The Royal Poinciana Playhouse has stood dark for most of the last two decades, a beautiful ghost at the north end of the island that most residents drove past without a second look. This January, the lights came back on. Inside, under twelve-foot oak-beamed vaulted ceilings, a Southern Italian kitchen started sending out branzino acqua pazza and paccheri con frutti di mare to tables that look straight out over the Intracoastal. If you live here, you already know the reservation is hard to get.
That single opening is doing something bigger than adding another table to the island. It is quietly moving the center of gravity of Palm Beach dining off Worth Avenue and onto the Intracoastal side, and it is doing it in the same season that a European hospitality group opened its first American hotel three blocks away. For anyone who already owns here, the practical result is that a summer weekend at home now has a different shape than it did a year ago.
The First Restaurant on the Water
Tutto Mare opened January 2, 2026, and it did something no other restaurant on the island had ever done. It is the only restaurant in Palm Beach located directly on the Intracoastal. That is not marketing language. Look at a map of the island's dining and the sightline to the water has always run through a hotel lobby, a bridge, or a hedge. Now it runs through a dining room.
The room itself was designed by Gabby Karan de Felice, whose family runs the Hamptons favorite Tutto il Giorno, and the menu draws directly from her father Gianpaolo de Felice's Southern Italian upbringing. Branzino acqua pazza, fritto misto, and paccheri con frutti di mare anchor a list that is short by design. The Royal Poinciana Plaza location matters here too. The Plaza has spent the last several years turning itself back into a real destination rather than a passthrough, and Tutto Mare is the piece that finally makes the north end a Friday-night decision instead of a lunch stop.
If you live on North Ocean or in one of the co-ops along the Lake Trail, the walk over is now shorter than the drive to most of Worth Avenue. That is a genuinely new fact about the island.
The Vineta Hotel Changes the Cocoanut Row Block
A few minutes south, the former Chesterfield has reopened as The Vineta Hotel, and the group behind it is not a domestic operator. The hospitality group behind the famed Hotel du Cap in Antibes, Le Bristol Paris, and the Eden Rock in St. Barts opened its much-anticipated first US property in Palm Beach earlier this year. That pedigree matters less as name-dropping than as a description of what the ground-floor experience feels like. The French Riviera reference is literal, not aspirational.
Two rooms opened with the hotel:
- Coco's, the courtyard restaurant, is led by Executive Chef Brian Rodriguez, blending Mediterranean flavors with classic coastal European influence. One of the signature dishes on the menu is steak Diane, imported directly from the Hotel du Cap kitchen.
- The Vineta Bar reads to anyone who was here before as a deliberate nod to the former Leopard Lounge, restored inside the same historic building with a cocktail program built to sit alongside the hotel's dinner service.
The reason to care about both together is that they finish a thought Tutto Mare started. The island now has, within a fifteen-minute walk of each other, three genuinely new rooms with genuinely different postures. A waterfront Italian, a Mediterranean hotel restaurant, and a bar with a memory. That is more textural range than the island has offered in a single season in years.
The Polo Room Isn't New, But It Belongs in the Same Conversation
If the Vineta and Tutto Mare are the openings of the year, The Polo Room is the room that quietly rewrote the social calendar in the twelve months before them. Nacho Figueras, an actual polo player and international sports star, is a co-owner of this equestrian-themed island spot that's caught on like wildfire. If you can take your eyes off all the major moguls in the room long enough to order, you might want to try the trending caviar bumps, followed by crab and avocado salad, lobster frites or the wagyu beef French dip.
The reason to mention it here is not to rehash a review you have already read. It is that The Polo Room, Tutto Mare, and Coco's together represent something different from a normal season of restaurant turnover. They are three destination rooms with distinct national or international pedigrees, all sitting inside a ten-block stretch, all opened or fully hitting stride inside a twelve-month window. That does not usually happen here.
The practical effect for a resident is that "where should we eat" has become a harder question this summer, not because the choices are bad but because they are all new enough that no one has a settled answer.
A Quick Map of What Opened Where
For the reader who scrolled to this section first, the summary of the new island rooms:
| Room | Location | The pedigree | What to order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tutto Mare | Royal Poinciana Plaza, on the Intracoastal | Karan de Felice family, sibling to Tutto il Giorno | Paccheri con frutti di mare, branzino acqua pazza |
| Coco's | The Vineta Hotel courtyard | Oetker Collection lineage (Hotel du Cap, Le Bristol, Eden Rock) | Steak Diane |
| The Vineta Bar | The Vineta Hotel | Reimagined tribute to the Leopard Lounge | The cocktail list |
| The Polo Room | Royal Poinciana area | Co-owned by Nacho Figueras | Caviar bumps, lobster frites, wagyu French dip |
The Water Half of the Summer
Dining is only half of what changes here between June and September. The other half is that the island empties out enough for the water itself to feel like a private amenity again. Three fixed points on the summer calendar are worth building a weekend around.
Peanut Island in the middle of a Tuesday. The open secret of the Palm Beach summer. Peanut Island sits just inside the Lake Worth Inlet, a short run from the docks with a beach, snorkeling, and some of the most spectacular views of Palm Beach Island. Drop anchor, lower the swim platform, and let the afternoon handle itself. It's what the water is for. The reason this belongs on a resident's calendar and not a visitor's is that the island is genuinely quieter mid-week between June and September, and the crossing from the Lake Worth side takes minutes.
Fourth on Flagler, watched from the water. South Florida's largest free outdoor Independence Day celebration, and this year marks America's 250th anniversary. Live music across three stages, military honor ceremony, family entertainment, and an 18-minute fireworks display over the Intracoastal starting at 9 PM. No better seat in the house than from the water. If you have dock access on the island side, you already know the geometry. The show is aimed east, straight at you.
Father's Day weekend at Ocean Reef. Three days of offshore competition at Ocean Reef, one of South Florida's most exclusive private communities and a landmark venue for serious sport fishing. Whether you're competing or spectating, Father's Day weekend at Ocean Reef is a full Palm Beach experience. Not on the island, but a standing part of the June rotation for a lot of families here.
None of these three are new. What has changed is the shore-side end of the day. A run over to Peanut Island in the morning and a table at Tutto Mare that night is a sequence that did not exist last summer.
Why This Season Is Actually Different
Every year has restaurant openings. What makes this one worth writing down is the concentration and the pedigree. In a single twelve-month window, the island gained its first Intracoastal waterfront restaurant, its first Oetker Collection property, and a permanent second act for the Chesterfield's bar, alongside a Figueras-backed room already operating at full velocity. Palm Beach has always been a market where the interesting rooms are the ones the residents keep for themselves for the first six months. That window is closing quickly on all four.
If you live here, the useful thing to do this month is book two of the four while summer inventory still exists at the tables. The Plaza gets harder in October. The Vineta gets harder the moment the seasonal residents come back.
A Note From the Team
The rhythm of the island reshuffles itself every few years, and 2026 is one of those reshuffles. If you own here and are thinking about what your property looks like against a changing north-end scene, or you are considering a move onto the island and want a genuine read on which blocks benefit most from the Royal Poinciana revival and the Vineta reopening, we are happy to talk it through. IJL Real Estate Group works with owners and buyers across Palm Beach Island with senior-level attention and the discretion the market expects.
Book an appointment to talk through the island block by block.