Palm Beach sits on a barrier island barely half a mile wide at its narrowest point, the Atlantic on one side, the Intracoastal on the other. For most of the last decade, that geography has been mostly decorative when it comes to dinner. Docks, lawns, and private seawalls line the western shore, but a table where you can actually eat while looking at the water has been close to nonexistent.
That changed twice this year, about two months apart, inside two buildings that already had their own history on the island. Women's Wear Daily summed up the old math bluntly when Tutto Mare opened at Royal Poinciana Plaza in January: there are many beautiful settings to eat in Palm Beach, but "only one sits directly on the water, a remarkably low number for an island." Then, on March 2, a second landmark a five-minute drive away reopened with its own waterside pedigree, though this one traded the Intracoastal for a storied name instead.
The Only Table Actually on the Water
Tutto Mare opened in January inside the restored Royal Poinciana Playhouse at the Royal Poinciana Plaza, the 1957 John Volk-designed shopping complex organized around two courtyards near the heart of the island. It's the work of Gabby Karan de Felice and her husband, Gianpaolo de Felice, the couple behind the Tutto il Giorno restaurant group, which has run seaside Italian spots in Southampton, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, and Sag Harbor for close to two decades. Tutto Mare is their first outpost outside New York, and it landed in a space with more history attached than a typical restaurant buildout.
The room was once the Playhouse's Celebrity Room, a Hollywood-adjacent lounge from the late 1950s where actors mingled under a hand-painted ceiling. That mural, Robert Bushnell's "Venetian Festival," survived the renovation and now looks down on diners again, its caricatures of more than a hundred period stars, including Clark Gable, restored along with the rest of the room. Karan de Felice reimagined the space as a lounge with Balinese teak furniture, and the floor was raised specifically to close the distance to the water, overlooking Lake Worth Lagoon and the Palm Harbor Marina next to the new Glazer Hall performing arts center.
The menu leans Mediterranean rather than the group's usual Southern Italian, with branzino acqua pazza, fritto misto, and paccheri con frutti di mare from executive chef Agostino Petrosino. Diners waiting for a table can shop the same complex for Kelly Klein ceramics, Robert Lee Morris jewelry, and cashmere from Karan de Felice's mother, Donna Karan, all sold a few steps from the dining room. It's the kind of detail that only makes sense once you understand Royal Poinciana Plaza isn't a strip of restaurants. It's a self-contained retail world that happened to be missing a genuine waterfront seat until this year.
Five Minutes Away, the Leopard Lounge Comes Back as Coco's
The second reopening sits about two blocks from Worth Avenue, inside a building most longtime residents still call the Chesterfield. Built in 1926 as the Lido-Venice and briefly known as the Vineta from 1928 into the late 1970s, the pink Mediterranean Revival building at 363 Cocoanut Row spent thirty years as the Chesterfield before London-based Reuben Brothers bought it in 2022 for $42 million and closed it for a renovation that ran nearly three years. It reopened on March 2 as the Vineta once again, this time as the first U.S. property for Oetker Hotels, the European group behind Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on the French Riviera and Eden Rock in St. Barths.
The room count dropped from 53 to 41, a deliberate trade of density for space, and Paris-based designer Tino Zervudachi handled the interiors with pale woods, grasscloth, and rattan meant to feel distinctly of the island rather than imported from anywhere else. The building's ground floor now holds four dining and bar concepts, but the one worth knowing is Coco's, which occupies the space of the old Leopard Lounge. That room used to be a genuine local institution, black lacquer booths, a leopard-print carpet, live music that drew celebrities and regulars into the same seats for decades. Coco's keeps a concealed leopard motif as a nod to that history while serving a menu tied to Oetker's sister property in France, including Eden Roc sea bass with fennel puree and a Steak Diane made with Australian Wagyu. The restaurant seats 96 across a dining room and a jasmine-scented courtyard, with a poolside Pool House next door for lighter fare like lobster rolls and tuna tartare tacos.
A Pattern: Palm Beach Is Reopening Its Past, Not Building Something New
Line these two projects up and a pattern shows up that a single restaurant review would miss. Neither Tutto Mare nor Coco's is a ground-up build. Both occupy landmarked buildings with protected exteriors, both preserved a piece of the space's earlier identity on purpose, and both took years longer to open than a new construction project would have because renovating a National Register building on a barrier island comes with its own timeline. Add Palm House, the hotel at 160 Royal Palm Way that reopened in late 2024 after sitting shuttered for 17 years under a company affiliated with London-based Iconic Luxury Hotels, and Palm Beach has seen three landmark hospitality properties come back to life within about a year and a half, all through restoration rather than replacement.
That's a meaningfully different growth story than what's happening a few miles west, where entire districts like NORA are being built out as new commercial zones north of downtown West Palm Beach. Palm Beach doesn't have the room, or the appetite, for that kind of expansion. Its version of new energy runs through old addresses. The island's tourism numbers back up why that pattern is worth watching: Palm Beach County drew a record 10.7 million visitors in 2025, up 8 percent from the year before, arriving right as the island's supply of hospitality experiences is being renewed rather than expanded. When demand grows and the physical footprint can't, the value concentrates in whatever gets reopened.
How to Actually Use This
If you've been meaning to try either one, September gives you a practical reason to stop waiting. Restaurant Month, also branded Flavor South Florida, runs throughout September this year with more than a hundred participating restaurants at prix fixe price points between $20 and $70, a low-commitment way to sample a chef's counter or a steakhouse menu without booking the full a la carte experience.
A few things worth knowing before you go:
- Tutto Mare takes lunch reservations daily starting at noon and dinner starting at 5 p.m., with last seating around 9:30 p.m. most nights.
- Coco's is open to nonguests, and The Bar, the hotel's small cocktail lounge, welcomes outside visitors too, though it operates as a seated-only venue to limit crowding.
- If you're driving between the two, expect delays. The Town of Palm Beach has South County Road, also known as State Road A1A, closed for sidewalk and intersection work between Brazilian Avenue and Royal Palm Way from August 24 through September, right in the corridor connecting Worth Avenue to the rest of the island's spine road. Town-wide undergrounding and paving work is also underway elsewhere on the island this fall, so a five-minute drive between Royal Poinciana Plaza and the Vineta may run longer some nights.
Neither opening changes what Palm Beach is. The island was never going to trade its scale or its restraint for a denser restaurant row. What changed is smaller and more specific: for the first time in years, there's a real answer to where you actually sit on the water, and a few blocks from Worth Avenue, an old name and an old room came back with enough of their original character intact that longtime residents will recognize what they're looking at.
If you're weighing a move on the island, whether that means buying, selling, or simply understanding how these changes affect property values along the Intracoastal and near Worth Avenue, SERHANT. Palm Beaches knows this stretch of the island block by block. Schedule a private consultation with Christian Prakas to talk through what's next.
