Ocean One Bar & Grille, known for $5.99 lunches, shuts all 6 South Florida locations
Ocean One Bar & Grille, which blitzed into the South Florida market three years ago touting lunch entrees under $6, has abruptly shut all six of its South Florida locations.
As of this week, phone lines are disconnected at each of the trendy sports pub’s outposts in Delray Beach, Royal Palm Beach, Davie, Dania Beach, Coral Springs and Kendall. Meanwhile, the Florida website, OceanOneFL.com, reroutes customers to Ocean One’s last remaining location: Its 15-year-old flagship in Las Vegas.
Whether the closings are temporary or permanent is unclear. No explanation was offered by the mini-chain’s owners — David Stein, Ron Rowe, and Tony and Rosita Visone — and multiple calls and texts to Tony Visone’s cellphone number seeking comment went unreturned this week.
Ocean One Bar & Grille confirmed the closings only after multiple concerned diners left comments on the restaurant’s official Facebook pages. When one asked why Ocean One chose to shutter its Delray Beach outpost, the account replied, cryptically: “For reasons we prefer to keep private.”
In the same thread, the account later added: “All Florida locations are closed.”
This week, the front doors of Ocean One’s Coral Springs location, which reportedly closed Dec. 11, were seen padlocked shut. In Davie, a construction worker told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the location wasn’t permanently closed but rather being “remodeled.”
In the Sun Sentinel-run, 133,000-member “Let’s Eat, South Florida” Facebook group, Ocean One diners have been sounding off about Ocean One’s possible demise. Many remained split about the food quality, with opinions ranging from “trash” to “great quality for the price.” Others wondered how $5.99 entrees were sustainable in an inflationary market.
The Dania Beach location shuttered on Dec. 22, according to Emily Wirley, marketing manager for Kimco Realty Corp., which operates the 102-acre Dania Pointe shopping complex. That sit-down, which debuted in October 2020, was Ocean One’s first entry into the South Florida market, coaxing pandemic-weary customers back onto restaurant patios with discount lunches, dinners and all-day happy hours.
Then came a rapid expansion. The restaurant charged $4.99 (later increased to $5.99) for a raft of dishes ranging from grilled lemon-herb salmon and half-pound sirloin burgers to tenderloin quesadillas and orecchiette pasta. There was also an all-day happy hour of three-for-one premium cocktails for $12.
The mini-chain had been dogged with criticism in recent months in the “Let’s Eat, South Florida” group over claims of loud music, patio tables blocking sidewalks, poor customer service and cleanliness issues.
State inspectors temporarily shut the Coral Springs outpost in March over an infestation of live flies. The presence of insects also triggered three shutdowns by the state in 2021 at Ocean One’s Delray Beach location, for issues that included a fly landing “on (a) cinnamon-fried tortilla.”
