Sultan Mediterranean Cuisine
Audio By Carbonatix
For generations of Miamians, Sultan Mediterranean Cuisine was where the night ended. (Usually with a falafel, greasy pizza, and a story to tell). Now, after 38 years of feeding Miami night owls on Collins Avenue, Sultan has closed.
According to Alan Philips, the restaurateur and podcast host behind What’s Good MIA, the Mediterranean restaurant, which opened in 1988, has closed. It marks another closure during this brutal Miami summer.
“If you don’t know what that means, you didn’t go out in this city in the right decade,” Philips writes. “Sultan was the place you ended up after Mynt, after Rokbar, after the day at Shore Club, before you got on the boat; you ended up at Sultan,” he continues. “Bad pizza, mediocre falafel, great vibes, and a wall of photos that looked like a who’s who of anyone who mattered: Kim K, Shaq, whoever else came through Miami that weekend.”
And he’s right. During its heyday in the late 2000s and early 2010s, even Gerard Butler was stopping by for some falafel and hummus. So, what happened?
Sultan Mediterranean Cuisine
A late-night SoBe rite of passage
Sultan was the decidedly unglamorous place you stumbled into after a night out in South Beach, but that’s what made it quintessentially South Beach.
The tiny restaurant had a handful of tables, late-night hours, and a menu of falafel, gyros, kebabs, hummus, pita, and pizza. Its walls were famously covered with photos of celebrities who had stopped by over the years, including Kim Kardashian, Shaquille O’Neal, Tara Reid, and Paris Hilton.
New Times knew the place well, too. In 2010, we named Sultan “Best Falafel,” an award the restaurant proudly hung on its wall. “Blazed late at night (this place is open till 5 a.m.) or sober during the day, you will still get a head trip from Sultan’s falafel,” New Times wrote at the time.
Sultan Mediterranean Cuisine
What happened to Sultan?
The Sultan people remember from its heyday, however, wasn’t necessarily the restaurant that closed in 2026. The spot had declined over its later years as ownership changed, according to Philips. “A couple years ago somebody bought it,” Philips writes. “First move: change the menu. The thing that worked for decades, gone.”
Philips says he contacted the landlord about the now-vacant 1,200-square-foot space and was quoted an asking rent of about $30,000 per month. “No restaurant survives $30,000 a month on 1,200 square feet,” he writes.
New Times has not independently confirmed the asking rent.
Sultan Mediterranean Cuisine
Another piece of old South Beach is gone
News of the closure quickly struck a nerve. “RIP Sultan’s, if you partied on the beach in the ’00s and ’10s, you know,” one person commented on Philips’ Instagram Reel. Another wrote, “Sultan saved me many times…sad!”
And that’s ultimately what a few Miami Beach frequenters of the 2000s are mourning. Not necessarily the Sultan of its final years, but the one that existed at the height of South Beach nightlife. Plus, the falafel was once good enough to win a New Times Best of Miami award. (Heck, it was even good enough to get Paris Hilton to pose in front of said award!)
While it may not have been the greatest, it’s still a bittersweet reminder that so many longtime spots are quietly disappearing.
Sultan. 1903 Collins Ave., Miami Beach. Now closed.
