Fisher Island Just Let Its First Outside Restaurant Through the Gate
"They really reached out to us. So, the board there had its process of approving it, and here we are," Omer Horev told Miami New Times. Horev, the chef behind the wellness-food chain Pura Vida, was describing how his restaurant ended up on the Fisher Island Racquet Club's grounds in the summer of 2024. It sounds almost procedural for what turned out to be a first in the Fisher Island Club's 36-year history: a restaurant brand that the Club doesn't own, staffed by a company that had never operated on the island before, serving food inside the gates.
Two years later, that opening reads less like an isolated exception and more like the first domino. A fifth ferry joined the island's fleet this year. A second kitchen, this one designed around a James Beard Award winner, is rising on the island's last open parcel. None of it changes who can get onto Fisher Island. All of it changes who's allowed to feed the people who are already there.
Since the Fisher Island Club opened in 1987, every restaurant on the 216-acre island operated under one ownership structure. Theapolis at the Vanderbilt Mansion serves Mediterranean and Greek plates with a skyline view. La Trattoria handles pizza and pasta by the Main Marina. Lola's brings brasserie energy to the Town Center. The Beach Club, the Snooker Club, and the Island Market round out the rotation. All of them answer to the same operator, and until 2024, that was the entire dining scene for the roughly 600 residents and members who live and eat there.
Horev told Miami New Times that residents had been asking for something different "over the last couple of years." Not a bigger menu at an existing venue. A different brand entirely, one they already knew from its 20-plus other South Florida locations. Building it meant solving problems that don't come up on the mainland: every fixture, every piece of equipment, every delivery had to cross by ferry or barge first. Those logistics made bringing an outside operator to the island a substantial undertaking.
The restaurant that resulted isn't a trophy addition. It's a casual, wellness-leaning spot serving all-day breakfast, bowls, sandwiches, and cold-pressed juice out of the Racquet Club space, decorated with the same potted greenery and pastel umbrellas as its other locations. Horev, who co-founded the chain with his wife Jennifer in 2012, has built a following around fitness collaborations: yoga sessions, padel meetups, that kind of programming.
That's the detail worth sitting with. If the demand had been for another steakhouse or another formal dining room, the Club had plenty of those already. The request that actually broke a 36-year pattern was for something closer to a health food counter. The gap wasn't in luxury. It was in variety.
Fisher Island has no bridge and no causeway. Boat, private yacht, or helicopter are the only ways across, which makes the ferry fleet as central to daily life as any restaurant. In June 2026, the island's ferry operation added its fifth vessel, a $14.1 million boat named Falcon, built by Eastern Shipbuilding Group. It can carry up to 150 passengers and 30 vehicles, and it launched for sea trials in February before clearing testing and making the trip south to Miami.
Falcon isn't a replacement. It's an addition to a fleet that already included Heron, a boat the same shipyard built for the island more than 20 years earlier and has apparently kept running as its most dependable vessel since. The addition comes at the same moment the on-island dining scene started bringing in outside names, outside staff, and outside supply chains that all have to make that same seven-minute trip.
The clearest evidence that this isn't a one-time exception sits on the island's last undeveloped parcel. In January 2026, the developers behind Six Fisher Island, the 50-residence tower rising at 6 Fisher Island Drive, announced that Stephen Starr's STARR Restaurants would curate its entire dining program: a signature waterfront restaurant, a chef's table, the Sunrise Lounge Café, and in-residence dining. Starr's résumé includes Miami's Makoto and Pastis, Philadelphia's Parc and Morimoto, and New York's Buddakan and Le Coucou. He's not an operator anyone on the island had to petition a board to bring in. He was written into the plans before the building had a roof.
By August 2026, that building had moved into its final construction phase. The tower cranes came down, a marker that usually means the structural work is done. Podiums were under construction, the south amenity deck was taking shape with mature trees already being hoisted into place, and pool forms were being set with concrete pours underway according to reporting from PROFILEmiami. Completion is now described as late 2026 or 2027, a window that has widened from the original 2026-only target. Related Group is developing the project alongside Teddy Sagi, BH Group, and Wanxiang America RE Group, with Kobi Karp as architect and Tara Bernerd and Partners handling interiors.
Here's the difference between this and Pura Vida. Pura Vida arrived because members asked for it and a board approved the request after the fact. Starr's restaurants are being built into the walls of a structure that didn't exist two years ago, with no members yet living there to have asked for anything. One was reactive. The other is architecture. Both point the same direction: an outside culinary name is no longer something Fisher Island resists. It's something the island now plans around from the first drawing.
| Before 2024 | Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Outside restaurant operators on the island | Zero in the Club's 36-year history | Pura Vida (2024), STARR Restaurants program announced for Six Fisher Island (January 2026) |
| Ferry fleet | Four vessels | Five, including the new $14.1 million Falcon |
| New construction on the island | None since the original build-out | Six Fisher Island, the last developable parcel, in its final construction phase as of August 2026 |
Someone finishing a set at the Racquet Club can walk over for a bowl and a cold-pressed juice instead of waiting on a table at La Trattoria. Falcon is part of the island's ferry fleet. And a few hundred yards up the shoreline, cranes have already come down on a building where a Stephen Starr dining program is being poured into concrete before a single family has moved in.
None of this makes Fisher Island less closed. The water is still the only gate, and it still works exactly the way it always has. What's changed is who gets to cook once you're through it.
If you're tracking what an evolving dining and transit picture actually means for daily life on Fisher Island, or for a property you already own there, Mark Yaffe follows these shifts closely as part of advising clients on the island.
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