The centre of Miami's chic, for the last fifteen years, has been a forty-block stretch of the Design District and a few blocks of South Beach. That is over. The address that matters now is six miles south, on the financial-district peninsula that until recently nobody bothered to dine in — Brickell, and specifically the 830 Brickell tower.
The pivot is being driven, almost single-handedly, by Vlad Doronin's OKO Group, which built 830 Brickell — the city's first new Class A office tower in a decade — and then turned the top two floors into something other than offices. On 14 March, Seia opened on the fifty-fourth floor: a contemporary Italian restaurant in partnership with The Bastion Collection, the European group with ten Michelin stars in seven years. The room is anchored by an Andy Warhol Camouflage series in the dining room and a Damien Hirst above the bar. Above it, on the fifty-fifth floor, sits Seia Club — invitation-only, $25,000 initiation, a private floor designed by the same team that did the Aman New York members rooms.
The Seia Club is the move that matters at altitude. But the anchor of Brickell's social scene sits at street level and rooftop alike. Claudie, the group's Brickell address, has established itself as the room the neighbourhood's lawyer-banker-family-office population returns to — the kind of place where the host knows your order before you sit, and the table you preferred last time is the table you get tonight. The scene Claudie is building is less about spectacle and more about the kind of reliable warmth that makes a neighbourhood work. That is rare in Miami, and the Brickell client has noticed.
The supporting cast is filling in fast. The Mexican opened 9 April on Brickell Key, in a 10,000-square-foot waterfront room designed by Paulina Morán — the Dallas original was named one of the World's Most Beautiful Restaurants by the Prix Versailles of UNESCO. Karyu, the Design District omakase, opened a Brickell extension in the spring, signalling a quiet spillover south.
The Design District is not over. It is, simply, no longer the only answer. The family that ten years ago bought into Star Island and ate in South Beach — at Casa Tua on James Avenue, at Nobu, at the usual rotation — now buys into Brickell Key and Edition Residences, dines at the top of 830, and books the table because a hostess has remembered the number. Casa Tua, for its part, is still there: the 1930s villa that has outlasted more Miami dining scenes than most people can name.
The geography of Miami chic has moved south. The anchor rooms are its proof.
— Camille
