On the afternoon of Monday, August 10, diners holding reservations at Hillstone started getting phone calls. The voicemail one of them posted was polite and short. The restaurant had decided to close permanently, it could not seat them that night, and it would gladly book them at the North Miami or Coral Gables location instead. Hillstone had held its perch above Collins Avenue since March 2015. By 5 p.m., a reader told Miami New Times that staff could be seen through the windows taking inventory.
The closing got attention because Hillstone was a fixture. It also matters for a quieter reason: it opened the one room on the Shops' dining map that nobody has claimed yet. Every other restaurant change at 9700 Collins Avenue this year has been a hand-off, with a proven operator stepping into a space another tenant left behind. New construction is underway at the center, but it went to retail first. The dining map that will hold through next season is being built entirely from rooms that already existed.
The order of the moves
Taken one by one, this year's restaurant headlines look like separate stories. Taken in order, they form a single chain.
- Makoto moved upstairs in 2022. Stephen Starr's Japanese restaurant opened its third-floor outpost in February 2022 and is still there. Its original space stayed in Starr's hands.
- Slim's took Makoto's original space on March 17, 2026. Starr turned it into a 183-seat steakhouse with chef Anthony Micari running the kitchen.
- Le Zoo closed in April 2025 after a decade, when its lease ran out at the end of that month, and the space was slated for China Grill.
- China Grill reopened in that space on June 9, 2026. It is Jeffrey Chodorow's first Miami China Grill in more than a decade, and it stays open until midnight.
- Carpaccio has leased an 8,000-square-foot third-floor space, with an opening scheduled for fall 2027.
- L'Avenue, the Paris restaurant, leased Carpaccio's 4,000-square-foot ground-floor space in December 2024. It takes the room once Carpaccio moves up.
- Saltie Girl is set to anchor the third-floor expansion in 2028. It will be the Boston seafood restaurant's first Florida location.
Only Carpaccio's third-floor room and Saltie Girl's involve space that doesn't exist yet, and neither is scheduled to open before fall 2027. L'Avenue's room already exists, but it won't come free until Carpaccio moves. Everything you can book today sits in a room that was already part of the center before 2026.
Why the operators waited for specific rooms
Chodorow said as much when World Red Eye asked him why China Grill returned now. "I actually wanted to bring back China Grill for years," he said, "but I wanted to do it at Bal Harbour Shops and I had to wait until the space became available."
The numbers explain the waiting. When Whitman Family Development closed its construction financing in December 2024, the center covered about 500,000 square feet and was 98% leased across 110 tenants. Whitman has since described it as full, with a waiting list, and doing $2,000 to $3,000 in annual sales per square foot. At that occupancy, a restaurant can't choose its spot. It waits for one to open up, and when one does, it goes to someone already in line. That is why the same few operators keep showing up in this story. Starr reused his own space. Chodorow waited years for Le Zoo's lease to end. In the same interview, Chodorow described the next hand-off in a single sentence:
"L'Avenue from Paris is moving in next door when Carpaccio moves upstairs. That should tell you something."
That puts China Grill's neighbor on the list of things set to change, though L'Avenue's opening still depends on Carpaccio's move upstairs, now scheduled for fall 2027.
The new square footage went to boutiques first
The big physical change at the Shops this fall is retail. The West Shops held its public debut on Wednesday, September 23, with new storefronts on Level 1 and arrival through the 96th Street Garage and Green Level Valet. That first phase covers roughly 200,000 square feet on the west side of the property, toward Biscayne Bay. It is the largest addition since the center opened 61 years ago, and its renderings are credited to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
The announced lineup is all fashion and jewelry. L'Agence, Toteme and Peserico were reported as newcomers to the center. Akris, Isaia, Graff, Bottega Veneta, Zegna, Zimmermann, The Webster, David Yurman and Etro are moving into resized spaces within the property, and Prada, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent and Brioni are enlarging the stores they already have. The Shops' own event page called the debut a preview of "upcoming boutique openings," so a few of those names may still have their doors closed this month. No reporting so far places a restaurant or café in this first phase.
The restaurants in new space come later and higher up, with Carpaccio on the third floor in 2027 and Saltie Girl in 2028. Until then, retail moves into new space while dining keeps trading the existing rooms.
The tower proposal tied to the same site belongs to a separate story. Whitman's plan for residential towers and a boutique hotel under Florida's Live Local Act is a different project from the retail build-out. The Village Council voted down a mediated settlement on April 27, and the case is headed toward trial with no construction timeline. None of the restaurant moves above depend on how it turns out.
The one room without a name
That brings the story back to Hillstone. The Real Deal put its former space at 6,400 square feet on the second floor. That makes it bigger than the 4,000-square-foot ground-floor room L'Avenue is waiting for. It also comes with the Collins Avenue view that made Hillstone, as Miami New Times put it, "a favorite meeting place for everyone from local business executives to tourists and longtime regulars." Hillstone Restaurant Group had not given a reason for the closing as of that report, and no new tenant has been named as of early October. If the center's waiting list works for this room the way it has for the others, the next operator here will be someone who has been waiting for exactly this kind of space.
Hillstone Restaurant Group still runs restaurants in Coral Gables and North Miami.
Where to book in October
The two newest rooms are also the easiest way to see how the hand-offs played out, and Miami Spice gives you a reason to go this month. The Bal Harbour Miami Spice listing runs through October 31 and names Slim's, China Grill, Makoto and Atlantikós among the participants, with menus priced from $40 to $95. Menus and participation can change, so confirm with the restaurant when you book.
- Slim's. GACHOT designed the room with marble checkerboard floors, leather banquettes and murals by Christoph Niemann. On the regular menu, the beef program tops out at $210 for an 8-ounce wagyu strip, and the foie gras cheesesteak from Starr's Barclay Prime in Philadelphia runs $100 here. The meal can finish with tableside Bananas Foster.
- China Grill. The classics are back, including lobster pancakes, lamb spare ribs, Peking duck and Banana's in a Box, along with new black cod miso dumplings and green leaf truffle dumplings. Chodorow describes this version as more indoor-outdoor than the original. It stays open until midnight, the latest seating in this group.
- Carpaccio. Its ground-floor room has about a year left before the planned move upstairs. An April interview described menu and interior updates around the signature carpaccio, Maine lobster linguine and branzino.
The Village calendar fits around dinner. Sounds by the Sea with The French Horn Collective plays Sunday, October 11, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Bal Harbour Beach North by the Jetty, 10301 Collins Avenue. The Fall Festival follows on Saturday, October 24, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Waterfront Park, 18 Bal Bay Drive, with a train ride, a corn maze and games.
Which tenant takes Hillstone's second-floor room will say a lot about how the Shops spend the years before the expansion's restaurants arrive. The same hand-off pattern shapes the residences around 96th Street and Collins, where what an address offers day to day depends partly on which rooms the center fills next. The Pitlake Group follows these changes as part of advising clients on Bal Harbour. If you are weighing a residence near the Shops, Schedule a Private Consultation.
