If you have lived in Coconut Grove for more than a year, you have a mental list of addresses you drive or walk past and wonder about. The plywood on the second floor of CocoWalk. The corner unit at the Mayfair across from Carbone Vino. The private island at the end of the bridge that you have not set foot on since a wedding a decade ago. Each one has been a question mark for months, sometimes longer. This fall, the answer is different depending on which one you are asking about, and getting that answer right matters more than another roundup of "what's opening in the Grove" ever will.
Three Spaces, Three Timelines
The second-floor space at CocoWalk sat dark for more than a year after Planta Queen closed. That kind of vacancy in a high-traffic retail center is unusual, and it left a real gap in the Grove's evening options. At the Mayfair, the corner unit across from Carbone Vino has been under construction since at least mid-2025, part of a build-out that outlasted its original timeline more than once. And on Grove Isle, the twenty-acre private island connected to the mainland by a short bridge, a restaurant has been promised as the anchor of a brand-new condominium tower for well over a year.
Three addresses. Three separate stories. Only two of them are resolved.
What's Open Right Now
Grand Public Kitchen + Bar took over the CocoWalk space this spring, and it is open now, not "opening soon." The restaurant, run by Uniq Hospitality Group's Matthew Tsoumaris and Ryan Bassels with Chef Leo Pablo in the kitchen, occupies roughly 7,400 square feet on the second floor, directly above Chop steakhouse, at 3015 Grand Avenue. Pablo's background includes stints working alongside Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Michael Mina and Joël Robuchon, and the menu runs modern American with Mediterranean touches and a few nods to Tsoumaris's Greek heritage.
"Grand Public is about creating a place people want to return to. Coconut Grove's close-knit community made it the ideal home for our concept."
The detail that actually changes a resident's week is the schedule. Grand Public runs a daily happy hour from 3 to 6 p.m., then a second one after 10 p.m. that carries the same specials into the late hours. That second window matters because sit-down, late-night cocktails have been thin in the Grove for the past few years. A restaurant that treats 10 p.m. as prime time rather than closing time is solving a problem that no amount of new dinner reservations was going to fix.
At the Mayfair, 1986 Steakhouse is also open, and this one came with a longer wait than most people tracking it realize. Construction on the corner unit across from Carbone Vino was still underway in the middle of last year, with no opening date attached, and the restaurant did not welcome its first guests until this spring at 2911 Grand Avenue, Suite 111. It is an Argentine parrilla built around live-fire cooking, with a beef program that spans Argentine and American Prime cuts alongside Japanese A5 Wagyu, and a cocktail program built in partnership with 3 Monos Bar out of Buenos Aires. If you had it filed under "still under construction," it is worth updating that file. It has been serving dinner nightly since spring, closing at 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Here is the quick reference:
- Grand Public Kitchen + Bar (3015 Grand Avenue, CocoWalk second floor) — open, daily happy hour 3-6 p.m. and after 10 p.m.
- 1986 Steakhouse (2911 Grand Avenue, Mayfair) — open, dinner nightly
- La Sponda (4 Grove Isle Drive, Vita at Grove Isle) — not yet open
What's Still Coming
La Sponda is the one address on this list where the wait is genuinely not over. The restaurant, from Gioia Hospitality Group, the team behind the Michelin-recognized Daniel's Miami in Coral Gables, is set to anchor Vita at Grove Isle, the newly completed luxury condominium on Grove Isle. Interiors are being designed by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, the firm behind Annabel's in London, and the plan is weekday lunch, weekend brunch and nightly dinner facing Biscayne Bay. Vita's own team has said the restaurant will be open to the public rather than limited to residents and club members, which is worth noting if you have not been back to the island in years. Grove Isle has not been a place non-residents casually walked into for dinner in a long time.
But the summer window that Vita's own marketing pointed to earlier this year has already come and gone without a public opening date attached, and nothing in the restaurant's own channels suggests doors are open yet. If you have been holding a mental reservation for a bay-view dinner on the island, treat it as a plan for later this year rather than something to book this week.
The Actual Problem Being Solved
Line up Grand Public and 1986 Steakhouse next to each other and the through-line is not the menu. Both restaurants are backed by people who already had a stake in Miami's food scene before they signed these leases. Rapicavoli, who now runs the Mayfair Grill and previously launched Glass & Vine, has been cooking in the Grove for years. Gioia is already running Daniel's in Coral Gables. That is a different pattern from the last decade in this neighborhood, when a flagship space would go to an out-of-town concept, run for a year or two, and quietly close for the next one to try.
The more useful way to read this for your own calendar is by time slot rather than by chef. The Grove's dining gap over the past few years was never Friday or Saturday night. It was Tuesday at 4 p.m. and Thursday at 10 p.m., the hours when there was simply nowhere close by to go. Grand Public's two happy hours target exactly those hours. That is a more durable kind of value than any single dish, because it changes what a normal Tuesday looks like rather than what a special occasion looks like.
Main Highway Filled In Quietly
South of Grand Avenue, the changes have been smaller and easier to miss. At 3190 Main Highway, a restaurant simply called 3190 opened in the narrow slot between two longtime Grove institutions, Lokal and Atchana's Homegrown Thai. The name is the address, there is no printed menu, and the format is fixed, which tends to mean someone has thought hard about a small number of dishes rather than a large one. Miami Slice, the downtown pizza operation, has also expanded into the neighborhood, taking over the former Harry's Pizzeria space and bringing its New York-style slices along with additions like wood-fired cabbage and beef carpaccio.
None of this displaces the Grove's older anchors. GreenStreet Cafe has been serving breakfast on Main Highway since 7:30 a.m. for more than three decades. Le Bouchon du Grove has been doing French bistro food long enough to predate most of the city's current food press. El Bagel, on Virginia Street at Grand Avenue, still draws a line on weekends. If the new openings are filling gaps, the old guard is the reason the street had a shape worth filling in the first place.
The Sunday Anchor
If your week runs on a Sunday routine, the Mayfair courtyard is where it lands now. The Grove Bazaar runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., built around brunch from Rapicavoli's Mayfair Grill, with a rotating vendor mix that has included the Miami women's clothing brand Mann, Left on Saturn vintage and Hallandale's Mintage Records. It is walkable from most of central Coconut Grove, which puts it in the same category as Grand Public and 1986 Steakhouse: not a special trip, just part of the week.
What This Means for Your Week
The honest version of the "Grove is changing" story is smaller and more useful than the headline suggests. Two of the three spaces everyone has been watching are open and taking reservations tonight. The third one is real, well-funded and worth waiting for, but it is not open yet, and treating it as a done deal will get you a wasted trip across the bridge. Everything else, from the CocoWalk happy hour to the Sunday market at the Mayfair, adds up to a neighborhood where more of the calendar is finally accounted for, not just the weekend.
If you have been in the Grove long enough to remember what Main Highway looked like before any of this, you already know how quickly a lease can change. For residents who are thinking further ahead, whether that means a renovation, a move within the neighborhood, or simply understanding what a changing restaurant scene means for property values here, Mauricio J. Barba and Miami Signature Homes offer a complimentary home valuation and a private consultation grounded in the same kind of on-the-ground detail as everything above.
