WGM Double Issue: Legendary Miami Restaurant List, Yardbird Closes, Soho Kills the Pool House
+ Victor Oladipo is Miami's Rocky & What's Good? The Leftovers Podcast #2
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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 8.5.26
Today's newsletter includes, Sultan is gone after 30 years and its landlord is looking for love in all the wrong places, Yardbird is dead and we've got the inside track on how private equity ran an $11 million brand into the ground, Soho House gutting its Edgewater Pool House as part of a $2.7 billion wellness bet, the Florida Keys continue to become Miami's Montauk with Lorelei hitting the market for $18 million, Victor Oladipo's Rocky story and why the Heat should give him his shot, and we hang with the Leftovers to create the definitive list of Miami's most legendary restaurants, the locals and the imports.
On My Mind: Sultan is gone & the Landlord is Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places.
Sultan is gone. If you don’t know what that means, you didn’t go out in this city in the right decade.
Sultan was the place you ended up. After Mynt, after Rokbar, after the day at Shore Club, before you got on the boat, you ended up at Sultan. Bad pizza, mediocre Falafel, great vibes, and a wall of photos that looked like a who’s who of anyone who mattered: Kim K, Shaq, whoever else came through Miami that weekend. Thirty years the menu worked. Thirty years people showed up.
A couple years ago somebody bought it. First move: change the menu. The thing that worked for decades, gone, because the new owner knew better, or nothing. It didn’t work. It just closed.
I was walking with my son the other day and saw it sitting empty and I called the landlord, because that’s what I do. I’m always looking at spaces. The conversation started fine. Then came the details: 1,200 square feet, $300 per square foot, rent of $30,000 a month. He said it, I laughed, told him to call me when he came back to reality and hung up.
No restaurant survives $30,000 a month on 1,200 square feet. That’s Fifth Avenue money. That’s Rodeo Drive money. That’s Worth Avenue money. This was basically a middle eastern food truck, not a flagship on the world’s most expensive retail strips. I think thats called “asshole math” and it doesn’t work for anybody.
That’s what’s wrong with Miami right now. Some landlords don’t care whether the tenant survives, the neighborhood improves, they just want to make bad deals with any sucker with a dream. Taking zero responsibility for outcomes. It doesn’t just hurt the sucker. It hurts everyone, including the landlord, when the storefront goes dark again in six months and the cycle starts over it sends the wrong message to the market. It’s a shameful practice and the landlord deserves to be called out for being so greedy & shortsighted.
BEACH BUSINESS
Soho House is Killing It’s Pool House
