A new crop of residential properties across Miami are bringing in big-name chefs to up the ante.
Paraiso Bay in Edgewater will include a bayfront restaurant by chef Michael Schwartz.
After walking through the south entrance of The Setai in South Beach (2001 Collins ave., Miami Beach, 305-520-6000)—the residents-only entrance on 20th street—it’s a short stroll through the action of the hotel, underneath its Touzet Studio-designed tower, to The Setai’s flagship restaurant, The Restaurant at The Setai by chef Mathias Gervais. This is Miami’s archetypal fusion of high-end residential tower, marquee restaurant, and (sometimes) hotel within a single structure—and it’s something we’ll see a lot more of in the near future.
It’s all part of a purposeful effort on the part of developers to put as much attention into ground floor retail spaces as they do into the palaces in the sky above them. Cuisine is one of those categories—like the visual arts, architecture, shopping, and (finally) environmental sustainability—that is really on the rise in Miami, a fact that’s inescapable for any residential property developer looking for that next amenity that will attract the affluent.
Some are taking the food element to the next level, embracing the farm-to-table movement with in-building vegetable gardens. It’s farm-to-condo or bust. A few blocks north of The Setai, at 1 Hotel & Homes (2399 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, 305-361-5100), New York-based celebrity chef Tom Colicchio hopes to have a vegetable garden for his new, as yet unnamed restaurant within the condo/hotel project. “I would love to figure out a way to actually grow up on the roof,” says Colicchio. “We have a system that we use in New York where we’re growing food in milk crates, and it’s really effective.” The restaurant itself will be “mostly seafood” and, being that we live in such a warm climate, make use of olive oil instead of butter, resulting in a menu that’s Mediterranean-ish.
The Related Group is partnering with hospitality giant Sam Nazarian on Hyde Midtown, a Miami condo-hotel project under the nightclub brand.
This being his first foray into South Florida restaurateuring, Colicchio has also said he’ll lean on local friend and fellow celebrity chef Michael Schwartz for tips. Schwartz himself is working on a restaurant at The Related Group’s Paraiso Bay, a private residential community that recently broke ground in Edgewater. The restaurant, which is also as yet unnamed, will be located in Paraiso’s Beach Club, a bayfront amenity accessible by land and by dock. “Seeing the success of places like Seasalt & Pepper and The Standard, we realized there weren’t that many places in Miami to get something to eat or drink accessible by water, and we decided to introduce the beach club concept into some of our projects,” says Carlos Rosso, president of Related’s condo division. Here, Related is also considering creating a garden with Schwartz that’s integrated into the community park the company is building adjacent to the Beach Club.
Related is getting into this trend in a big way. The company is currently partnering with hospitality giant Sam Nazarian on four announced projects: SLS Brickell, where Schwartz and fellow chef José Andrés (known for his Bazaar at the SLS South Beach) are working on restaurants; SLS Lux, where chef Katsuya Uechi will have an outpost of his restaurant Katsuya; and two condo/hotel projects under the Hyde (nightclub) brand, in Midtown Miami and Hollywood Beach.
A rendering of Hyde Resort and Residences Hollywood in Hollywood Beach.
The two-towered Brickell Heights project is where Related first explored the idea of including vegetable gardens in its projects, a notion that has expanded to five Related buildings with a whopping 15 planting beds total. “When we started working with the chefs, more and more of them started talking about doing gardens,” says Rosso. “The health-consciousness of Brickell Heights, which will include an Equinox gym, made the garden a logical inclusion there.”
Related has commissioned local green thumb Dylan Terry to install the beds; his company, Ready-to-Grow Gardens, will tend them once a month. Creating community gardens within luxury condo towers, as well as giving the residents the option of planting and growing their own vegetable plots within the building, is something very new. Of course the burgeoning popularity of urban farming, a perfect idea for Miami’s year-round growing climate, is one reason green plots are appearing on amenity decks across Miami. As our city urbanizes, the available real estate for urban gardens will just as likely be the tops of residential buildings, next to the pool, as underutilized pieces of land.
It turns out, incorporating well-known restaurants and rooftop gardens into luxury residential buildings isn’t an entirely novel concept—grand apartment houses of the early 20th century often had both gardens and eateries. The Dakota in New York originally came with a large dining hall that no longer exists. Nearby, the famous Café des Artistes was built to feed the residents of the Hotel des Artistes, and just up Broadway the Ansonia had a farm on the roof complete with livestock for its first three years of existence, until the New York City Department of Health shipped the animals off to Central Park in 1907. That’s something Miamians won’t be seeing on any South Florida properties—unless, of course, it’s of the Britto or Koons variety.