At the Table newsletter: Shiny, new restaurants for a shiny, new year
Shiny, new restaurants for a shiny, new year
If the first couple of weeks of 2022 are any indication, this year could be a promising one for the local dining scene. With new restaurants and interesting new concepts on deck, there’s considerable sparkle ahead.
We can look forward to a slew of upcoming eateries. They include:
• Isla & Co., an all-day café with New York roots that’s headed to the West Palm Warehouse District.
• In the city’s South of Southern district, a pair of childhood buddies from the neighborhood are opening The SoSo, a trendy “fast-fine” spot with plenty of community love.
• In downtown Palm Beach Gardens, the group behind the wildly popular Carbone restaurant (New York, South Beach) plan to open Parm, a comfort-food Italian-American restaurant.
• Palm Beach island anticipates the debut of Cojímar, an upmarket Cuban restaurant inspired by Hemingway’s favorite fishing village in Cuba. And with stellar Havana native, chef/partner Luis Pous aboard, the restaurant promises to be legit cubano. (More on this restaurant soon.)
Of course, this emerging dining landscape got a good boost before the close of 2021. We saw the remarkable reopening of Chef Lindsay Autry’s West Palm Beach restaurant, The Regional, on Dec. 29. Call it a pandemic miracle – the popular Southern-inspired restaurant had been closed for 17 months. Weeks earlier, Boca Raton welcomed a snazzy new seafood restaurant called Corvina and Palm Beach Gardens greeted a second location for Prezzo, the revived 90’s-era Italian spot.
In fact, in a year when restaurant service ranks suffered considerable losses, the county welcomed this eclectic batch of eateries.
Still, some restaurants have witnessed the depletion of their staff as many servers and bussers left the business altogether or jumped to better paying jobs. To mitigate this loss, south county restaurateur Art Piyavichayanont has (literally) rolled out a solution: bionic bussers to help his staff. These BellaBots have been a hit with his customers, he says. One hilarious detail: the bionic Bellas get testy when customers fuss too much with their cat-like ears. (Never an issue with live, human-eared bussers.)
Meanwhile, on the farm
Today and tomorrow, a family-owned Loxahatchee Groves farm gets its global close-up when the “Outstanding in the Field” farm-feast series sets up what they describe as a “roving restaurant without walls.” For the two feasts, Holman’s Harvest farm welcomes Palm Beach chef Jason Weiner (Almond) and acclaimed Miami chef Niven Patel (Ghee Indian Kitchen). Both events are now sold out, but...
If you’re looking for more farm-feast options, check out the Swank Table dinner series at Swank Farm, also in Loxahatchee Groves. On Sunday, they’re hosting an Anthony Bourdain tribute dinner. And there are seven other dinner events after that.
Also on Sunday, Kai-Kai Farm in Indiantown hosts a dinner by Stuart chef Mark Muller (Ellie’s Downtown Deli). And on Jan. 30, the farm’s featured local star is Buccan Palm Beach chef Clay Conley.
Wishing you a delicious weekend!
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Newsletter: Shiny, new restaurants for a shiny, new year
