New Restaurants in Palm Beach: What's Ahead for the 2026 Season

Almond served its last dinner at 207 Royal Poinciana Way on Mother's Day 2024, the Palm Beach Post reported. Its replacement is Élephante, the Mediterranean restaurant from Nick Mathers' Wish You Were Here Group. The plan calls for 284 seats inside and out, valet, live music, and a bakery and market next door at 208–210 Sunset Avenue. Haute Living's October 16 season preview still lists it as "Opening Date TBA." The Town Council cleared the project in January 2026, and by April the Post described it as apparently ready to launch.

Élephante is the best-known case this fall, but the same thing is happening up and down the island. Four restaurant projects have recent Town Council approvals. Three of them are new restaurants, and none of those three has a confirmed opening date. Meanwhile, what has actually opened since summer, or is about to, is retail. The gap is set by the document the Council keeps sending back for revision.

The document between a vote and a dining room

On Palm Beach, a Council vote is usually only the first approval a new restaurant gets. Approvals are routinely "conditioned upon an approved declaration of use," the operating terms a restaurant agrees to before it opens. At the September 9, 2026 Development Review meeting, the Town Council's minutes record members asking for a standardized version of these documents. The common terms they listed were:

• seating
• garbage collection
• music
• deliveries
• parking
• valet service

The minutes say members wanted a standard format with room left for site-specific conditions. They also asked whether a given restaurant would be "town-serving or region-serving." That question decides what kind of evening a new place creates on its block: how late the music runs, where the cars wait, when the trucks come. On a commercial street like Worth Avenue that backs onto homes, it gets settled on paper before anyone sets a table.

A later Council agenda listed draft declarations of use for three of the season's projects together: Stephen Starr's restaurant at 151 Worth Avenue, Le Bilboquet at 247/245-A Worth Avenue, and the former Le Bar a Vin building at 380 South County Road. Three approvals are now going through the same second round.

Four approvals, four distances from done

Sorted from the project closest to finished to the one furthest away:

1. Le Bilboquet, 247 Worth Avenue. This one doesn't involve a new restaurant. On September 9 the Council considered 12 more seats in the second-floor private dining room. Owner Philippe Delgrange described them as being for occasional private events, not a larger everyday dining room. The special exception passed 4–1, on the condition of an approved declaration of use and a 40-person maximum upstairs. The parking variance passed 3–2, with Councilmembers Araskog and Moran voting no.
2. George x Avenue 31, 380 South County Road. Avenue 31 started on Avenue Princesse Grace in Monaco and cooks Italian-Mediterranean food. The Palm Beach plan adds an evening lounge with a nightclub component on both floors of the former Le Bar a Vin building. It took two steps to get here. On September 9 the Council approved a 236-square-foot expansion of the existing second-floor nightclub use. That approval allowed no increase beyond 108 licensed seats and required at least 24 seats on the second floor, and it passed 4–1. Owner George Norcross told the Council the plan was an upscale restaurant and lounge, not a traditional nightclub. The Palm Beach Daily News reported on October 7 that the Council had since approved the site plans, which it called a major municipal hurdle. The Avenue 31 Palm Beach site says "Opening 2026." No day has been announced.
3. Élephante, 207 Royal Poinciana Way. Its Council approvals came in January. The October coverage still carries no opening date, only "Coming this season."
4. Room Service, 151 Worth Avenue. This is the furthest out, covered in the next section.

The furthest out of all is the Esplanade at 150 Worth Avenue. In August the Palm Beach Post reported initial plans to rebrand it as Burlington Arcade at Palm Beach, with private clubs, a bakery and luxury retail. So far those plans have not had a Council vote.

Room Service and the town-serving test

The former Neiman Marcus building has been empty since the store closed in 2020. Stephen Starr's plan for it is 165 seats: 126 inside, seven at the bar and 32 on a balcony over Worth Avenue. On September 9 the Council approved the restaurant special exception and site plan 5–0, conditioned on an approved declaration of use. The parking variance passed 4–1. The Architectural Commission still has to do design review. The draft declaration of use on the follow-up Council agenda is dated September 29, 2026. Haute Living reports the earliest possible opening as December 2027, about 13 months after this season starts.

The hearing shows how a restaurant's character gets shaped before it opens. According to the minutes, Starr described Room Service as a steakhouse with a broader comfort-food menu meant to appeal to local residents and repeat customers. The restaurant group's attorney, Maura Ziska, said the outdoor seats would be on the second floor along Worth Avenue, away from the park area on Peruvian Avenue, and that neighbors she had contacted were satisfied with that. The Town's traffic consultant, Eric Czerniejewski of the Corradino Group, said his main concern was keeping valet cars from queuing onto Worth Avenue. He recommended a follow-up review once the restaurant opens.

Council members raised off-island parking or shuttles for employees if they turn out to be needed. They also discussed keeping the Peruvian Avenue side quiet and passive. Employee parking, music, hours and garbage collection were all sent back to be written into the declaration. No member of the public commented. All of it is being negotiated more than a year before Worth Avenue's biggest new dining room seats its first guest.

What is actually new before Thanksgiving

Retail moves faster because it carries far fewer of these conditions. The clearest example of a change already in place is Michael Kors Collection, which has opened a 700-square-foot boutique at The Colony, 155 Hammon Avenue, in the former Dolce & Gabbana space. The Daily News reported that the brand had held trunk shows and pop-ups at the hotel before, most recently in February 2025.

Next is Vineyard Vines, returning to Worth Avenue at 330 Worth. According to the Palm Beach Daily News, the company expects to open the first week of November. The store will be 2,700 square feet. Its old shop at 305 Worth closed in April 2024 and is now Isaia. The process is a useful contrast with the restaurants. The interior and storefront work went through the Town's administrative review, and Architectural Commission Chairman Jeffery Smith signed off without a commission hearing. The one piece left out was the awning, which would have to go before the full commission. The space also has its own story. The previous tenant, The Silver Fund, had been there since late 2013. Owner Michael James told the Daily News the business left when its lease ended rather than accept a new rent more than twice what it had been paying.

The change most likely to show up in an ordinary week is at Green's, 151 N. County Road. The Daily News reported that Hamptons-based White's Apothecary will take over the pharmacy and retail side during this coming season. The Green's name, the green-and-white awnings and the luncheonette all stay.

If you own on one of these blocks, or a short walk from one, a new restaurant's operating terms affect daily life as much as its menu, and over time they can show up in what a home is worth. For more than five decades the Reback family has watched how changes along Worth Avenue, Royal Poinciana Way and South County Road affect the residential streets around them. When you want a discreet read on what this season's approvals mean for your property, Reback Realty is glad to talk it through. Request a Confidential Home Valuation.