17 saddest South Florida restaurant closures of 2026 so far

Can you believe it’s not even officially summer yet and there’s already a slew of closures? Summer is known as Miami’s infamous “slow” season, where restaurants shut down, and 2026 has already had its fair share of closures before summer even comes.

Miami’s dining scene has always been brutal. However, this year the closures have felt personal, with beloved mainstays closing after decades in the city. Here are the 17 saddest South Florida restaurant closures of 2026 so far.

À La Folie Café – South Beach

À La Folie closed this spring after roughly 24 years in South Beach. A Facebook group posted an eviction notice over back rent, base rent on the Española Way space running $13,100 a month. People poured into the comments fast. When someone posted the notice to a Miami Beach Facebook group, the comments filled fast, mourning the charming French restaurant. “One of the last surviving, authentic places with great character,” one commenter wrote.

Baby Jane – Brickell

Baby Jane closed on May 30 after ten years in Brickell, following a lease renewal that couldn’t be finalized. It ended a bar that had quietly become the neighborhood’s most reliable gathering place. It opened in 2016 when Brickell was still becoming what it is now. The Japanese menu of yakitori, bao buns, and ramen was consistently good; the cocktails were too, and there was always someone you knew a couple of stools down. The Instagram comments after the announcement poured in quickly – couples who had first dates there and married, a DJ who said Baby Jane gave him a stage to develop his career.

Bahama Breeze – All SoFlo Locations

Darden Restaurants announced on February 5 it was closing all 28 remaining Bahama Breeze locations, sunsetting the Caribbean-themed brand it founded in Florida in the 1990s. The Kendall and Pembroke Pines locations closed on April 5, with roughly half of the nationwide stores converting to other Darden restaurants and the South Florida locations closing outright. For a generation of South Floridians, Bahama Breeze was a fun, kitschy, mealtime escape to the Caribbean where someone always ordered a frozen cocktail with a paper umbrella.

Blue Collar – MiMo

Seven weeks after closing Mignonette, Danny Serfer shut Blue Collar on May 17. He’d opened the original spot in MiMo in 2012. He moved to a larger space with a full bar in 2024, keeping the menu exactly as it was: the dry-aged burger, the Chanukah latkes served year-round, the rotating vegetable sides, most of the staff having been there more than a decade.

Cheese Burger Baby – South Beach

Stephanie Vitori got a notice to vacate her Washington Avenue space after 25 years. She was pushed out so developers could build a seven-story hotel designed by Arquitectonica, after the building had sold for $20 million in 2024. Vitori started at Cheese Burger Baby as a delivery driver in 2001, bought the place from original owner Tommy Pooch in 2004, and turned the 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. burger window into one of South Beach’s longest-running late-night institutions, feeding Anthony Bourdain, Beyoncé, Dwyane Wade, and Guy Fieri along the way. She says it isn’t over: “This is NOT an ending. This is a transition.”

City Cellar Wine Bar & Grill

Popular restaurant City Cellar and its sister restaurant Barrio closed on May 24. It ended a 25-year run as one of the original restaurant tenants at West Palm Beach’s CityPlace. The closure stems from the expiration of the restaurant’s lease and will impact nearly 100 employees, though co-owner Bill Watson said the company is working to place as many staff members as possible at its other South Florida restaurants. For a generation of downtown West Palm Beach residents, attorneys, journalists, and office workers, City Cellar has been more than a restaurant — it has been a gathering place that has helped define the neighborhood’s dining scene since it opened in 2000.

Denny’s Biscayne – Midtown/Design District

The Biscayne Denny’s closed March 29 with a handwritten thank-you note on the door. It ended a 55-year run on the boulevard. Pacific Star Capital paid approximately $24 million for the property back in 2022 and plans to build an 18-story tower with 26,000 square feet of retail in its place. However, Denny’s managed to hang on for four years after the sale. For anyone who drove that stretch of Biscayne for the last few decades, through the late nights and 3 a.m. hunger of an era before the corridor transformed into something unrecognizable, those yellow booths at 36th Street were a given.

Einstein Bros. Bagels – South Miami

Handwritten “permanently closed” signs appeared in the windows of the Einstein Bros. on South Dixie Highway this spring with no explanation after 28 years in business. For South Miami, this bagel chain long predates the city’s bagel options, such as El Bagel, H&H, and PopUp Bagels. DJ Alex Gutierrez described it in a Facebook tribute: nearly a decade of 5:55 a.m. arrivals, the same vanilla-hazelnut coffee order, employees who became familiar faces over the years.

Foxy Brown – Fort Lauderdale

Foxy Brown served its last table on Mother’s Day, May 10, after 15 years in Fort Lauderdale’s Victoria Park. Owner Elliot Wolf cited rising lease and insurance costs and told the Sun Sentinel it’s a “break” rather than a permanent close. The restaurant opened in 2011, relocated to a larger space in 2021, and built a following for comfort food like banana bread grilled cheese, maple bacon wings and waffles, lobster crab benedicts, and patty melts.

Gramps – Wynwood

For 13 years, Gramps was one of the few venues in Wynwood that felt like a true locals’ spot. It even remained an anchor even as the neighborhood became flashy and built up around it. Owner Adam Gersten announced the closure back in August 2025, giving the neighborhood a long goodbye before the doors shut in the first week of January. When he posted the closure announcement, it pulled 800 likes and 200 comments in under 14 minutes. “Wynwood has definitely lost its soul once Gramps is gone,” wrote one fan, and in a neighborhood that has traded most of its original character for cocktail bars and luxury towers, that’s an accurate statement.

Howl at the Moon – Fort Lauderdale

The Fort Lauderdale outpost of national dueling piano chain Howl at the Moon lasted just 14 months before shutting down on February 28. This was the brand’s second attempt in the city, following a decade-long run at Beach Place that ended in 2009, but the location was the problem from the start: one block too far off Las Olas for tourists to find, in a market where shifting drinking habits made a 5,000-square-foot concept harder to fill than it used to be. Good Night John Boy, a 1970s disco-themed bar, is taking over the space in October.

The Last Carrot – Coconut Grove

The Last Carrot closed on February 7 after exactly 50 years in Coconut Grove, for the same reason it has here in Miami: development. More specifically, Ziggurat, a development bringing condos priced up to $8 million and a rooftop Michelin-chef restaurant. Michael Compton founded the Last Carrot in 1975. After his death in 2001, his daughters, Meadow and Erin, took over, keeping the menu of whole-wheat pitas, fresh juices, spinach pies, and smoothies exactly the same. It won New Times‘ Best Juice Bar in 2025, showing just how beloved it was almost half a century after opening.

Le Chick – Wynwood

Le Chick closed March 22 after nearly nine years in Wynwood, another first-wave restaurant in the neighborhood that didn’t survive as the neighborhood filled in around it. Founders Coco Coig and Jorge Sanchez opened it in 2017, inspired by a rotisserie they’d eaten at in Europe, and it became one of the more popular spots in the area, featuring wood-fired chicken, double-patty burgers, and a bustling courtyard open from lunch until late. The team is calling it a “pause” and promises something new, though what that looks like and where it lands hasn’t been announced.

Lokal – Coconut Grove (Closing June 28)

Lokal is closing June 28 after 15 years in Coconut Grove, driven by a 50 percent rent increase that Kush Hospitality founder Matt Kuscher said made it impossible to stay. “We would have loved the opportunity to stay here, but the rents were raised 50 percent, and honestly, it’s just no longer sustainable as a business,” he said in a video announcement in March. Lokal opened in 2011 as the first restaurant in what would become the Kush Hospitality Group, and built a following with a Florida-focused menu featuring popular burgers and a well-rounded beer list. All month in June, the restaurant is running a $15 burger-and-beer deal as a final send-off.

Mignonette – Edgewater

“This restaurant has been so much more than a place to eat. It’s been a home.” Danny Serfer shut Mignonette on March 28 after nearly 12 years in Edgewater, across from Miami’s oldest cemetery. The room had tan leather banquettes, a marble raw bar, copper pipe constellations overhead, and a menu filled with ‘f-cking fancy’ seafood like oysters, crab cakes, and redfish with its reduction of shallots, garlic, piquillo peppers, brandy, white wine, and butter. One regular said it in the comments after the closing announcement: “A vibe before the word ‘vibe’ was a thing. The concentration was always on the food, not on appearances and typical Miami flash.”