center.

Then he realized he didn’t want to spend his life in a kitchen.

Midnight Room Service

Back in Florida, while he studied at FIU, Lee ran midnight room service at the Bahia Mar. He took the orders, cooked them, delivered them and picked up the trays. He came in early just to watch the galas. When the catering director finally made good on her weekly threat to quit, Lee was in the GM’s office that Monday morning asking for her job. The GM had never met him, and Lee had no experience. “Give me 90 days at the same salary.” He was 21 and making $50,000, so he dropped out of FIU.

Omni moved him to Miami to open catering downtown. He didn’t know a soul there and didn’t speak Spanish. Then Ted Gould offered him $100,000 to run catering at the Pavillon, which is now the InterContinental.

Every job, he says, led to a better one.

The nerve didn’t come from his parents. He calls them “people who didn’t take chances,” and he says it with love. His dad sold women’s clothing, hated the commute to 1400 Broadway and never left. Lee paid for his own teen tour, his own Trans Am and his own first house. His parents gave him a washing machine for that house. He’s grateful for all of it.

South Beach, Before It Was South Beach

In the mid 1980s, Lee put up the money for a bar at 634 Collins and guaranteed the note. His partner died two months before opening. So Lee quit the hotel and ran Torpedo, one of Miami Beach’s first gay bars. It was in the same building where he’d eaten Chinese food with his grandparents as a kid. He barely drinks. It didn’t matter.

The neighbors taught him how not to get ripped off. Scratch was on one side, Warsaw on the other and Torpedo in the middle. That triangle was the night.

Lee picked up Gianni Versace at the airport on his first trip to Miami.

Versace took one look at the Sinatra suite at the Fontainebleau, shag carpet and all, and refused to stay. Lee called Chris Blackwell and moved the whole entourage into the Marlin, nannies included. The next morning he took Versace to breakfast at News Cafe. Versace ate breakfast there almost every day for the rest of his life, and the supermodels followed him to Lee’s bar after shoots.

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He’ll tell you that himself. When I asked what he wants people to say about him at his funeral, he didn’t hesitate: “No is just a starting place.” He thinks it might end up on his tombstone. I think it already explains everything.

Lee founded the Food Network South Beach and New York City Wine &…

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 9.29.26

This Week’s Issue

This week’s issue is about what happens when growth starts testing the thing that made something special in the first place.

Inflation is exposing restaurant brands that expanded faster than their identity could hold, with Chip City, True Food Kitchen and Yardbird all becoming cautionary tales. In North Beach, more than $120 million of oceanfront property is being assembled for a new ultra luxury tower, while Brickell Key is proving Miami’s condo market is still operating on another planet with $1.7 billion already sold at the new Mandarin Oriental.

Wynwood is losing one of its last true family spots with FunDimension closing, Giannis is already giving Miami reasons to believe after a near perfect Heat debut, and Española Way is trading Tropezón for another Lost Boy as operators double down on the concept that travels best.

The bigger theme: in Miami right now, the winners are the brands, neighborhoods and operators that know exactly what they are and protect it as they grow.

ON MY MIND: Inflation is killing restaurant chains faster than the Cocaine Cowboys.

Last week Chip City shut down every store it had left, all 22 of them, with no warning to customers or staff. It started in 2017 in Astoria with two guys trying to sell 100 cookies a day, and it grew to nearly 50 stores in ten states, Florida included. Danny Meyer’s investment fund put in $17.5 million and took control in March. Four days before the doors closed, cofounder Peter Phillips sued the company and its investors over pay he says he was owed. The president’s explanation: “we no longer have the funding required to operate this business.”

On Sunday, True Food Kitchen filed for Chapter 11. Sam Fox and Dr. Andrew Weil started it in Phoenix in 2008 as a health first restaurant before every strip mall had a grain bowl. It worked. Then Fox sold, private equity moved in, and the celebrity checks followed: Oprah, Howard Schultz, a $100 million round in 2022. And the rest is history. Today it has about $42 million in debt, 12 of its 46 restaurants closed overnight, and a sale process run by the court. In the filing, the company blames expansion outside its core markets and spending on food and drinks that strayed from its original philosophy.

Translation: it stopped being the thing that made it work.

Two weeks before that, Yardbird filed for bankruptcy at the corporate level. It was born on Miami Beach in 2011, then went to Denver, Los Angeles and beyond. Now it’s down to five locations, about $25 million in debt and a buyer lined up for the brand.

Inflation is killing restaurants. Food costs, labor, rent and insurance all went up, and guests didn’t get any richer. But inflation doesn’t kill everyone equally. It kills the ones that already lost their reason for being. Chip City went from 100 cookies a day to ten states, and the founder ended up suing the people running it. True Food sold a founder’s point of view, and then the founder left. Yardbird sold a Miami Beach feeling, and then it tried to sell that feeling in Denver.

When the vision and soul leave, a brand is just an idea with economics attached, and in this economy cost structures are a losing battle. The restaurants that make it through will be the ones where you can still feel the person who started them.

BEACH BUSINESS

NORTH BEACH RISING: THE BUYOUT IS DONE. NOW HERE COMES THE TOWER.

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