It’s been a rough few months for the restaurants at Boca’s Royal Palm Place, with the demise of Jake’s Stone Crab, Caruso and Fusionarie. But the restaurant biz is always churning, for good or for not so good, and now that we’re getting close to “season” again, the good news is starting to outweigh the bad.
Two restaurants are expected to open before year’s end in the sprawling retail-restaurant complex off Palmetto Park Road, though hardly any details are available at the moment. Still, it’s worth noting that the folks behind Juiceteria, the sprightly health-oriented juice bar off Southeast Mizner, are on track to open their next-door raw vegan café, The Raw Garden, in a few weeks. The menu of—yes, raw and vegan (and soy- and gluten-free) dishes is still under development, but expect it to complement the juices and smoothies so popular at its parent.
Also coming to RPP, in the old Fusionarie space, is a local branch of New York-based Sapphire Indian Cuisine. I can’t tell you much about what we’ll be getting here, but if the Big Apple location is any guide, look for a much more extensive and interesting menu of Indian specialties than we’re used to seeing in these parts.
Further north—Jupiter, to be precise—we’ll see the return to the kitchen of one of the most talented chefs anywhere in South Florida. Together with noted Thai chef-restaurateur Charlie Soo, uber-chef Roy Villacrusis (whom some of you may remember from a short-lived stint at Boca’s Kapow! Noodle Bar) will openAah Loi Thai & Sushi any day now. Aah Loi is a play on the Thai word for “delicious,” which as anyone who’s eaten his food can attest, ought to be Villacrusis’s middle name.
