In 2020, when most of America’s major cities banned indoor dining and forced restaurants to operate on a takeout-only basis or set up sidewalk sheds, husband-and-wife restaurateurs Gregory Galy and Marine Giron-Galy opened Mila in Miami Beach.
After moving from Los Angeles in 2018, they spent $15 million on the three-story concept, which includes an Asian-Mediterranean-fusion restaurant, a lounge, an omakase counter, a rooftop bar, and a members-only section for those who find V.I.P. bottle service insufficiently exclusive.
Mila’s astounding financial success—$27 million in gross revenue in 2021, $32 million a year later, and $52 million in 2023—helped lure a number of other restaurateurs to Miami. Since the pandemic, branches of restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, and elsewhere have opened in the city.
New York’s Major Food Group hastily dotted Miami with eight new restaurants, including Carbone. Stephen Starr opened a Pastis in Wynwood. José Andrés unveiled three restaurants in the Ritz-Carlton. Thomas Keller has a pair of Miami restaurants. Toronto restaurateur Charles Khabouth, who memorably started his career with a publicity stunt where a live tiger nearly busted through the front window of his club, has opened four spots and counting, including Queen, in Miami Beach. Richard Caring opened a local outpost of his London restaurant Sexy Fish.
But these restaurateurs may be the modern-day version of unsuspecting northerners who a century ago bought Florida swampland marketed as a fine place to build a home. For every success story such as Mila, dozens, maybe hundreds, of restaurants in the Magic City could close this year.
One night I had dinner with a friend at Sushi by Scratch, the local outpost of a popular Austin restaurant. Besides the family of three next to us, it was empty. Employees removed extra chairs from the 10-seat counter so that the place wouldn’t feel half full. Not long after, I ate next door at the temporary pop-up location of QP Tapas, one of the best restaurants to open in Miami last year, and just two other tables were taken; the restaurant closed earlier this month.
Felix Bendersky, a 46-year-old, slicked-haired broker of bars and restaurants, says a “restaurant Armageddon” has begun in Miami. Bendersky’s parents, immigrants from the Soviet Union, owned a popular Russian nightclub in Brooklyn where people would “go in Fridays and not come out until Sundays.” Today, his Miami-based firm, F+B Hospitality Leasing Brokerage, has an Instagram feed dishing industry news and, lately, making dire prophecies.
The problem, Bendersky says, began in the summer of 2020, when restaurateurs flocked to Miami to enjoy a largely lockdown-free economy. Contractors and subcontractors were in such demand that they charged outrageous fees. Backlogged city inspectors delayed progress and drove up construction costs. Customers dwindled as restaurants raised prices to keep up with inflation, as the cost of everything from tomatoes to emptying grease traps went up.
For every success story such as Mila, dozens, maybe hundreds, of restaurants in the Magic City could close this year.
Bendersky says he’s getting 15 to 20 calls a day from restaurateurs who plan to close soon, well above the half-dozen he averages typically. When I first spoke to him, earlier this year, he predicted several closures that have already happened, including Joliet, an excellent Cajun spot in Miami Beach; Pez Mexican, which closed even after being added to the 2024 Michelin Guide; the food hall Okeydokey; and Icebox Cafe, a favorite of Oprah Winfrey’s, which closed after 25 years in business. Right now, Bendersky says he has 20 restaurants trying to sell before they’re forced to close. He predicts at least 100 restaurants in Miami will close this year.
“I have the unfortunate displeasure of really knowing who’s not going to make it now, and it sucks,” he says. The day after we spoke, Bendersky messaged me about one of my favorite new restaurants. “Enjoy it while you can,” he wrote ominously. He was right, too: in April, the owners of Juliette closed up shop for good.
One of the restaurant owners who moved to Miami in the height of the lockdown is Franco Yannelli, who co-founded Grupo Alfoz, a company that started a dozen restaurants in Argentina. “A lot of people told me, ‘Beware, it’s really tough to get construction done in this city,’” he says. “And I thought, I am from a Third World country. What could be worse than that?” What Yannelli found was a city that lived up to its notorious reputation.
His latest restaurant, Chimba, serves Latin fusion in Midtown Miami. On the rainy night I went, a lone server struggled to keep up as the restaurant filled to half-capacity. Yannelli says that’s typical of Miami, where you can get slammed on a stormy Monday and see few customers on a sunny Friday. Business has grown in the five months since Chimba opened, but Yannelli also recognizes that the market is oversaturated.
Scott Linquist’s well-reviewed restaurant Como Como, in South Beach, closed in August 2022 amid soaring rents and competition. “These new restaurants that are coming in and spending outrageous dollars to open these clubs, it’s totally ruining the restaurant scene,” he says.
The Michelin-starred Ariete, which held a party this year to celebrate its eighth birthday, survives off locals who know good food, says chef Michael Beltran, not some kid from Idaho coming into town to “get banged up” and go to a club-restaurant. “We have a fucking Hell’s Kitchen now in Miami. It’s like Vegas. I don’t know if anyone’s looked at their menu, but there’s, like, chicken wings next to beef Wellington, and it doesn’t make any sense,” he says.
The day after we spoke, Bendersky messaged me about one of my favorite new restaurants. “Enjoy it while you can,” he wrote ominously.
Cindy Hutson, who opened her first Miami restaurant in 1994, says she can’t understand how 200-seat restaurants keep opening when finding dependable line cooks and servers has become near impossible. She remembers a time when she’d fire a server for showing up late. “Now you almost have to bow over to them and forget what you’ve seen and take them anyway,” Hutson says.
But while many restaurants will fail, some are still making Mila money, according to Lee Schrager, who’s known for founding the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Back in the 80s, Schrager braved a stagnant Miami restaurant scene to open the Torpedo bar, and then the Spot dinner club with partner Mickey Rourke, who grew up in the city.
When we spoke, Schrager told me that in the last month he’s been to several big new restaurants that were packed: Delilah, which brought $28 chicken fingers from Los Angeles; Chateau ZZ’s, a Mexican restaurant from the team behind Carbone; and Casadonna, a $20 million partnership between club owner David Grutman’s Groot Hospitality and the Tao Group from London. In Miami, Schrager explains, places that are consistently good—Joe’s Stone Crab, Michael’s Genuine, Stubborn Seed—are always popular, as are the hot new things. “The question is, What’s going to be left in five years here?” he says.
Bendersky believes it depends on the neighborhood. Far too many restaurants have spent lavishly to convert gritty warehouses in the graffiti-covered neighborhood of Wynwood since the pandemic. He predicts that many of them will close this year, especially now that the cool Miami winter has turned into a steamy spring. “It’s really hard to fuck up in December, January, and February,” he says. “But then in March, everybody hits the panic button at the same time.”
Meanwhile, with the success of Mila, the Riviera Dining Group is in expansion mode, with a hotel expected to open this year on the Miami River in downtown. The company is also planning restaurants in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, London, Dubai, and Mexico City.
Mila has never been a favorite among chefs, critics, or foodies. Ryan Pfeffer, of the Infatuation Miami, wrote that it’s the kind of place where you’ll “curse the friend who dragged you here.” Yet the club-restaurants are likely to survive. Those who bought the restaurant equivalent of Florida swampland might lose everything. But we’ll always have V.I.P. bottle service.
Eric Barton is a Miami-based writer who has contributed to Garden & Gun, Outside, and Men’s Health
