What Took Over DUNE's Spot on Fort Lauderdale Beach, and What Else Is New This Year

Walk north on A1A past the Auberge Beach Residences and the space at 2200 N. Ocean Blvd. looks almost the same from the sidewalk. Same glass, same sightline to the water. The name over the door is different, and so is almost everything behind it. DUNE by Laurent Tourondel served its last meal there on March 29, 2025, closing out a run that had already gone through several reinventions since the room first opened in 2018. What's there now is Del Mar, a Mediterranean concept from Cameron Mitchell Restaurants that reopened the space last fall after a redesign, and if you've been skipping that stretch of sand since the closure, this is the year to go back.

The reason it matters isn't just that a new restaurant filled an empty room. It's who filled it, and what else that same company is doing three blocks away.

The Room That Used to Be DUNE

Del Mar occupies roughly 17,000 square feet at Auberge, with indoor seating and tables set directly on the sand. The menu pulls from Greece, southern Spain, Morocco, France and Italy: wood-grilled meats, handmade pastas, mezze, and a raw bar. The dish worth planning a reservation around is the open-fire roasted shellfish platter, served tableside with South African lobster tail, scallops, prawns, clams and mussels. Dinner runs nightly, with brunch added on weekends and a weekday happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m.

Del Mar isn't a local one-off. The Fort Lauderdale location joins an existing flagship in Naples and a Columbus, Ohio original, and Cameron Mitchell Restaurants has already signed for a third South Florida location in West Palm Beach's NORA district. A company that is simultaneously building its third Florida outpost is treating this address as a long-term anchor.

The Same Company Built Your Other Anchor

Here's the part that doesn't show up if you only look at Del Mar in isolation. Cameron Mitchell Restaurants is the same group behind Ocean Prime, which opened this spring as the first restaurant at the redeveloped Las Olas Marina at 171 Las Olas Circle. That's a two-story, 15,000-square-foot room with terraces facing the Intracoastal, a private dining room for up to 32 guests, and dockage for anyone arriving by boat.

Put those two facts together and the practical read for anyone living along the beach corridor is straightforward. Your two natural anchors, the oceanfront end at Auberge and the marina end at Las Olas Circle, are now run by the same operator. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's a company building out a Fort Lauderdale footprint on both sides of the peninsula at once, which is a different kind of commitment than the trickle of one-off openings this stretch has seen in past years.

Marc Falsetto, the Fort Lauderdale restaurateur behind the incoming Caviar Club on Las Olas, put language to the shift when he announced that opening:

"The people who live here travel, they know great restaurants, and they crave something refined."

That's the thesis behind this whole wave, and it applies just as much to the beach side as it does to Las Olas. These rooms are being built for the person who already lives three blocks away, not for the spring break calendar.

A New Sunset Stop Near Bahia Mar

The other change worth knowing about sits a few minutes south, on the boat-adjacent stretch of 17th Street. Hula Kai Tiki Bar, a two-story Polynesian-themed spot from the owner of Quarterdeck, opened this summer at 1075 SE 17th St. with a pan-Asian menu that includes crispy duck, crab rangoon and bang bang shrimp. If you've ever timed a walk down that corridor around sunset before a friend's boat leaves out of Bahia Mar, this is now the obvious stop to make on the way.

Here's a quick reference for the corridor as it stands right now.

The Last Weeks to Get In on Dine Out Lauderdale

If you've wanted to try Del Mar or Hula Kai without committing to a full-price tab, the window is closing. Dine Out Lauderdale, the annual prix-fixe promotion that runs restaurants across the city at fixed lunch and dinner prices, returns every August and September, which puts this year's edition on track to wrap within days of this piece publishing. If it's still on the calendar when you read this, it's worth using while it lasts. If it's already ended, the same restaurants are still there at full menu price, and the shellfish platter at Del Mar is worth ordering either way.

Where the Free Concerts Went

If you've noticed the lawn at Las Olas Oceanside Park has gone quiet on Friday nights, that's not a sign the series ended. Friday Night Sound Waves, the free weekly concert series presented by the City of Fort Lauderdale's Beach Business Improvement District, marked ten years in its 2026 season, which ran January 30 through April 3 at the park across from the sand. The series has hosted nearly 130 bands and more than 700 individual musicians over the decade, and it comes back as a winter-into-spring fixture rather than a fall one. If you're planning a friend's visit for December, the concerts aren't the reason to time it that way. The music returns at the end of January.

What's Actually Next

The next fixed date worth putting on the calendar is October 3, when Las Olas Boulevard hosts its first-ever Autumn Festival, a free event running from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It's a new addition to the fall calendar rather than a returning one, which means this year is the first chance to see what it becomes.

Del Mar and Ocean Prime share one operator, and that operator has a third Florida Del Mar planned for West Palm Beach's NORA district. Hula Kai adds a tiki bar to the 17th Street approach to Bahia Mar. Together they fill out an evening loop that runs from the sand at Auberge to the marina at Las Olas Circle to a sunset stop near Bahia Mar.

If you live along this corridor and you're weighing what a place like Auberge or a comparable oceanfront address is actually worth in a market that's investing in itself this way, that's a conversation Team Van Zyl is set up to have.