A New Island Rhythm: The Rooms Reshaping Palm Beach Evenings This Season

Last winter, the island's after-six map had a familiar center of gravity. This one does not. Between December 2025 and March 2026, three of the most-discussed openings in years arrived within a fifteen-minute walk of one another, and none of them sit on Worth Avenue. If you live here, the shift is worth registering before season crowds do it for you.

The thesis is simple. Palm Beach's evening life has quietly migrated into a triangle bounded by Cocoanut Row, Royal Poinciana Plaza, and Sunrise Avenue. The rooms are new, the addresses are old, and the pattern they suggest for a resident's week is genuinely different from last year.

The triangle, not the avenue

Three anchors define the new geometry:

• The Vineta Hotel at 363 Cocoanut Row, reopened as the U.S. debut of a European luxury operator.
• Tutto Mare at Royal Poinciana Plaza, the island's only restaurant seated directly on the Intracoastal.
• The Polo Room Palm Beach at 251 Sunrise Avenue, in a space many residents will remember as PB Catch and, before that, the 251 Club.

Read on a map, the three points form a compact northern-midtown loop. Read on a calendar, they cover a full evening: aperitif at one, dinner at another, a nightcap at the third, all without moving a car.

What Coco's actually replaced

The Vineta's return is the season's headline, and it is worth understanding what changed under the same roof. Palm Beach's historic Vineta Hotel reopened on March 2, 2026 as the first U.S. property for Oetker Hotels, the European luxury group behind Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on the French Riviera. Originally built in 1926 during South Florida's early development boom, the Vineta opened the same year as other grande dame South Florida hotels, including The Boca Raton and The Biltmore in Coral Gables. The Vineta has seen a few iterations since then, most recently as The Chesterfield Hotel, known to travelers and locals for its clubby Leopard Lounge.

The property's room count is being reduced to 41, down from 57, which Oetker says will allow for a more generous sense of space. There will be four F&B concepts at the site, including the revival of the former Leopard Lounge. The renovation was led by interior designer Tino Zervudachi, based between Paris, New York, and London, through his firm ZRM and its London-based team, in close collaboration with architects Spina O'Rourke & Partners.

For residents, the interior detail that matters most is the small one. There is a hidden leopard motif tucked into the ceiling above Coco's dining room, a subtle nod to the space's previous life as The Chesterfield and, more specifically, the Leopard Lounge. The lounge itself has been reimagined. The Bar, the hotel's cocktail lounge, is open to both guests and nonguests and operates as a seated-only venue, a policy intended to limit crowding.

Coco's is the anchor. At Coco's, The Vineta's signature restaurant, Executive Chef Brian Rodriguez offers a menu that bridges Palm Beach ease with Riviera refinement. The restaurant offers 96 seats in total, 64 seats in the dining room and 32 more located in the courtyard. The kitchen imports a specific lineage. Executive Chef Brian Rodriguez oversees a menu developed in collaboration with Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc Executive Chef Sébastien Broda and Pastry Chef Tarek Ahamada, bringing several signature dishes from the legendary Antibes property to Palm Beach. Nearby, the Pool House serves Giovanni's pizzas, marking the first outpost outside Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc of the legendary residents-only trattoria at the Antibes property.

That last line is the one to notice. A residents-only trattoria in Antibes has, for the first time in its history, a second address, and that address is on Cocoanut Row.

Why Tutto Mare's location matters more than its menu

Coastal Italian is not a new idea in South Florida. A single specific fact, however, redraws the island's dining map. The only restaurant in Palm Beach located directly on the Intracoastal, Tutto Mare is one of the year's most anticipated openings and an early 2026 must-visit.

For residents, that phrase, the only, is doing real work. The island has ocean-facing dining rooms and courtyard rooms and clubby interior rooms in abundance. What it has not had is a table with the Intracoastal at the glass. Situated on the Intracoastal within Royal Poinciana Plaza, this has a perfect location and is one of the prettiest dining spots on Palm Beach Island. No surprise, because it's the vision of Gabby Karan de Felice, daughter of designer Donna Karan, known for transforming rooms into chic havens. The restaurant is a sibling of a familiar name to seasonal residents with Hamptons ties. Big openings are reshaping and reinvigorating the scene, from the long-awaited premieres of Tutto Mare, a sibling of Hamptons favorite Tutto il Giorno.

The practical resident use: an early table catches the light on the water off Royal Poinciana Way, a five-minute stroll from the Vineta's front door.

The Polo Room and a thirty-day turnaround

The third point of the triangle is the most personal. Nacho Figueras opened The Polo Room Palm Beach with Thierry Beaud in December. He is pictured at the restaurant's bar with the signature -22 Martini with frozen olives. The address is a piece of Palm Beach memory. About 20 years ago, a young Nacho Figueras was dancing the night away at 251 Club, which was, at the time, one of Palm Beach's most fashionable clubs. By 2025, 251 Club, located at 251 Sunrise Avenue, had long been PB Catch Seafood & Raw Bar, and owner Thierry Beaud was planning on reimagining the space.

The turnaround itself is a small feat that residents who have lived through island construction timelines will appreciate. It was very important to Beaud and Figueras that the restaurant be open in time for season while simultaneously keeping everyone from PB Catch employed, so the team only had about 30 days to turn PB Catch into The Polo Room. Anything that worked well, like the seafood bar, stayed relatively the same.

The room is not a costume. Figueras was involved in choosing every design detail, including vintage finds from along West Palm Beach's Antique Row and plenty of equestrian notes. He handpicked every photograph, all shot in the 1980s and '90s by famed polo photographer Ricardo "Snoopy" Motran and featuring such polo legends as Gonzalo Pieres and brothers Guillermo "Memo" Gracida and Carlos Gracida.

The kitchen reflects the same assembly logic. For each area of the menu, they brought in an expert in that field. For the Argentinian dishes, an Argentinian chef. For the crudo, a Michelin star chef who also helped with the vinegars and dressings. For the pastas, a pasta expert. The food is meant to have a certain level of sophistication while keeping the dishes simple. Practical details: dinner entrees start at around $36, the wine list features more than 300 selections, and The Polo Room Palm Beach is open for dinner starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

A season calendar residents can plan around

The three anchors gain another dimension when set against the winter fair schedule. Rather than treat any one weekend as the pivot, the season now has three cultural pull-dates that pair naturally with the new rooms.

Each is a short bridge across the Flagler drawbridge and back. Pair an afternoon at PBM+C with a late seating at Tutto Mare, or the Palm Beach Show preview with a nightcap at The Vineta Bar, and the fair weekends stop feeling like errands and start feeling like the connective tissue they were meant to be.

What this rearranges for the rest of the year

Two shifts are worth naming for anyone who already lives on the island.

The first is a change in center of gravity. For a decade, the reflexive answer to where should we go was Worth Avenue and its immediate side streets. This year the answer more often points north: Cocoanut Row for a hotel bar with actual bar seating, Royal Poinciana Plaza for a water-side table, Sunrise Avenue for a room that stays open six nights a week and does not require a Saturday reservation made in October.

The second is a change in tempo. Around the outdoor Mosaic-tiled pool, framed by bougainvillea and palm trees, guests relax on luxurious chaise lounges and experience a rare commodity in Palm Beach, which is genuine seclusion and privacy. Access is limited strictly to resident guests, reinforcing the sense of a private club or home, rather than a public resort. A hotel that is deliberately smaller, a bar that only seats, a trattoria that had never left Antibes: the three rooms share an editorial stance more than a cuisine, and it is one that favors the resident over the visitor.

If your Palm Beach week already runs on habit, the invitation this season is to break the pattern once or twice and see whether the new triangle changes how the island feels between January and April. It has certainly changed how it looks on a map.

For discreet guidance on ownership along Cocoanut Row, in the Royal Poinciana Way corridor, or elsewhere on the island, Leila Kallop is available for a private consultation. Explore the full Palm Beach neighborhood overview or request a private consultation to begin the conversation.