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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 5.12.26

• On My Mind: Life Is A Video Game That Doesn’t Come With Instructions

  Life is not for the faint of heart. Neither is Super Mario Bros.

Beach Business

• The Raleigh’s 690-Seat Tell

  The Planning Board convenes June 2 to decide whether the Raleigh gets two more floors, eight more condos, and a 690-seat restaurant.

• The Cadillac Hotel Is Becoming an Escalade

  A phased renovation lands late 2026 into 2027, guestrooms and public spaces.

Hospitality Local Insider

• Heat Watch: Gaia

  Picture Milos combined with LPM, the seafood seriousness of one, the see-and-be-seen energy of the other, and you have the shape of it.

New Openings

• Casa Tua Cucina Wynwood

  The legendary food hall arrives with major square footage in Wynwood.

• 400 Vinyl Room

  100 years of deal making. Right next to Yamashiro. Sixty seats, vinyl only.

• Buccan Sandwich Shop

  The Palm Beach cult favorite opened in Coral Gables.

Real Estate

• Luxe Developments We Love: Cipriani Residences Brickell

  1420 South Miami Avenue. Eighty stories. The tallest residential tower in Miami.

ON MY MIND: LIFE IS A VIDEO GAME THAT DOESN’T COME WITH DIRECTIONS

Life is like a video game. We are always all working to get to the next level. The only difference between life and the video game is that life doesn’t come with directions.

Yes, there is philosophy. There is religion. There is history. And yes, some of it works. But beyond that, your rules are internal. They are what you can live with. What works for you. What you can tolerate and still wake up every morning feeling good about yourself.

That’s the game. Not the one your parents played. Not the one your friends are playing. Your game is your game, your rules.

You will lose lives. You will get stuck on the same level for years until you find a new move. You will meet players who change everything. You will meet enemies who teach you more than your friends ever could. And eventually you will figure out that the boss at the end of every level is yourself. You have to overcome you.

Press start. Risk everything and figure out the rules for yourself.

BEACH BUSINESS

The Raleigh’s 690-Seat Tell: Who will the operator be?

Nahla Capital filed its hand with Miami Beach this week. The Planning Board convenes June 2 to decide whether the Raleigh redevelopment gets two more floors, eight more condos, and a 690-seat restaurant.

The headline is the height. The story is the seat count.

Nahla paid $270 million for the three-acre site last October, the former Raleigh, Richmond, South Seas Hotels, all stripped to their facades, all waiting for someone to finish what Shvo couldn’t. The 2020 approval was 86 hotel keys and 84 condos. By 2022 it was 44 and 60. Today’s filing pushes residential back up to 52 units across 17 stories, keeps the hotel at 60 rooms, and adds 66,264 square feet to the tower.

That’s the developer math. The 690 seats are something else.

Under Shvo, the F&B program was an exclusive amenity, Milan’s Langosteria flying in for their first U.S. location, designed by Peter Marino, sized for residents and a hand-picked membership. A private club. Marino is now out, suing over his designs. Langosteria’s status is unconfirmed and the silence is loud. Kobi Karp is architect of record.

Nahla isn’t replacing an amenity. They’re building a destination.

Six hundred and ninety seats next to the fleur-de-lis pool is an attempt to build a revenue machine. Who lands it matters. Is it a lease deal or a management deal? There are very few players who can deliver on the scale and the feel required for ultra luxury at 690 seats. Whoever wins this room will have a big impact on what defines the Rosewood Raleigh when it opens in 2028.

Compass is selling residences. Rosewood is branding the hotel. The restaurant will tell you who the building is really for and what it will feel like.

The Cadillac Hotel Is Becoming an Escalade

Mid-Beach is getting another new look.

Davidson Hospitality Group just took over management of the Cadillac Hotel & Beach Club on Collins and 39th, the 357-room Roy France Art Deco landmark that’s anchored that stretch since 1940. Hersha owns it. Marriott’s Autograph Collection still flies the flag. A phased renovation lands late 2026 into 2027, guestrooms and public spaces, both.

This is the second generation of the Cadillac. And it’s the one that matters.

The bones are exceptional. Oceanfront. Two towers. Original terrazzo. Two pools. 6,200 square feet of event space. A wraparound mezzanine that most hotels would kill for. The first renovation got it back on the map. This one can make it a destination.

HOSPITALITY LOCAL INSIDER

Heat Watch: Gaia

Gaia has landed at 801 South Pointe Drive, and the room already tells you everything. Picture Milos combined with LPM, the seafood seriousness of one, the see-and-be-seen energy of the other, and you have the shape of it.

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WELCOME TO THE WHAT’S GOOD WEEKENDER!!

Three properties worth touring this weekend. One feature worth reading on the sand. Just enough to get you off your phone, into something interesting, and armed with something to actually talk about Monday morning.

That’s the deal.

LUXE LISTINGS WE LOVE

A 1930s Secret on San Marco? Miami Beach still has those.

Most assume the Venetian Islands are strictly a collection of modern glass boxes. But tucked away on San Marco is a “Med-Deco” estate that feels more like a private compound than a beach house. This is the Miami equivalent of finding a hidden, ivy-covered carriage house in the West Village. Positioned behind a lush wall of tropical privacy at 1281 S Venetian Way, this 1935 residence offers a rare “if you know, you know” prestige just five minutes from the Design District and Sunset Harbour.

The 2,912 SF interior is a masterclass in architectural volume, centered around a dramatic Great Room with soaring vaulted ceilings and a classic fireplace. The home features a high-contrast mix of original terrazzo and warm oak floors, a chef’s kitchen with gray granite and gas cooking, and a dedicated office with custom built-ins. Outside, a walled tropical fortress of ancient Banyan trees surrounds a heated saltwater pool, spa, and a covered loggia with a custom bar and summer kitchen. Entirely turn-key with a rare four-car driveway, it delivers historic character with modern utility.

THE DEETS:

Price: $3,975,000

Neighborhood: Venetian Islands, Miami Beach

Square Footage: 2,912 SF

Lot Size: 7500 Square Feet

Days On the Market: 1

Built: 1935

Rooms: 4 Bedrooms, 3.5 Bathrooms

Amenities: Pool, 2 Car Garage, Soaking Tub, Patio with Bar, Landscaping

Listing Agency: Luxe Living Realty by Dora Puig

→ BUY IT NOW

A High-Tech Fortress in the Grove. No Electric Bill.

Coconut Grove is famous for its lush canopy, but 3232 Emathla St introduces a level of sustainable luxury that is rare even for this neighborhood. It’s a 2017 contemporary compound that functions as a private, off-grid sanctuary blending high-design architecture with a massive solar array that offers “zero-bill” living. Tucked away on a quiet street near Kennedy Park. Think West Coast tech retreat dropped into the heart of Miami’s most tropical zip code.

The 5,721 SF interior is defined by massive scale and volume, anchored by a professional-grade private cinema and glass walls that fully retract to the outdoors. The layout is built for a lifestyle of ease, featuring a sprawling primary wing with spa-inspired finishes and a secondary lounge upstairs for the ensuite bedrooms. Outside, the property is a walled oasis, where a resort-style pool is framed by a dense bamboo perimeter for absolute seclusion. Equipped with twin EV charging stations and smart-home integration, it is a future-proof residence that prioritizes privacy as much as performance.

THE DEETS:

Price: $6,995,000

Neighborhood: Coconut Grove

Square Footage: 5,721 SF

Lot Size: .25 Acres

Days On the Market: 4

Built: 2017

Rooms: 6 bed, 6.5 bath

Amenities: Movie Theater, Fully Retractable Doors, Solar Panels, Resort Style Pool

Listing Agency: Compass (Bradi Sigurdsson)

→ BUY IT NOW

An Oceanfront Fortress in Altos Del Mar. Only Ocean Front Private Homes in Miami Beach.

Miami Beach is famous for its high-rise skylines, but 7815 Atlantic Way belongs to a much more exclusive world. It is one of only 12 private residences in Altos Del Mar, the only gated community in the city where your backyard is the actual sand. This three-level contemporary estate feels like a sleek, coastal sanctuary that values absolute privacy, offering direct boardwalk access while remaining entirely shielded from the public eye.

The 5,868 SF interior is a masterclass in architectural transparency, featuring a private atrium with a decorative waterfall and walls of glass that frame the Atlantic. The layout includes a professional-grade Pedini kitchen with a backlit onyx island, a 45-foot grand salon with 11-foot ceilings, and a dedicated media lounge. The entire third level is a primary retreat, boasting 14-foot ceilings and a private terrace overlooking the sea. Outside, the resort-style grounds feature a saltwater pool, a sunken conversation pit, and a full summer kitchen designed for entertaining against the backdrop of the ocean.

THE DEETS:

Price: $24,990,000

Neighborhood: Altos Del Mar, Miami Beach

Square Footage: 5,868 SF

Lot Size: .37 Acres (Beachfront)

Days On the Market: 7

Built: 2015

Rooms: 5 bed, 6.5 bath

Amenities: 1 of only 12 oceanfront homes in gated Altos Del Mar, 45’ x 45’ salon with 11’ ceilings and ocean-framed art walls, Third-floor primary suite with 14’ ceilings and private oceanfront terrace, Sunken conversation pit, saltwater pool, and summer kitchen opening to the boardwalk and beach

Listing Agency: Douglas Elliman (Dina Goldentayer)

→ BUY IT NOW

WEEKENDER FEATURE

GOOD COMPANY, BAD BALANCE SHEET

Brightline finally became the product Florida deserves. The only question left is whether it gets the time.

There is a version of this story that is about $5.5 billion in total debt, an Ernst & Young going-concern letter, $233 million in total losses last year, a cash position that fell 52% to $139 million, and a deferred interest payment with a grace period clock ticking toward June 15.

That is not the story I want to write.

The story I want to write is about a train that, for the first time in years, is actually working and a country that has forgotten how to give good things enough time to win.

Brightline launched in 2018. For most of its life since, it has been an idea more than a product. A beautiful station in downtown Miami. A handsome livery. A promise about what South Florida could feel like if we ever decided to act like a real region instead of a chain of zip codes connected by I-95.

The early years were rough. Underbuilt ridership. Grade-crossing tragedies. A pandemic that gutted the entire premise of intercity travel. A cost of capital that turned a long-duration infrastructure bet into a high-wire act in real time.

And then, quietly, the product got good.

Not “fine.” Not “better than driving I-95 in the rain.” Good. The Orlando extension opened. The schedule densified. The trainsets multiplied. The on-board experience, Premium, MasterCard lounges, the whole choreography, started to feel less like an American compromise and more like something you might step onto in Madrid or Tokyo. Ridership between Orlando and South Florida is up 16% year over year. Regional ridership is up 8%. Revenue hit $214 million in 2025, up 14%. The operating loss, while still ugly, narrowed from $153 million to $127 million.

This is what a turning product looks like. Not an inflection point on a deck. The real thing, where customers start showing up faster than your spreadsheet predicted, and the experience starts referring more customers, and the brand starts doing the work that paid media used to do.

Read more

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 5.5.26

• On My Mind: Miami Is Not Manhattan. Miami Is Monaco.

  A small, dense, international city-state with disproportionate influence, a magnetic policy posture, and a self-selecting population of people who chose to be here.

Hospitality Local Insider

• First Look: The Delano

  Only time will tell whether the Delano returns to her grandeur. She will never be what she was and that is the point. She needs to be what she is.

Beach Business

• Implosion Number 2: The Fight For The Deauville

  A 110-page lawsuit, an 88-year-old matriarch, $500 million of oceanfront, and the developer who keeps ending up in the room.

• Carbone Beach Vs The Met Gala

  New York can keep the staircase. We’ll take the rigatoni, the ocean, and the music.

Real Estate

• Elon Watch: 300 Million Dollar House & A Helicopter

  A mystery billionaire landed a chopper in Biscayne Bay, took a raft to shore, and walked the most talked-about lot in America.

• Palantir’s Alex Karp Spends 75 Million On The Venetian

  Alex Karp has now spent roughly $75 million on a Venetian compound.

Family Affair

• Disney On Ice Was The Move

  Saturday afternoon, 30 minutes to Coral Gables, none of the Orlando hassle, and a smile on my daughter’s face I will not forget.

ON MY MIND: MIAMI IS NOT MANHATTAN. MIAMI IS MONACO.

There are two Miamis right now, and they are sitting at the same table.

On one side: small businesses are hurting. I’m hearing it directly, bookings are down across multiple operators from doctors to tennis instructors I know personally, the kind of soft-quarter signal that doesn’t show up in a press release but tells you exactly where the consumer is. Spirit Airlines, the airline that quietly made South Florida accessible to half the country, is gone, and combined with rising fuel costs, that almost certainly means a meaningful dip in visitation for a stretch. Or maybe the opposite happens: maybe it just means the people who would have gone to Europe this summer come here instead. I genuinely don’t know which way it cuts. Both are possible. Brightline, a train I deeply want to win, is carrying $5.5 billion in debt against $214 million of revenue and a going-concern letter from its auditors. The macro picture has teeth.

On the other side: mega-restaurateurs from Dubai and hoteliers from all over the world are arriving with plans to build entire empires here. Gaia reportedly spent north of $30 million on their build-out, and they don’t even own the real estate. That is not a restaurant opening. That is a statement of belief about where the next decade of global capital wants to eat dinner. U-Hauls are still pointed south. Stephen Ross, a man who has built more of this cities than most governments, is on record saying we are in the first inning of corporate relocation to Miami. The capital is here, and the capital is still moving.

How do you hold both of those Miamis in your hand at the same time?

You stop trying to compare Miami to the rest of America, and you start comparing it to the right peer set.

Miami is not Manhattan. Miami is Monaco. A small, dense, international city-state with disproportionate influence, a magnetic policy posture, and a self-selecting population of people who chose to be here. We are no income tax. We are pro-business permitting. We are second-home capital from São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Lagos, Riyadh, Madrid, Dubai, and yes, New York and Los Angeles. We are the only American city where the international money treats us as the home market and the domestic market as the secondary one.

That is not a soft factor. That is the entire game.

The rest of the country is staring down a hard 18 months, a debt cycle that has run too long, a consumer that is tapped, a federal balance sheet that doesn’t get fixed by hoping. There will be pain. There will be retrenchment. There will be cities that get smaller and meaner before they get better.

Miami will not be one of them. The capital here is global, not American. The migration here is structural, not cyclical. The policy stack, state and local, is the most business-friendly and residential-friendly in the country, and it was built deliberately, by people who watched what happened to the cities that chose otherwise. We are insulated. Not immune. Insulated.

But, and this is the part that matters, insulated is not invincible. Monaco is Monaco because Monaco protected what made Monaco. Every great city-state in history that lost its edge lost it the same way: it stopped defending the conditions that created the magic.

Miami’s job, right now, in this moment, is to protect the protections. Keep building, keep welcoming, keep saying yes.

The world is in a very interesting moment. We are in our own world inside of it.

Welcome to the new world.

CARBONE BEACH vs THE MET GALA

Two events. Same Monday. One winner.

Food:

Met Gala: Anna Wintour has reportedly banned chives, onions, garlic, and anything resembling flavor. Past menus have included a single edible flower on a plate.

Carbone Beach: Mario Carbone’s spicy rigatoni vodka. Veal parm the size of a hubcap. Meatballs. Bread that tastes like bread used to taste.

Setting:

Met Gala: a museum, a building specifically designed for not eating and not having fun.

Carbone Beach: the Atlantic Ocean is the centerpiece, the sand is the floor, the sky is the ceiling, and God did the lighting.

Entertainment:

Met Gala: a string quartet and a brief Rihanna sighting.

Carbone Beach: Ludacris, John Summit, DJ Khaled, Fat Joe, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Hart, Snoop Dogg, fifteen feet from your linguine.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 4.21.26

• On My Mind: Miami Wins, Wins, Wins, No Matter What.

  Moron Mamdani attacks Ken Griffin. Gary V concedes Miami is #1.

Hospitality Local Insider

• Restaurant Review: Slim’s Steakhouse, Starr Does it Again

  At Slim’s, the elder statesman energy is in full effect.

Beach Business

• The F1 Cheat Sheet for Normal People

  F1 was the unofficial end of season. Not this year.

• Where’s David Martin & Jorge Perez? Brickell Key Buyout.

  The 134-unit St. Louis condo on Brickell Key is close to selling.

• Eyal Shani has 50 Restaurants. He’s Opening Another.

  Eyal Shani is a genuinely talented chef. He’s not in the room.

Real Estate

• Luxe Listings We Love: The Scarface House Hits the Market For 237m

  The compound that served as Frank Lopez’s home in the 1983 film is for sale.

The Local Advantage

• Apa Aesthetic Arrives in Miami

  Kendall and Kylie Jenner. Jennifer Lopez. Uma Thurman. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. And now you.

ON MY MIND: MIAMI WINS WINS WINS, NO MATTER WHAT.

There’s a video on X with 52 million views.

NYC Mayor Moron Mamdani standing outside 220 Central Park South, Ken Griffin’s $238 million apartment, announcing a new pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes owned by people who don’t live in New York City.

Griffin doesn’t live in New York City. He lives in Miami. He moved Citadel there in 2022. He just bought the 545Wyn building in Wynwood for $180 million. And now, because a mayor with a camera decided to make him the face of everything wrong with wealth in America, Griffin is reconsidering his planned $6 billion Park Avenue tower, the one that would have created 15,000 permanent jobs and injected billions into the New York City economy.

Citadel’s COO called it shameful. He noted Griffin paid $2.3 billion in city and state taxes and directed $650 million in charitable gifts to New York institutions. Bill Ackman described the potential exodus response to Mamdani’s actions as “Ken Griffin leaving Chicago for Miami on steroids.”

Miami did none of this. We didn’t run an ad. We didn’t post a billboard. We didn’t tweet. New York did our marketing again. And the $5M-and-above sales segment is up 27% year over year.

The money already moved. The restaurants already moved. The hedge funds already moved. And while the Moron Mamdani films content outside a billionaire’s homes, Miami just keeps welcoming them with open arms.

And that my friends is how the empire state falls.

IN RELATED NEWS, GARY V CONCEDES MIAMI IS NBA. LAUNCHES NEW AGENCY.

It started, like most things do these days, with a post. Gary Vee took a swing, called Miami the G League. Not the NBA. I wasn’t letting that one slide.

What followed wasn’t noise, it was a proper back-and-forth, point-for-point, until it turned into something better: a live debate at the launch of his new agency, Tamara Group, named after his mother and led by CEO Ryan Harwood (we love you Ryan!). Not a bad setting to settle it.

Then came the twist.

Somewhere between the speeches and the skyline, aboard a yacht that felt more like a floating proof point than a party, Gary said it plainly: Miami is the best. Not just good, the top of Maslow’s hierarchy. The place where it all comes together. And just to drive it home, working on a yacht beats sitting in an office. Every time.

That’s the thing about Miami. You can argue it from the outside, but once you’re in it, really in it, the conversation tends to end the same way.

Thank you for blessing us, Gary V. Congrats on the new agency, check it out here.

HOSPITALITY LOCAL INSIDER

RESTAURANT REVIEW: SLIMS STEAKHOUSE, STARR DOES IT AGAIN.

Stephen Starr is the last of a dying breed. A restaurateur from a different generation, the days of Danny Meyer, Keith McNally, Drew Nieporent. He was the Philly guy. The second-city guy. The one who had the desire, the capability, and the style, but wasn’t yet THE guy. Over the last two decades, with the exception of Meyer, he has largely eclipsed everyone from his era. Concert promoter to nightclub owner to second-city restaurateur to the pre-eminent fine dining operator in the country. That’s not a career arc. That’s a masterclass.

One reason Starr has pulled away from his generation is his instinct for association. He understands that opening at Bal Harbour Shops, partnering with Ian Schrager, or operating alongside Keith McNally and Roman and Williams makes him as good if not better than the company he keeps. It’s the same principle that built Kith and Aimé Leon Dore, proximity to greatness as a deliberate strategy. So as Starr becomes the elder statesman of American restaurants, still rocking the deep tan, the black t-shirt, the black suit jacket, his restaurants are aging as elegantly as he is.

At Slim’s, that elder statesman energy is in full effect. The word that kept coming back, again and again: elegant. The decor was elegant. The captain and waiters’ suits were elegant. The dishes were elegant. Some of it pushed slightly too far, five knife options for your steak is a statement, but the point was well taken. We do things right here. We thought about everything.

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The Miami Transplant Journey: 24 Months to a Better Life

Month 1: Euphoria You’re at the pool on a Tuesday. You text your group chat a photo of your coffee. You’ve already said “I’m never going back” to three people who didn’t ask. You post a sunset. You post another sunset. You feel sorry for everyone you left behind.

Month 3: The Search You ask where the smart people hang out. People look at you like you asked where the air is. You try to explain what you mean, the dinners, the debates, the feeling that the conversation matters. You realize the people you’re meeting are obviously smart. They’ve built companies, raised families, made fortunes. They listen to podcasts on boats. They just don’t intellectually masturbate. They prefer to relax and have fun. It takes you another six months to figure out that might be the smarter move.

Month 5: The Dinner You get invited to a dinner on North Bay Road. You assume it’s a small thing. You pull up and there’s a valet. The house is the size of a hotel. The host is either a genius or a criminal, or possibly both, or possibly something else entirely that nobody quite explains. The woman next to you owns a boat that is unusually large and has a gift wrapping room in her house. The guy across from you claims to own a country. You realize this is just dinner for the PTA.

Month 6: The Publix Incident You go to the Sunset Harbour Publix looking for the things that made your old kitchen work. The specific Miso. The Labne. The bread. You cannot find any ethnic food. You have been walking in circles for 40 minutes, you are standing in the aisle and feel something crack. You call your wife. You say “I don’t think I can live here.” You are a grown adult. You are having a breakdown in a grocery store. On the way out, defeated, you grab the fried chicken because you haven’t eaten. You get to the car. You try it. It’s better than any fried chicken you had in New York. You sit in the parking lot and eat it in silence. You order the Labne and Miso on Amazon, they arrive the next morning.

Month 7: The Asian Food Reckoning You accept that the Asian food here is not close to what you had in your Chinatown. You try everywhere. You cry a little. You text your friend in New York a picture of what’s passing for ramen. He sends back a laughing emoji. That afternoon you are driving in North Miami Beach, you see a ramen shop, its delicious. You realize media doesn’t write about things like this here. Review sites only review restaurants like Amazonico.

Month 8: The Trip Back You go home for a wedding. You’ve been looking forward to it. You get off the plane and the cold and filth hits you like a brick. Your coat isn’t warm enough anymore, your body has changed and can’t handle it anymore. You see your old friends. They’re tired, aged, and pale. They’re complaining about the same things they were complaining about when you left. The restaurants you missed are fine. The energy you romanticized is just stress with better branding. You fly back to Miami and you feel the sun kiss your face, you love the humidity and your blood pressure drops back to chill. You rarely romanticize the old city the same way again.

Month 9: The Gaps You start noticing what isn’t there. There’s no dentist in Miami Shores. There’s no normal restaurant on 41st Street. There are no Jewish Deli in Miami worth eating. There’s no neighborhood bar in your neighborhood. In New York you assumed every category was saturated because every category was saturated. Here, entire industries are just missing. You start a note on your phone called “ideas.” It gets long. You realize the reason nothing is here isn’t that it can’t work, it’s that the people just don’t realize its missing. You did. You might be a genius. You start taking meetings.

Month 10: The Service Economy You slowly discover that Miami has quietly solved problems your old city never bothered with. Sudsies picks up your dry cleaning and returns way better than anyone in NYC. A man comes to your driveway and details your car for less than a carwash in Manhattan. When you get sick, a nurse comes to your bed with an IV, tests you for everything, bills your insurance, and leaves. You didn’t know this was a thing. You join a beach club. It’s where your family lives on weekends, where you take every visiting friend, where half your meetings happen. The one thing you can’t solve is a good doctor. There aren’t enough, the good ones are all concierge, and most of them are opening a med spa. You keep your guy in New York. You fly up once a year for the physical. Then he moves to Miami. G-d loves you.

Month 11: Assimilation You complain about the traffic, even though its nothing close to New York or LA rush hour. You know which causeway to take at which hour. You have a guy at Joe’s and got the VIP email for Major Food. You vow never to go back to Mila because your not a tourist, except maybe for brunch. You ask people where they are going this summer and read Whats Good Miami. You are, technically, a local now.

Month 12: The Taxes You do your taxes. There is no state income tax. You call your accountant. You say “are you sure?” He is sure. You sit in silence for a long moment.

Month 13: The Car You go to buy a car. You realize you don’t have to pay $800 a month for parking. You realize insurance and car payments are cheaper. You realize you can actually drive the car you always wanted. You buy it. You feel no guilt and you look great doing it.

Month 14: The Call For a year you’ve been trying to get into places. Then one day someone you barely know says “let me make a call.” An hour later you’re on the floor at the Heat arena. The next week someone else gets your construction permit unstuck, turns out his guy knows the commissioner’s guy, who knows the Cuban guy who stamps it. You stop trying to buy your way in. You start paying attention to who knows who. You realize the whole city runs on this. The real city is a group text you didn’t know existed. You start getting added to group texts.

Month 15: The Friends You talk a lot about missing your friends. Then your friends come visit. They’re better here. On vacation, on the boat, at dinner, they’re the people you fell in love with years ago. You realize you were never really hanging out with your friends back home. You were coexisting with their stress. You see them now for long weekends, at their best, and you love them more than you did when you lived in the same zip code. You keep the friendships. You lose the anxiety. Everyone wins.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 4.21.26

Life Altering Launch

• Sunshine Coffee Introduces All Natural Soft Serve + Warm Cookies

  Simple, clean, nourishing ingredients that taste like the best thing you’ve ever had.

Beach Business

• Chalamet at E11EVEN at 7 PM

  Coachella with the Kardashians or a boys’ weekend in Miami? Decision obvious.

• Word on the Street: Billionaire Brothers Changing Flags

  Who knows what will happen, but we can tell you one thing, the streets don’t lie.

• Half a Billion for the Last Big Piece of Downtown Miami

  “We did all the heavy lifting. We set the table.”

• $1.4 Billion for Dinner Reservations

  Whether the math works is almost beside the point. The sheikh wants dinner, and now he can have it whenever he wants.

Hospitality Local Insider

• HONŌ Opens. You’ll Never Guess What Kind of Restaurant It Is.

  See you on the rooftop. You’re buying the crispy rice.

• TURNING POINT: Casa Tua Cucina Lands in Wynwood

  This is it, folks. Wynwood is officially tipping.

Real Estate

• Real Talk: Nomad Residences Wynwood, Designed by my Grandma?

  A floral record player. A chandelier from grandma’s house.

• Luxe Developments We Love: Shore Club Private Collection.

  One of the most storied addresses in Miami Beach comes back, as 49 private homes designed by Robert A.M Stern.

LIFE ALTERING LAUNCH: SUNSHINE COFFEE + SOFT SERVE

If you know Sunshine Coffee, you know. You know the coffee. You know the matcha. You know the Sunshine Sando. You know what it feels like to walk in and feel like the whole neighborhood just gave you a hug.

Now imagine that, but with soft serve, that is all natural with no sugar.

Sunshine just launched soft serve. Two flavors in their brand colors, just like everything else. Yellow, French vanilla, no sugar added. Blue, all-natural Greek yogurt blended with spirulina. No junk. Just simple, clean, nourishing ingredients that happen to taste like the best thing you’ve ever had.

And then there’s The Mykonos. Greek yogurt soft serve. Olive oil. Sea salt. Honey. Four ingredients and suddenly you’re on a white stone wall overlooking the Aegean.

The life-altering, earth-shattering move is the Dream Team. Warm cookies, warmed to order, and cold soft serve. Side by side, in gooey matrimony. Cinnamon roll cookie. Banana bread chocolate chip. Double dark chocolate. Pistachio chocolate chip. Pick one, put it next to a swirl of Yellow or Blue, and experience unrelenting beachside bliss.

There are also Mini cones for the purists. Fresh-made warm Sundrop mini doughnuts for the adventurous. And the greatest affogato ever, vanilla soft serve with a double shot of Sunshine espresso poured right over the top. I’ve had them in Rome. I’ve had them in Milan. This one might be the best in the world.

Best news of all, you can now get your Miami Iced or an iced matcha latte until 8 PM from Wednesday to Sunday.

Come by. Bring someone you love. Sit outside on Española Way while the sun goes down and the music plays. Get a matcha. Get a Dream Team. Get both.

Life will never be the same. I mean it.

Sunshine Coffee, 1436 Washington Ave (At Espanola Way)

Open Daily 7 AM to 5 PM, Open Until 8 PM, Wednesday to Sunday

→ SUNSHINE COFFEE GO NOW

BEACH BUSINESS

CHALAMET AT E11EVEN AT 7 PM

It ain’t easy being Timothée Chalamet. One weekend you’re at Coachella with Kylie. The next you have to choose between going back to the desert with the Kardashians or a boys’ weekend in Miami. Tough life.

The biggest movie star in the world chose us. Fresh off CinemaCon with Zendaya and Momoa, fresh off Coachella Weekend 1 with Kylie, Chalamet could have gone anywhere on Earth. He grabbed his boys and flew to Miami Beach. Shirtless on the sand between the Setai and 1 Hotel on Friday. Inside E11EVEN at 7 PM on Saturday, while the rest of the city was still deciding what to wear.

No premiere. No brand deal. No cameras he invited. Just a bachelor party, an all-black outfit, and a nightclub entry time that would make most Miamians blush.

Kylie went back to Coachella. Timothée chose the 305. And honestly? Between bottle service at sunset and watching Bieber for the second weekend in a row with your girlfriend’s entire family, the man didn’t just make a choice. He made the only choice.

WORD ON THE STREET: BILLIONAIRE BROTHERS CHANGING FLAGS?

One of the most recognizable hotels on South Beach is about to change its brand. The billionaire brothers who own it have been making big moves on the property, and word is the biggest move is still coming. The flag.

A flagship Marriott brand out. A flagship Hilton brand in. Iconic hotel, on the sand, on Collins.

If it happens, Hilton plants its most prestigious flag on one of the most visible stretches of beach in America, in a building a Marriott brand used to call a flagship. Not a transition, a high-profile takeover.

Who knows what will happen, but we can tell you one thing: the streets don’t lie.

HALF A BILLION FOR THE LAST BIG PIECE DOWNTOWN

Marc Roberts and the Simkins brothers at Lion Development just listed a 6.6-acre site in Park West for $500 million. That’s downtown Miami’s largest remaining development parcel, right next to Miami Worldcenter, right next to the I-395 Signature Bridge, right next to everything they already built.

The zoning allows for over 10 million square feet. Thousands of units. Residential, hotel, office, retail, whatever the buyer wants to build, the land says yes.

These are the guys behind E11EVEN. The club, the towers, the brand. They assembled the land, built the neighborhood, and now they’re selling the last piece to whoever wants to finish it. Roberts put it best: “We did all the heavy lifting. We set the table.”

Half a billion for 6.6 acres in a neighborhood that didn’t exist ten years ago. That’s some beautiful and blessed Miami math.

$1.4 BILLION FOR RESERVATIONS: CARING SELLS RESTAURANTS

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 4.14.26

On My Mind

• Everything in Miami Starts with Real Estate

  People talk about Miami’s restaurant scene like it’s a food story. It’s not. It’s a real estate story with good lighting and a tasting menu.

Beach Business

• Where’s David Martin?: West Palm Edition

  Our favorite developer who is everywhere all at once is heading north.

Hospitality Local Insider

• Genghis Cohen Is Coming to Sunset Harbour.

  Sunset Harbour is getting legendary NY-style Chinese food via LA.

• Gary Vee, Josh Capon, & David Rodolitz Bringing ITO•Kaya to Miami.

  ITO•Kaya is coming to JEM Private Residences at Miami Worldcenter.

• Everyone’s Going North. Buccan Is Headed South.

  Buccan is opening 3 concepts including its legendary sandwich shop in Coral Gables.

Miami Sports Update

• The Heat & The Play In, A Love Story

  Another year another play-in. Tonight is win or go home.

Luxe Developments We Love

• We have a New Series & We are Starting with the Top - > Aman Miami Beach

  Russia’s James Bond, Vladislav Doronin, will turn you into Miami’s James Bond.

ON MY MIND: Everything in Miami Starts with Real Estate

People talk about Miami’s restaurant scene like it’s a food story. It’s not. It’s a real estate story with good lighting and a tasting menu.

Watch how it actually works. A developer needs to sell condos. A hospitality group gets called. Suddenly there’s a concept, a chef, a PR push, a reservation list. The food is real. The talent is real. But the reason it exists, the reason it exists here, at this corner, in this neighborhood, right now, is a cap rate calculation made in a conference room eighteen months earlier.

That’s not cynicism. That’s Miami.

The wellness boom is the same story in compression pants. Pilates studios, infrared saunas, IV drip lounges, they don’t appear in Wynwood or Brickell because the founders woke up inspired. They appear because a developer needed a tenant that signals the right kind of resident. Wellness is the new retail anchor. The endorphins are just a bonus.

Even the neighborhoods are real estate decisions dressed up as cultural moments. The Miami Design District didn’t become a luxury destination because taste migrated. It became one because Craig Robins spent two decades quietly assembling the blocks underneath it. Little River is in the middle of that story right now. So is Allapattah. The culture is the flare gun. Capital is what follows.

And then there’s transportation, the most honest example of all. Every rail line, every bridge, every traffic study, every political fight about where the Brightline stops next. Follow the money and you will find the land holdings. Infrastructure in Miami is just real estate development with a public budget.

None of this is a criticism. It is, in fact, what makes Miami one of the most incredible cities in America. You can actually see how it works. The machine isn’t hidden. If you understand real estate here, you understand everything else. The restaurants, the culture, the politics, the neighborhoods, they’re all downstream.

The question worth asking in Miami, is who owns the land underneath it.

BEACH BUSINESS

Where’s David Martin?: West Palm Edition

Grove at Grand Bay. Park Grove. Eighty Seven Park. Five Park. GLASS. Mr. C Residences Coconut Grove. Mr. C Residences West Palm Beach. The Miami Beach Convention Center Hotel. Grove Central. Villa Miami. THE WELL Coconut Grove. THE WELL Bay Harbor Islands. And now, 2023 Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach.

Our favorite developer who is everywhere all at once is heading north with the rest of the big wigs.

David Martin’s Terra, partnering with BH Group’s Isaac and Liat Toledano, is under contract to buy a 1.6-acre waterfront site on Flagler Drive from billionaire Jeff Greene for north of $90 million. Greene paid $1.5 million for the same land in 2014. The property sits across from Currie Park, which is getting a $35 million renovation, and right next to where Related Group and BH are building the Ritz-Carlton Residences. A 350-foot luxury condo tower is the likely play.

Terra already has Mr. C Residences West Palm underway, 27 stories, 146 condos, 110 hotel keys, 85% presold. Now a second project on Flagler. West Palm has more than 2,000 condos in the pipeline from Miami’s biggest names: Steve Ross, Related, Fort Partners, and now Terra twice.

If you want to know where Miami’s money class is going next, watch where David Martin buys dirt. He’s never been wrong about a neighborhood. Not once.

HOSPITALITY LOCAL INSIDER

Genghis Cohen Is Coming to Sunset Harbour. NY Chinese via LA.

Forty-two years in Los Angeles. Never left California. Until now.

Genghis Cohen, the legendary New York-style Chinese-American restaurant that opened on Fairfax in 1983, inspired the Seinfeld Chinese restaurant episode, and has been feeding multi-generational LA families, musicians, skateboarders, and celebrities from the same red booths for four decades, is making its first expansion ever. To Miami Beach. To Sunset Harbour. Taking over the former Sardinia space, opening late 2026.

Marc Rose and Med Abrous of Call Mom hospitality (The Spare Room, White Limozeen in Nashville, Winsome) are bringing the whole thing: the egg rolls, the queen chicken, the crab rangoon, the kitschy ‘80s décor, the fish tank, the red booths, and the tiki-inspired cocktails. Partnering with hotel mogul Jason Pomeranc. The menu is Jewish-inspired Chinese cuisine, the kind of food that New Yorkers who moved to LA spent 40 years being nostalgic about, now landing in a neighborhood where New Yorkers who moved to Miami will feel exactly the same way.

Sunset Harbour now has Brooklyn-style pizza and LA-style Chinese food. What a city. What a world. I’m in love.

→ More on Genghis Cohen

Gary Vee, Josh Capon, & David Rodolitz Bringing ITO•Kaya to Miami.

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Let’s be honest about what every other “Top Broker” list in Miami actually is: a press release wearing a ranking’s clothes.

You know the ones. The lists where placement is determined by ad spend. Where the #1 spot goes to whoever bought the back cover of the magazine. Where the criteria, if they exist at all, are carefully calibrated to avoid offending anyone who might pull a media buy. Those lists aren’t rankings. They’re invoices.

The Broker Heat Index is different. Placement is never for sale. Period.

We started The Heat Index with restaurants because a city’s dining scene is its biography. Then hotels, because hospitality is the first impression a world-class city makes. Now we go where the real money moves, into the brokerage relationships, the closing tables, and the handshake deals that are reshaping the most scrutinized real estate market on earth.

Why Now

Miami isn’t slowing down. It’s maturing. And the difference matters.

Average sold prices in the luxury segment are up double digits year over year. More than half of all condo transactions are closing in cash, nearly double the national average. International capital from 73 countries is flowing into new construction, with Latin American buyers accounting for 86% of foreign purchases. The median single-family home in Miami-Dade is pressing $700K, and that number has gone up in 168 of the last 170 months.

This is not a market that tolerates amateurs. The brokers who command it are moving billions, advising the wealthiest families on earth, and operating in a city where a bad recommendation doesn’t just cost a commission, it costs a relationship. They deserve to be evaluated the way we evaluate everything else at What’s Good Miami: with standards, with specificity, and without a rate card.

How We Built It

Same framework as the restaurant and hotel rankings. Two axes — qualitative and quantitative. Good taste demands both. You can feel whether a broker is the real thing. You can also prove it.

We looked at closed volume and transaction data. We looked at market position and longevity, who has survived multiple cycles and still commands the room. We looked at institutional influence: who is building firms, who is shaping policy, who is defining how luxury is sold in this city. We looked at access, to inventory, to capital, to the rooms where decisions are made before they ever hit the MLS.

And we looked at something harder to measure but impossible to fake: reputation among peers. The people who actually work this market every day know who belongs on this list. We listened to them.

5 Tiers. 25 Names. Each One Earned.

Elite Tier: The undeniable. Volume, access, and reputation at a level no one can seriously dispute.

Power Broker: Market-movers with deep specialization, dominant in their corridors, trusted at the highest levels.

Institution Builder: The executives, founders, and firm leaders who are shaping the infrastructure of Miami real estate itself.

Specialist: Operators with commanding expertise in specific segments — pre-construction, celebrity transactions, neighborhood dominance — that gives them an edge no generalist can replicate.

Networker: The connectors. Brokers whose relationships, access, and momentum put them in rooms most agents never see.

A Few Names Worth Knowing Right Now

Twenty-five brokers made the list. Here are seven that tell the story of where Miami’s market is and where it’s going.

Danny Hertzberg | The Jills Zeder Group · Coldwell Banker Elite Tier

The Jills Zeder Group closes nearly $1.4 billion and has held the #1 position in Miami-Dade longer than most teams have existed. That’s the dynasty. Danny is the future of it. What separates him is digital command, he’s extending a legacy brand’s reach into channels and audiences the previous generation never had to think about. That’s not inheritance. That’s evolution. And the market is responding to it.

Dina Goldentayer | Douglas Elliman Elite Tier

$600 million in sales and a reputation built on something most brokers at this level can’t pull off: silence. Dina’s client list rarely makes the papers, and that’s the point. In a market that rewards noise, she’s proof that discretion is its own currency. Third overall in Miami. The people who know, know.

Ruthie & Ethan Assouline | Douglas Elliman Power Broker

The most important money highway in American real estate right now runs from New York to Miami. The Assoulines own the toll booth. They are the only true Miami–New York team in the market, managing the migration of capital from the Northeast to South Florida at a level no other brokerage can match. Multiple price records. Hundreds of millions in luxury inventory. A dominant presence in Bal Harbour. But the real edge is the pipeline — and right now, that pipeline is the game.

Nancy Batchelor | Compass Power Broker

There’s a reason Nancy is one of the most quoted voices in Miami real estate, she’s been right more often than she’s been wrong, and she’s been doing it longer than most. Commanding presence in Miami Beach and Morningside. A marketing force who helped define how luxury is sold in this city. Veteran is an understatement. Institution is closer.

Lourdes Alatriste | Douglas Elliman Power Broker

If you’re an international buyer entering Miami, there’s a very short list of people who can move you through the process at the highest level. Lourdes is at the top of it. Deep pipelines into Latin American capital, commanding presence in Coconut Grove and Coral Gables, and a cross-border fluency that is becoming more valuable by the quarter — not less. In a market where 86% of foreign buyers are coming from Latin America, she’s not just relevant. She’s essential.

Todd Lewin | Compass · Lewin Rubin Team Networker

Bi-coastal is a word that gets thrown around loosely. Todd actually lives it — offices in Miami Beach, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, with over $215M closed in 2026. His client network moves New York money directly into Miami real estate, and that migration isn’t slowing down. The connector between the two most important luxury markets in the country.

Jordan Karp | Jordan Karp LLC Networker

Son of legendary Miami architect Kobi Karp and socialite Nancy Karp. That sentence alone tells you the access is real. But what earns Jordan his spot isn’t the last name — it’s what he’s doing with it. He’s turned extraordinary Miami roots and a network most brokers spend a career building into one of the most talked-about young careers in the city. The rooms he’s in, most agents will never see. Watch this one.

These are seven of the twenty-five. The full list — every name, every tier, every write-up — is on The Heat Index.

See the Full List

The Broker Heat Index — all 25 names, the tiers, the write-ups, and why each one earned their spot — is live now on The Heat Index.

View the Broker Heat Index Vol. 01

Explore the full interactive rankings alongside our restaurant and hotel lists. Everything in one place. No ads. No sponsors. No paid placements. Just standards.

What This Means

This list will make some people uncomfortable. Good.

If your name isn’t on it, that doesn’t mean you’re not talented. It means we haven’t seen enough yet, or you’re operating in a segment we haven’t indexed. The Heat Index evolves. Vol. 02 will come. If you think someone belongs, tell us. We’re listening. We’re always listening.

If your name is on it, understand what that means. This isn’t a trophy. It’s a standard. We’ll be watching to see if you hold it.

Keep your SPF high and your standards higher.

See you at the beach.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 4.7.26

Beach Business

• You Gotta Have Friends: Alexa Leigh Mini-Van Mart in Sunset Harbor

  The minivan is parked. The jewelry is out. And Sunshine coffee & matcha are free.

• Foreclosure Alert: Mercedes Benz Places Miami

  Cottonwood Group filed a foreclosure lawsuit against Michael Stern’s JDS.

• Continuum Heading to West Palm Beach

  South of Fifth. North Beach. Now Singer Island.

• From Bartender to Kingmaker: Grutman’s Playbook Hits Shelves

  The secret, he is one of the most genuine & generous people you will ever know.

Hospitality Local Insider

• The Florida Keys: The Most Underrated Opportunity in SoFlo.

  Cheeca Lodge hits the market for $300m. The Florida Keys are the most under-recognized real estate opportunity in South Florida.

On My Mind: Kanye, Should You Listen?

Could you enjoy a meal cooked by a chef who was a Nazi?

That’s not a hypothetical. That’s the question I ask myself every time a Kanye track comes on and I feel it, really feel it, before I can stop myself.

Can you separate the art from the artist? It’s the oldest debate in culture and it has never been more personal to me than it is right now. When you eat a meal, you’re not just consuming food. You’re entering a relationship. You’re saying: this person’s gifts are worth my presence. Patronage is not passive. The food being exceptional doesn’t soften that calculus, it sharpens it. You’d be choosing the pleasure over the principle with full awareness of what you’re doing.

And still. The beat hits.

Forgiveness is the decision to stop letting someone’s worst moment define your relationship with the present. Memory is the decision to never let it define your future.

I’m somewhere between those two things. Some days the music takes me somewhere else entirely, another dimension, another version of what’s possible when a human being is fully unlocked. Other days I can’t get there. The wine has gone bad and I can taste it in every sip. I’m eating the steak and the sourness won’t leave. The genius and the hatred are inseparable on those days, and no amount of wanting to separate them makes it so.

That’s what true art does. It divides the audience, not between fans and critics, but within each of us individually. It forces a reckoning no algorithm can resolve for you.

So wherever you land on Kanye, moved by him or repulsed by him, or both on the same Tuesday, know this: the hatred he put into the world, knowingly or not, is toxic. Full stop. No matter how hard the beat hits. You don’t have to throw away the meal. But you should know what’s in it.

That’s what’s on my mind this week.

YOU GOTTA HAVE FRIENDS

One Day Only: Alexa Leigh Mini-Van Mart & Free Sunshine Coffee in Sunset Harbor

The minivan is parked. The jewelry is out. And the coffee and matcha are free. Alexa Leigh brings the Minivan Mart to Row Sunset Harbor on April 10, 10:30AM to 3PM, one day, one location, no second chances.

The Mini Signature Collection makes its IRL debut here, best sellers you’ve been adding to cart, finally in your hands. Piercing on site, free with an earring purchase. And Sunshine Coffee is pulling up with complimentary coffee and matcha for the whole crowd, because that’s just how we do it in Miami.

Jewelry, a fresh piercing, and a free cup of iced deliciousness. Thursday has never had less of an excuse.

Alexa Leigh Mini-Van Mart

Friday April 10th, 2026, 1030 AM - 3 PM

Row Sunset Harbor, 1201 20th St

BEACH BUSINESS

Foreclosure Alert: Mercedes Benz Places Miami

The Mercedes-Benz badge is on the building. The lawyers are in the lobby.

Cottonwood Group filed a foreclosure lawsuit against Michael Stern’s JDS Development just days after acquiring the $85 million bridge loan backing Mercedes-Benz Places, the 800-unit, two-tower project that broke ground in 2024. JDS missed its January 2025 repayment deadline on a loan extended multiple times since 2015. Cottonwood says the tab is now nearly $100 million, with interest accruing daily.

JDS isn’t flinching.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 3.10.26

Beach Business

• The Delano Is Back. Will The Magic Return?

  On April 27th, the curtains part again and the legend returns.

• AP House Just Landed in Sunset Harbour.

  Audemars Piguet opened its 16th AP House on the top floor of Eighteen Sunset.

• Pizza Tropical Returns. And it stands on its own.

  Pizza Tropical isn’t dying. 7010 Biscayne Boulevard. Upper East Side.

• Trump Is Building a “Library” in Miami. There Are No Books.

  A 50-story glass tower with TRUMP in gold letters across the facade.

• The Rest of the Country Fills Rooms. Miami Sells Out.

  87.3% occupancy. Nightly rates up 17% to $315.

Hospitality Local Insider

• What’s Going to Be Good: CHO Funky Asian Bistro

  Miami Beach is finally getting the Asian restaurant it deserves.

On My Mind: The Sea Doesn’t Part Until You Step In

Passover is here. And if you’re in Miami right now, you know it, this city swells during the holiday in a way that is unmistakable. The restaurants are full, the hotels are packed, the pool decks are alive, and somewhere between the seder plates and the south Beach sunsets, thousands of Jewish families are doing what Jews have always done, gathering, arguing, laughing, eating too much, and retelling the oldest story in the tradition. Miami during Passover has its own energy. It always has. And every year it brings me back to the same moment in the story, not the plagues, not the escape, not the manna. The sea.

Because the Kabbalistic teaching around the parting of the Red Sea is one of the most honest things I have ever encountered about what it actually takes to move forward in life. The sea did not part when Moses raised his staff. According to the mystics, it parted when Nachshon, a man no one remembers, walked in up to his nose. Faith expressed not as prayer but as motion. The miracle was always available. It was waiting on the human being to move first. We spend so much of our lives waiting for conditions to be right. For the path to be clear. For someone to tell us it’s safe. But the teaching is unambiguous, the water doesn’t move until you do. The clarity comes after the commitment. The parting is the reward for the step, not the invitation to take it.

Whatever sea is in front of you right now, walk in. The miracle has been waiting.

BEACH BUSINESS

Preview: The Delano Is Back. Will The Magic Return?

There are hotels. There are iconic hotels. And then there is the Delano.

I know this personally. Twenty-five years ago I walked through those white curtains and something shifted. The energy in that room, the pool, the people, the feeling that you were exactly where the world was happening, changed the trajectory of my life. I’m not sure I live in Miami today if that moment doesn’t happen. I know I’m not alone in that.

The Delano didn’t just host people. It converted them.

When Ian Schrager and Philippe Starck reimagined it in the 1990s, they didn’t just renovate a building, they invented a category. The boutique hotel era began on Collins Avenue, behind a veil of billowing white curtains, at a pool that became the most photographed in the world. For a generation of travelers, tastemakers, and night owls, the Delano wasn’t a place you stayed. It was a place you arrived.

Then it went dark. Five years of scaffolding, speculation, and rumors. South Beach held its breath.

On April 27th, the curtains part again.

At the helm is Ben Pundole, one of the most compelling minds in modern hospitality, a man who understands that a great hotel is never really about the rooms. It’s about the feeling. It’s about who shows up and why they keep coming back. With Pundole steering the vision, the new Delano isn’t just a renovation story. It’s a statement.

The bones are all there. Terrazzo floors. Hexagonal columns. The white-on-white sensibility that made the place feel like a dream you weren’t sure you’d been invited to. All of it intact. All of it sharper.

Four food and beverage concepts anchor the property, including the resurrection of the Rose Bar, once the most electric room in South Beach, where Hollywood royalty and Miami’s creative class shared the same barstool. Alongside it, two concepts from Paris Society making their American debut: Gigi Rigolatto, a high-energy Italian restaurant built around Mediterranean warmth, yellow Siena marble, and long lunches that have no intention of ending, and Mimi Kakushi, an intimate Japanese concept on the fourth floor inspired by 1920s Osaka, available exclusively to members and hotel guests.

Which brings us to the most exciting element of the new Delano: the membership club. This isn’t a loyalty program. This is a room inside the room a curated community of creative minds, tastemakers, and people who understand that the best things in life happen when the right people are in the same place at the same time. Miami has needed this. The Delano was always the right address for it.

But here is the honest question nobody wants to ask out loud.

The Delano is now a brand. Part of a much larger hospitality group with global ambitions Dubai, Paris, and whatever city comes next on the expansion map. That is not a criticism. It is a reality. And it is the exact tension that will define whether this reopening becomes a legend or just a very good hotel.

Because the magic of the original Delano was never really about the design. It was about the feeling that something alive was happening inside those walls. That the staff had a spirit. That the guests felt permission to be a little more themselves than they were when they arrived. That the room held something, call it energy, call it soul, call it whatever you want, that you couldn’t manufacture with a renovation budget.

The questions that matter now are not about the terrazzo floors or the marble or the Rose Bar playlist. They are harder than that. How personal can it feel at scale? How honest and genuine will it be when the corporate playbook is always somewhere in the room? Will the staff be given space to actually express themselves, or will they be managed into pleasantness? Will guests feel safe enough to go somewhere outside of themselves? Will the design breathe, or will it just photograph well?

Some hotels give you a bed. The great ones give you a life.

The Delano gave me mine. It’s back. Now we wait to see if the magic returns.

AP House Just Landed in Sunset Harbour And It’s Not a Store

Audemars Piguet just opened its 16th AP House on the top floor of Eighteen Sunset, and the word “boutique” doesn’t come close. Eleven thousand square feet, a private lobby elevator, wrap-around balconies, a pool, and unobstructed views of Biscayne Bay. No price tags in sight. No sales floor. Just the quiet, unmistakable message that if you have to ask, you’re probably not the customer.

This is what happens when a brand with watchmaking margins that would make a pharma exec blush decides to play real estate. AP doesn’t need foot traffic, they need the right ten people in a room. And Sunset Harbour, which has spent the last few years quietly transforming from a local neighborhood into one of the most concentrated pockets of serious money in the country, is now exactly that room. The restaurants got better. The fitness culture got intense. The residential prices got obscene. And now Audemars Piguet is on the top floor looking down at the bay like they own the whole thing.

That’s what Sunset Harbour has become, not a scene, not a strip, but a destination with a point of view. The kind of place global luxury brands choose when they’re done with Bal Harbour and ready to be somewhere that actually has a pulse. AP didn’t just open a location. They validated a neighborhood.

Pizza Tropical Is Back. And It Found a Better Address.

Some restaurants feed a neighborhood. And then there are the ones that become the neighborhood, the place where the night ends, where the inside jokes are born, where you run into everyone you know and a few people you’ll never forget.

For nearly a decade, Pizza Tropical was that place for Wynwood.

It was never really about the pizza. It was about what the pizza represented, a late-night ritual for concert goers, comedians after a set, karaoke regulars, and anyone who understood that the best Wynwood nights ended with a slice in one hand and hot honey wings in the other. It fed the neighborhood when Wynwood was still scrappy, still creative, still communal, before the cranes arrived and the rents followed.

When Gramps closed and Pizza Tropical went with it, Miami felt it. The mourning was real. So was the goodbye party. But at that same farewell, owner Adam Gersten stopped the room cold, Pizza Tropical isn’t dying. It’s relocating.

7010 Biscayne Boulevard. Upper East Side. Next to Dogma. A partnership between founders Frank Pinello and Gersten alongside one of the restaurant’s longest-serving employees. Expanded menu. All the classics.

Wynwood grew up and priced itself into something different. Pizza Tropical kept moving to where the soul is.

Trump Is Building a “Library” in Miami. There Are No Books.

The renderings dropped this week and they are exactly what you’d expect. A 50-story glass tower with TRUMP in gold letters across the facade. A full-size Air Force One parked in the lobby. A golden escalator. A giant fist-pump statue of the man himself. A replica Oval Office. A ballroom. A rooftop garden.

Presidential library. Sure.

The building will sit on $67 million worth of prime downtown waterfront, next to the Freedom Tower, which it will dwarf, on land the State of Florida handed over for free. It was designed by Miami firm Bermello Ajamil, who we can only assume submitted the renderings with a straight face.

Other presidents built libraries. Trump built Vegas by the sea.

The doors aren’t open yet. But the gift shop is going to be incredible.

Miami Hotels are on Fire. Hot. Hot. Hot.

The World Baseball Classic came to town and Miami did what Miami does.

87.3% occupancy. Nightly rates up 17% to $315. Revenue per available room up nearly 29%. The rest of the country was sitting at 65.7% occupancy and $167 a night.

It wasn’t even close.

This is the gap between a city people visit and a city people need to be in. Miami has crossed that line and it’s not crossing back. Every major event that lands here doesn’t just fill hotels, it reprices them. The Baseball Classic did it. Formula 1 will do it again in May. And when the FIFA World Cup arrives this summer with seven matches, a million visitors, $1.5 billion in projected economic impact, this city is going to put up numbers that make this week look like a soft open.

The Delano just came back. The Waldorf Astoria is still going up. These properties aren’t speculative bets on Miami’s future. They’re receipts.

For decades, Miami carried a reputation as a seasonal city, a place that peaked in winter and went quiet when the heat arrived. That story is over. The calendar says otherwise. The occupancy numbers say otherwise. Miami isn’t a destination with a season anymore. It’s a city that has them all.

The world doesn’t take summers off from Miami. It just books earlier.

HOSPITALITY LOCAL INSIDER

What’s Going to Be Good: CHO Funky Asian Bistro

Miami Beach is changing. Not slowly, fast. The center of gravity is shifting, neighborhoods are bleeding into one another, and if you’re paying attention you can feel exactly where the new center is forming.

It’s happening right now in the stretch between Sunset Harbor and West Avenue. Trader Joe’s anchored it. Comras is redeveloping Lincoln. Infinity is taking over Shvo’s project on Alton at the end of Lincoln Road. Whole Foods is coming. What was once a corridor you passed through is becoming a corridor everyone is moving toward. The density is arriving. The money is arriving. The attention is arriving.

And right in the dead center of all of it is where Mo Alkassar decided to build CHO.

A location that used to feel questionable now feels inevitable. That’s the thing about great operators, they don’t follow the crowd to where a neighborhood already is. They read the city, trust their instincts, and plant their flag where the neighborhood is going.

Mo has been reading cities his entire career. From Qatar to Dubai, Coconut Grove to Wynwood, he has spent years building restaurants for other people, bringing vision, craft, and hospitality to concepts that wore someone else’s name. He knows what it takes. He knows what it costs. And he knows the difference between building something for a client and building something that is a true reflection of who you are.

CHO is the latter. This is Mo’s moment.

There is a particular kind of energy that comes from an entrepreneur who has finally decided to do their own thing. Not because they had to. Because they were ready. Because the years of watching and learning and executing for others have compressed into a point of view so clear and confident that the only honest move is to put it into the world under your own name. This is when most entrepreneurs do their best work. This is that moment for Mo.

And the timing couldn’t be more pointed, because South Beach has a glaring hole that CHO is built to fill.

This city has extraordinary food. But great, authentic Asian food served with best-in-class hospitality? That has never been South Beach’s strength. Drunken Dragon tried. KYU succeeded, before it was acquired, expanded, and became something else entirely. But Miami has never had its Momofuku. We have fancy Chinese. We have crispy rice on every corner. We have the down-and-dirty ethnic gems, Larb Thaiasian, Dumpling King, doing their thing with integrity. But no restaurant that spans Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, and Chinese with the kind of seriousness and soul that makes you feel like you’ve found something real.

That is what CHO is swinging for.

The menu reads like a chef who has eaten deeply and traveled widely and refuses to be pinned down by geography. Hamachi Mulhoe in a gochujang broth. Khao Soi Lamb Neck with crispy noodles. Cha Ca La Vong, Vietnam’s most iconic dish, with turmeric-marinated daily catch. Mashima Reserve Wagyu Zabuton sitting next to a $14 Eggplant Lumpia that will probably be the sleeper hit of the menu. Duck Wontons in golden chicken broth. Chili Shrimp Dumplings with timut pepper. A Crab Curry built around jackfruit and spaghetti squash that has no business working as well as it does on paper.

We had the honor of a preview. Here is what you need to know.

The Scallop Crudo is quite possibly the best dish we have eaten in 2026. Full stop. The Khao Soi Lamb Neck, egg noodles, crispy noodles, bean sprouts, is the kind of bowl that makes you cancel your plans and order another. The Duck Fried Rice was perfection in the most unfussy, confident way a dish can be perfect. And the Wasabi Cabbage Salad, Korean pear, apple, wasabi vinaigrette, we found ourselves wishing it was bottomless. Olive Garden style. No shame.

Then there are the drinks, which deserve their own conversation. An Asian riff on a margarita that was beautiful, light, and airy, the kind of cocktail that disappears before you realize you’re already halfway through your second. A rum punch served in a tiger cup that was as theatrical as it was delicious. And an ube martini that had no right being as good as it was.

This is a kitchen and a bar program firing in the same direction. That is rarer than it sounds.

South Beach has been waiting for this restaurant for a long time. It just didn’t know the address yet.

Now it does.

CHO Funky Asian Bistro | Miami Beach

→ Reserve Now

Keep your SPF high and your standards higher.

See you at the beach,

WhatsGood.Miami

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 3.10.26

Beach Business

• Not Such a Good Time for the Goodtime Hotel.

  Being 2 blocks from the beach means you might as well be 2 miles away.

• $100 Million. Sold. Before a Single Shovel Hit the Ground.

  Records keep getting smashed in Miami real estate

• Vision Without Execution Is Just Real Estate Fantasy.

  Kassin & Berg of Infinity take over SHVO’s visionary play for Lincoln-Alton Road

• Paris is Coming to the Design District.

  Fouquet’s has been announced as the hotel partner for the Miami-Design District

Hospitality Local Insider

• Friday Lunch Club: Claudie Brickell.

  Is Claudie coming for La Petit Maison’s lunch? Only time will tell.

Real Estate

• Luxe Listings We Love: $7.95m with an Outdoor Ice-maker.

  An Ice-maker apparently can live better than most humans

On My Mind: Gary V & Me. New York vs. Miami.

Gary Vaynerchuk (who I love btw) said Miami is the G League and New York is the NBA. He’s right. If the game you’re playing is working yourself to death in a city that rewards suffering as a virtue, then yes. Miami is not that league.

Because New York isn’t the NBA. New York is the Big Lie. The lie that grinding harder in a harder place makes you more serious. More successful. More real. The lie that cold weather and high taxes and two hours on the subway is the price of admission to a meaningful life.

Miami is the Masters. Not the minor leagues, it’s the graduate degree, the doctorate. You come here when you’ve figured life out. When you understand that life is not the thing that happens after the work is done. Life is the work. The relationships, the journey, the weather, the water, the culture, that’s not a reward. That’s the point.

The people who moved here from New York they graduated. To something better, something their parents nearly killed themselves in New York to enjoy for maybe 5-10 years of their life.

Gary, with love, you built your whole brand telling people to outwork everyone. I respect that. But you’re playing the wrong game.

Winning is working your ass off AND swimming in the ocean before your 9am call. Being present for your kids in the morning. No property tax. No income tax. Earning big and living a life you don’t have to vacation from. Breathing ocean air, not wallowing in subway grime.

The people who left New York didn’t give up. They graduated.

Working harder for less in return is amateur hour. Does New York have better tech leaders? Finance leaders? Higher grossing restaurants? No. No. No. We have better sports teams and It wasn’t your guy in the Super Bowl half time show it was ours.

Miami figured it out. The rest of the country and the world, is catching up.

That’s What’s Good Miami.

BEACH BUSINESS

Not Such a Good Time for the Goodtime Hotel

Miami Beach has a rule it doesn’t put in writing: if you’re not on the water, you’re fighting uphill.

The Goodtime Hotel sits two blocks from the beach. Two blocks that, in this market, might as well be two miles. The 266-room hotel, built with city zoning incentives, celebrity backing, and genuine ambition for Washington Avenue, is now facing a $150 million foreclosure action. The lender has been covering payroll and delinquent sales taxes just to keep the doors open.

The story isn’t really about one hotel. It’s about a structural reality Miami Beach has never solved.

When occupancy softens, the water-adjacent properties hold. The luxury beachfront product keeps its rate. Everything else compresses. Goodtime’s price point, $240 to $400 a night, put it squarely in no man’s land. Not cheap enough to fill on value. Not positioned well enough to command a premium. Two blocks off the sand with no compelling reason to choose it over something closer to the ocean.

The celebrity moment helped at launch. Pharrell Williams as co-developer made headlines. The rooftop pool parties drew crowds. But that energy faded by mid-2024, and when it did, there was no locational advantage to fall back on. The Art Deco storefronts built into the hotel never filled with retail. Washington Avenue never turned around.

Miami Beach hotel occupancy dipped last year. Revenue per room stalled. The high-end waterfront segment was the only bright spot.

The Goodtime had everything except the one thing that matters most in this market.

It wasn’t on the water.

$100 Million. Sold. Before a Single Shovel Hit the Ground.

Miami just set a new record twice in two weeks.

Two penthouse residences at the Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Miami closed at $49.9 million each, the highest-priced condo transactions in mainland Miami history, at approximately $6,300 per square foot. Separate buyers. Separate deals. Same address on Brickell Key.

Each roughly 8,000-square-foot home sits on the 66th floor, five bedrooms, dual kitchens, a library, sweeping terraces, and a private outdoor lap pool overlooking the ocean. And none of it exists yet. The project doesn’t deliver until 2030. Groundbreaking hasn’t even happened.

That’s the move. That’s the signal.

Swire Properties has now pushed past $1.3 billion in total sales across two towers, with February alone generating more than $90 million in activity. The development that replaces the original Mandarin Oriental isn’t just a building. It’s the last available waterfront site on Brickell Key, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, with interiors by Tristan Auer and AD100 designer Laura Gonzalez.

One buyer reportedly relocated from the West Coast. The ultra-luxury segment above $10M in South Florida hit its second-highest total on record in 2025. Early 2026 data shows sustained inflows from California and New York.

Miami isn’t catching up to New York. Miami is becoming the standard.

The penthouses sold. The record is set. The city keeps rising.

Vision Without Execution Is Just Real Estate Fantasy.

The renaissance of the Lincoln Road–Sunset Harbor corridor keeps building momentum, and this corner just found its team. Infinity Collective, the firm behind the Esmé Hotel on Española Way, has filed preliminary plans for a 14-story mixed-use building at 1656–1680 Alton Road. The former Epicure site. 184 units. 85,000 square feet of retail. 35,000 square feet of offices. And a padel court.

Steven Kassin and Dave Berg, the partners who turned Esmé into one of Miami Beach’s most compelling hospitality plays, are the ones making the move. They picked up the 1.4-acre assemblage last September for $28.3 million, the exact amount Shvo had borrowed on it, via deed in lieu of foreclosure.

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There’s a certain kind of swagger you only get from growing up in the Northeast.

It’s blunt. It’s unapologetic. It usually comes with strong opinions about everythingm including bread. Ryan McKeown embodies that and then some.

We sat down with the Peppi’s Pizza owner in the Design District and within five minutes it was clear, this isn’t another Miami restaurant trying to be “vibey.” It’s a mission with history, tributes, and incredible flavor and entertainment.

Ryan explained to us in our interview “You know, a lot of places serve what I call a steak and cheese, but have never stepped foot in Philly. For me, it’s not about copying tradition, it’s about understanding where it’s going.”

And honestly, that tells you everything you need to know.

Philly Meets New York Meets Miami

Peppi’s isn’t trying to reinvent anything. It’s doing something harder: making sure to get it right in a place that often has gotten this wrong.

Ryan’s background is rooted in Philly, but the menu walks the line between New York slice culture and Philadelphia sandwich royalty.

But the soul of the place? That’s in the details.

• 72-hour fermented dough for that perfect chew

• House-baked bread for the sandwiches

• No shortcuts, no gimmicks

• Cooper Sharp, because thats the only cheese it could be or should be

This is food made by someone who clearly cares, maybe a little too much, but in the best way possible.

Started with Pizza, but the Cheesesteak is the Headliner

Let’s just say it: Miami has needed this.

Peppi’s cheesesteak isn’t trying to be a “version” of a Philly cheesesteak, it’s the cheesesteak.

Shaved ribeye. Cooper Sharp or Whiz. Fresh bread. Sesame seeds. Picked hot peppers you get to bite into and drizzle on top.

It’s the kind of sandwich that people get weirdly territorial about, and for good reason. Even Dave Portnoy called it “an authentic Philly cheesesteak” and scored it higher than the pizza.

And once you try it, you get why.

And finally Miami has an Italian Sub worth driving for.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 3.10.26

Beach Business

• Starbucks Billionaire Howard Schultz Moves to Miami.

  The man who sold the world on coffee just moved to a city with the best iced coffee in the world.

• The Fontainebleau Is Getting a Waterslide. Go Home & Cry.

  Florida lawmakers just handed billionaire Jeffrey Soffer exactly what he wanted.

• New Strip: Billionaire Ruben Bros, Seriously Upgrading the W SoBe

  Billionaire duo are going for approval on a full reimagining of the property

• BAM Score 83 Points, the Heat Break People’s Brains Again

  The second-highest scoring game in the history of professional basketball.

Hospitality Local Insider

• New Opening: Slim’s Bal Harbor, the Restaurant World’s Sure Thing

  “Glamorous, intentional, and effortlessly chic” Starr’s brief for Slim’s.

• The Buzz is Real: Frankie & Wally’s, Coral Gables

  Barely a month in Coral Gables and it’s already selling out by mid-afternoon.

Real Estate

• Real Estate Luxe Listings: Miami Shores Steal, for Under 2 Million

  There is a better version of you, living on a quiet street in Miami Shores

On My Mind: Stop Asking Everyone’s Opinion. Trust Yourself.

Stop asking everyone’s opinion. I mean it. We live in an era where every decision gets focus-grouped, every idea gets workshopped, every instinct gets second-guessed by someone who has never built anything. We call it collaboration. We call it being open-minded. It’s just fear dressed up in polite language. And it kills everything it touches.

The people who built the things worth building didn’t take a poll first. They had a conviction and they ran toward it. Starbucks wasn’t a committee decision. The Fontainebleau wasn’t approved by a neighborhood vote. Every great restaurant, every great building, every great business in this city started with one person who trusted themselves when no one else did yet. That is not arrogance. That is the prerequisite.

Here’s what I’ve learned: the more people you ask, the more diluted the idea becomes. Everyone has an opinion. Most opinions are just someone else’s fear projected onto your dream. Your cousin thinks it’s risky. Your friend thinks the timing is off. Your colleague thinks you should wait. None of them are lying to you. They’re just not you. They don’t have your vision. They don’t feel what you feel when you think about what this thing could become.

The truly dangerous move isn’t launching before you’re ready. It’s waiting so long for consensus that the window closes and you spend the rest of your life explaining why you almost did something great.

Miami was not built by people who waited for permission. This is the wild west. This city rewards the ones who move. Trust yourself. Make the call. The opinion you need most is your own.

BEACH BUSINESS

Starbucks Billionaire Howard Schultz Moves to Miami. Thank God We Have the Best Iced Coffee in the World.

The man who built the world's most famous coffee brand just became our neighbor. Miami was ready. Howard Schultz, the man who turned a single Seattle coffee shop into a global empire, has moved to Miami. He and his wife paid $44 million for a five-bedroom penthouse at the Four Seasons Surf Club in Surfside, left 40 years in Seattle behind, and announced the whole thing on LinkedIn with the comments disabled. We’ll take it. Welcome to the neighborhood, Howard.

The move is by now a familiar story. Miami has become the city that serious people choose when they’re done with everywhere else. The weather, the energy, the density of ambition, it adds up. Every billionaire who picks Miami is a vote of confidence in this city. We accept every vote.

But here’s what nobody is talking about. Schultz built his entire career on one insight: that people don’t just want coffee, they want an experience. A place. A feeling they come back to every morning. He was right. He built Starbucks into one of the most recognized brands on earth proving it.

And now he’s retired, right around the corner from Sunshine Coffee.

Sunshine Coffee is Miami’s own. Independent, locally built, rooted on Española Way in Miami Beach with a second location coming to North Beach. No corporate playbook. No seasonal gimmicks. Just the best iced coffee in the world and a brand born from this city. Schultz spent four decades chasing the idea of what a great coffee experience could feel like. We built it here.

Howard, whenever you’re ready, we’ll have one waiting.

The WGM Take: The man who sold the world on coffee just moved to a city with the best iced coffee in the world. Some things are just meant to be.

The Fontainebleau Is Getting a Waterslide. Go Home & Cry.

Florida lawmakers just handed billionaire Jeffrey Soffer exactly what he wanted. A new state measure, drafted with help from a Fontainebleau lobbyist, forces cities to automatically approve certain variances for large destination resorts, effectively letting the Fontainebleau bypass Miami Beach’s Historic Preservation Board entirely. The board had delayed a vote three times. Residents packed city commission chambers with anti-water park signs. The mayor went on record opposing it. None of it mattered. The measure passed 20-17.

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If you’ve ever scrolled through the world of Dr. Miami, you know it isn’t just “a medical practice.” It feels like a universe, unfiltered, cinematic, and wildly intentional. A place where the rhythm of the o…

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 3.10.26

Beach Business

• Dolphins Pay $99 M for Tua to Leave, Hello Magic City Malik

  Tua leaves behind 55 million in dead cap this year, oh well.

• The Heat win 5 in a Row and are Suddenly… Dangerous

  Watch out Eastern Conference, the Heat are burning up

Hospitality Local Insider

• Ezio’s Steakhouse: There is a Great Chef Cooking in North Beach

  Is there a new restaurant king of North Beach? Maybe

• The Russian James Bond Is Opening a Private Club in the Sky

  Vlad Doronin is opening an Italian restaurant and private club in Brickell

• The Mexican Arrives in Brickell Key

  Roberto González Alcalá opened a Mexican restaurant named…. The Mexican

Real Estate

• Luxe Listings We Love: Grove with Capital G

  Simon Bissu designed a 6,194 SF home on an 11,550 SF lot.

On My Mind: Everyone thinks they know. They don’t.

There are only two reasons a person ever changes. They choose to. Or the pain gets so bad they have no other option.

That’s it. Two doors. And almost nobody walks through the first one willingly.

Think about that for a second. We live in the most documented era in human history. Every mistake has been made before us. Every shortcut has been mapped. Every version of failure and every version of success has been filmed, written about, podcasted, posted, and served to us algorithmically at exactly the moment we might need it.

The evidence is everywhere. The answers are not hidden.

And still, people run straight into walls they could see coming from a mile away.

Why? Why choose pain when you don’t have to? Why wait until everything breaks before you’re willing to look at what’s broken?

Focus works. Staying true to what you believe works. Keeping it simple, not dumbed down, but stripped of everything that isn’t essential, works. These aren’t ideas. They’re outcomes. Tested ones.

You don’t need more information. You need less noise and more commitment to the signal you already have.

But people will keep running after the wrong thing. Not because they don’t know better. Because knowing better and doing better are different muscles entirely. And most people never train the second one.

The ones who choose before the pain, those are your people. Find them. Build with them. Move fast.

BEACH BUSINESS

Dolphins Pay $99 M for Tua to Leave, Hello Magic City Malik

The Dolphins just paid $99 million for Tua Tagovailoa to go away. Yes, really. They could have avoided this 3 years ago by not signing him after his 12th concussion, but they didn’t want to be bad people and did the stupid, wasteful, thing.

The team released the quarterback this week, absorbing a $99 million dead-cap hit, one of the biggest financial losses a team has ever taken just to move on from a player.

Tua now appears to be headed to Atlanta, while Miami turns the page yet again at quarterback.

Enter Malik Willis, aka Magic City Malik, who arrives on a three-year deal worth about $67.5 million.

MCM, 26, made his name filling in for an injured Jordan Love in Green Bay, completing over 85% of his passes with three touchdowns and zero interceptions, while also rushing for 123 yards and two scores. New Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley and GM Jon-Eric Sullivan both came over from the Packers organization, so this isn’t a blind bet. The question isn’t whether Willis can play, it’s whether Hafley and offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik can build an offense that lets him be himself.

If it works, the ceiling is real. If it doesn’t, this is just another chapter in a long book of Dolphins quarterbacks that never worked out.

The Heat win 5 in a Row and are Suddenly… Dangerous

The Heat have quietly won five in a row, knocking off teams like the Pistons and Rockets, and the energy around this team is starting to feel very familiar.

Bam and rookie Kelel Ware are looking straight-up lethal together. Inside, outside, lobs, blocks - the frontcourt suddenly feels like a problem for people.

Meanwhile Stormin’ Norman Powell and Tyler Herro have turned into the Heat Check Brothers, capable of catching fire and flipping a game in about three possessions.

And don’t look now, but Jaime Jaquez Jr. is starting to look like a legit Sixth Man of the Year candidate.

Which means, once again, Erik Spoelstra is doing that thing where he takes a roster people doubted and turns it into something nobody wants to deal with.

All of a sudden I’m thinking: f*ck Giannis, we might make a run.

Because if this team sneaks into the playoffs, there isn’t a single contender that’s excited about seeing Miami in the first round.

And frankly, I’m already looking forward to talking shit to whichever team does.

HOSPITALITY LOCAL INSIDER

Ezio’s Steakhouse: There is a Great Chef Cooking in North Beach

Many years ago, before Williamsburg stole the narrative, Roberta’s opened in Bushwick. No marketing. No hype machine. Just Carlo Mirarchi, Brandon Hoy, a great space and food that had immediate credibility, cultural and culinary. The pizza was outstanding, the vibe was immaculate. You knew it the moment you walked in. They got some Michelin stars, and built a thing that lives on to this day.

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Taste Starts Here.

Five stars. Four diamonds. Michelin guides written by people who flew in on a Tuesday and left before the weekend. Algorithmic scores aggregated from a thousand strangers who couldn’t agree on what a good meal actually is. We’ve had all of it, and none of it has ever told you what you actually wanted to know: Is this place worth your time? Is it worth your money? Is it worth being seen at?

That’s not a star question. That’s a taste question. The Heat Index is our answer.

Starting with restaurants, because a city’s dining scene is its biography. Miami has always been a city of extraordinary ingredients, the culture, the climate, the people, and the Heat Index exists to separate the places that honor that from the ones that merely exploit it.

From there: hotels. Then real estate developments. Then the brokers selling them. And then (depending on how we feel that week) maybe the best pizza in the city, or where to spend a long weekend, or which shops are actually worth walking into. Because taste doesn’t stop at the table. It lives in the lobbies, in the penthouses, in the way a building meets the street or a suite meets the sea. Miami is one of the most scrutinized cities on earth right now, and scrutiny without standards is just noise.

The Heat Index is the Standard.

It works like this: every entry is measured across two axes: qualitative and quantitative. Good taste demands both. You can feel whether something is right. You can also prove it. We account for craft and concept, for longevity and buzz, for local significance and global relevance, for the price on the menu and what that price actually buys. We look at who built it, why they built it, and whether it holds up when the hype has moved on to the next thing.

What you get is a number. But more importantly, what you get is a reason.

This is not a kindness project. We are not here to celebrate everything Miami produces simply because Miami produced it. We love this city too much for that. The Heat Index will tell you when something is genuinely great and tell you exactly why. It will also tell you when something fell short, and that matters just as much.

Miami is getting better. Faster than most people realize. The Heat Index is here to document it. To hold the line on what excellence actually looks like. Taste starts here.

The 9 Rules of the Heat Index

What makes something genuinely worth talking about.

1. Local Roots, Global Range: The best things are deeply local & universally covetable.

2. Built to Last, Not Built to Trend: Trends flame out. Heat holds.

3. The People Behind It: Miami can smell the difference between someone who moved here to cash in and someone who’s here because they belong.

4. Craft Over Concept: The concept earns the first visit. The craft earns the return.

5. Miami Didn’t Discover It, Miami Made It: There’s a difference between something that came here and something that came from here.

6. Price Earns Its Keep: If the math doesn’t add up, the heat doesn’t either.

7. The Press Release Isn’t the Story: Buzz is easy. Reputation is earned. We care about what survives the hype cycle.

8. It Makes the City Better: The best restaurants make other restaurants cook harder. The best hotels push the whole market. True heat is generative, it lifts the city.

9. You’d Tell a Friend: Would you text someone about this unprompted? That’s the realest measure of all.

Continue below for the full list and all the juicy details….

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 2.24.26

Beach Business

• North Beach is getting a water-world, aptly named the Mermaid Club.

  Continuum launches 2000 Sport & Wellness Waterfront Residences

• Where’s David Martin? Boca Edition

  Terra’s frontman is behind One Boca, a major redevelopment play

Hospitality Local Insider

• Sunset Harbor: The Bermuda Triangle of Miami Beach Restaurants

  Is Sunset Harbor a good place to open a restaurant? Unclear.

• Fuku’s Back. Back Again. We did this before, but let’s pretend.

  David Chang’s chicken spot launches in Coral Gables. Didn’t we do this already?

• Pop Up Bar: Stormy Monday Bar

  Hospitality veterans behind Kyu, Kaori, and Wynwood’s Shiso, are opening a bar.

Real Estate

• Luxe Listings We Love: The Panorama House, Miami Shores

  21,450 SF lot with a beautifully designed 5,348 SF midcentury residence.

You Gotta Have Friends

• Art: Tara Benmeleh’s Moving Altar

  Tara Benmeleh is opening a solo show at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.

• Arthur & Sons, NY Red Sauce joint opens in Jupiter, Florida

  Joe Isidori (& Jeff Lagowitz) have opened Arthur & Sons in Jupiter

Iran: The Greatest Comeback Story of the 21st Century Is Being Written

If you’ve ever had a Persian friend (me), dated a Persian (me), married into a Persian family (me), or simply been lucky enough to sit at their table, you already know. You know about the food that takes three days to make and disappears in twenty minutes. You know about the hospitality that makes you feel like the most important person in the room. You know about the style, effortless, elegant, always just right. You know about the music that starts after midnight and the dancing that doesn’t stop. You know about the mothers who feed you before you even sit down, the fathers who pour before you ask, the children who are raised to be proud of where they come from. Persian culture has been quietly one of the greatest gifts to every city it has touched, New York, Los Angeles, DC, London, and more recently Miami. From the real estate skylines they helped build to the restaurants they filled with life, from the Shabbat tables where they became family to the boardrooms, hospitals, and universities where a brilliant Persian mind is never hard to find. There is no pocket of leadership in the world, no industry, no discipline, no community, where Persians aren’t contributing meaningfully.

This is a culture that has been carrying its civilization in its suitcase for forty seven years. The diaspora kept it alive in Beverly Hills and on the Upper East Side and in Bal Harbour, the food, the language, the poetry, the values. Rumi’s words have been on more Instagram bios than any algorithm could explain, and that’s not an accident. It’s a 2,500-year-old civilization refusing to be forgotten. Cyrus the Great wrote the world’s first declaration of human rights. Persian scholars kept mathematics and medicine alive while the rest of the world went dark. Hafez and Rumi didn’t just write poetry, they wrote a philosophy of living that the world is still catching up to. This is the culture behind the dinner parties you never wanted to leave and the weddings that felt like the best night of your life.

And now, for the first time in a generation, there is a real possibility of going home. Not just for the diaspora, but for all of us who have been adopted into this culture, who have sat at the table, who have fallen in love with the people and the food and the warmth. A new Iran, one that reclaims its identity as a bastion of culture, intellect, beauty, and celebration, is one of the most exciting prospects on earth. The Caspian coast, the ancient ruins of Persepolis, the bazaars, the mountains, the cuisine that somehow gets better every time, all of it is waiting. This is an invitation. Follow the Persians home. Support them. Celebrate with them. The greatest comeback story of the 21st century is being written right now, and you’re going to want to say you were there.

BEACH BUSINESS

North Beach is getting a water-world, aptly named the Mermaid Club.

Continuum Company, the team behind the iconic South Beach tower, is heading north. Ian Bruce Eichner and his daughter Allie are launching 12000 Sport & Wellness Waterfront Residences at 12000 North Bayshore Drive in North Miami, a 20-story, 262-unit development sitting on 4.3 waterfront acres they scooped up in a $48.5 million bulk buyout last fall. The project spans condos, penthouses, and townhomes starting at $1.4 million, with design by Kobi Karp Architecture and interiors by Paul Duesing Partners.

The crown jewel is the Mermaid Club, a full waterfront amenity experience complete with a 20-slip marina, floating pools, paddle-boards, and kayaks. Think less amenity deck, more aquatic lifestyle. The building rounds it out with a spa, fitness center, indoor pickleball courts, sports simulators, and putting greens — basically everything you need to never leave home.

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What’s Inside:

• $15 Billion Offer. One Answer: No. The Stephen Ross story you need to read

• NORA District: West Palm’s new cultural center is open and already iconic

• The Vineta Opens Tonight: Palm Beach’s most anticipated hotel in a decade

• Larry Ellison Moves In: what his $277M resort acquisition really means

• Aman Comes to Palm Beach: 41 units, 20 years in the making

• Mary Lou’s: the Worth Avenue legacy hiding behind a bait shop door

• The New Gold Coast: How the 70-mile corridor from Miami to Palm Beach became the most powerful stretch of real estate in America

Someone offered Stephen Ross $15 billion for the Miami Dolphins.

To be precise, they offered close to $15 billion for the Dolphins, Hard Rock Stadium, and the F1 Miami Grand Prix, the entire sports entertainment empire he’s spent years assembling. Ross bought the Dolphins in 2009 for around $1 billion. A $15 billion offer would have been the largest sports transaction in history, nearly double the record set when the Los Angeles Lakers sold for $10 billion last year. And he turned it down.

“Pretty high numbers,” he told Bloomberg in January, almost laughing. “But where would you put the money? Then what would I do with it?”

What he’s doing with it, all of it, the capital, the attention, the energy of a man who made his name building Hudson Yards over the New York rail yards, is happening 70 miles north of Miami on a stretch of Intracoastal waterfront that, until recently, most of South Florida’s luxury class casually ignored.

West Palm Beach and its legendary neighbor across the bridge, Palm Beach, are not rising in spite of Miami. They’re completing it. Think of the relationship the way New York breathes through the Hamptons, or the way Manhattan professionals decompress in Westchester. Different registers of the same chord. What’s being built up the coast right now is the other half of a story that Miami started, and the pace of it, taken all together, is staggering.

The Man Who Stayed

Stephen Ross is 85 years old. He splits his days between a West Palm Beach office and his Palm Beach home, cutting back on travel anywhere outside Florida except for Dolphins games. Mornings start with a workout. Days end late. By every account, this is his idea of a great time.

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 2.24.26

Beach Business

• FL House Votes to Eliminate Property Tax

  The Florida House voted 80–30 to pass HJR 203.

• New Sheriff in Sunny Isles: New Tallest Building Approved

  Sunny Isles Beach has approved a 62-story, 820-foot luxury condominium tower.

• USA Hockey Team Celebrates Gold in Miami

  From the 1Hotel to E11EVEN for a full night of well-earned victory.

• Palantir HQ to Aventura? Most Valuable Public Company in FL

  From Silicon Valley to Denver from Denver to Miami Via Aventura

Hospitality Local Insider

• Dubai → Miami, Gaia, Mimi, & More Arrive

  Miami is about to welcome another international heavyweight.

You Gotta Have Friends

• The GOAT in Wynwood, Tom Brady at Collectors Club

  The best card and collectibles shop in the city.

• Hidden Gem: Felice Brickell, 4 Course Tuscan Dinner with Iacopo Falai

  No noise. No chaos. Just spectacular service & food that actually tastes like Italy.

On My Mind: Energy is contagious.

Not in the woo-woo way. In the real way. The measurable way. The way you feel after a dinner that lights you up, or drains you dry.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Their ambition sets your pace. Their standards become your ceiling. Their drama becomes your distraction. Their discipline becomes your edge.

If you sit at tables where people gossip, you shrink.
If you sit at tables where people build, you expand.

Energy transfers. It multiplies. It infects.

Look at your group chat. Look at your calendar. Look at who gets your hours. That’s who’s shaping your future, whether you’re conscious of it or not.

So the real question isn’t “What’s good?”

It’s: Who’s good for you?

BEACH BUSINESS

The Great State of Florida: FL House Votes to Eliminate Property Tax

The Florida House just voted 80–30 to advance a bold proposal that could make Florida the national model for homeowner protection.

The measure would gradually eliminate most non-school property taxes on Homesteaded homes, a transformative step aimed at protecting full-time Florida residents and strengthening long-term homeownership. If approved by the Senate, the proposal will appear on the November 2026 ballot. If voters pass it, larger homestead exemptions would begin phasing in by 2027, with most local property taxes on primary residences eliminated by 2037. (School taxes would remain in place.)

At its core, this is about protecting the people who live here, the families, retirees, entrepreneurs, and long-term residents who power Florida’s economy. By dramatically reducing the tax burden on primary homes, the state would be reinforcing stability, rewarding residency, and making Florida even more attractive for full-time homeowners.

The economic implications could be extraordinary. Lower recurring ownership costs often translate into stronger demand, greater purchasing power, and upward pressure on property values. For many homeowners, this could represent one of the most significant wealth-building shifts in modern Florida history.

The Senate must still approve the proposal before it reaches voters. If it does, and Floridians pass it, this could position Florida as the leading example for how states protect residents, strengthen communities, and accelerate generational wealth.

Checkmate New York and California. Enjoy yourself a delicious Mamdani-Newsom cocktail, 9.5% property tax increase in NYC.

New Sheriff in Sunny Isles: Tallest Residential Tower Approved

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Something big is happening, and most people are going to be blindsided by it.

Matt Shumer, co-founder and CEO of Otherside AI, put it plainly in Fortune this month: “we are in the this seems overblown phase of something that is anything but.” The part of his post that hit hardest wasn’t the sweeping predictions about the future of work. It was something …

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