For most of the past year, if you lived on Brickell Key and wanted a real dinner without walking across the bridge, you were out of luck. La Mar closed when the Mandarin Oriental Miami started its renovation in May 2025, and the island spent the better part of a year as scenery: a jogging loop with a skyline view and nowhere to sit down and eat. In April 2026, the old hotel came down entirely, imploded to clear the site for what will become the Residences. That same month, The Mexican opened a few hundred feet away, more than 10,000 square feet of dining room, tequila gallery, and bay-facing terrace built by a Dallas restaurant group making its first move into Florida.
Now that restaurant is one of the newest names on this year's Miami Spice list, and that timing is the part worth paying attention to if you already live here and have spent the summer wondering whether the promotion is worth the reservation.
The Island's New Restaurant Is Also This Year's Cheapest Way In
Miami Spice turns 25 this year, running August 1 through September 30 across more than 300 restaurants in Greater Miami. The basic shape hasn't changed: three-course prix-fixe menus at a discount off the regular card. What has changed is who showed up. The Mexican is a first-time Miami Spice participant, offering a $40 three-course lunch and a $65 dinner Tuesday through Friday, built around dishes like aguachiles, tortilla soup, morita marlin tacos, and salmon piquin.
That matters for a simple reason. A restaurant this new, with a design budget this visible and a bay-view terrace this in-demand, would normally be booked weeks out at full price before a resident ever got a table. Miami Spice compresses that timeline. For eight weeks, the newest and most talked-about seat on Brickell Key costs the same as a mid-range dinner anywhere else in the neighborhood. If you have been meaning to see what replaced La Mar, this is the month to do it, and it is only available four nights a week, so Tuesday through Friday is the actual window, not a suggestion.
Bagatelle Miami River is doing something similar a few minutes away. It is new to the Miami Spice roster in 2026, offering a $65 three-course dinner Wednesday through Saturday along the river, with a menu built around the French brasserie's usual seafood and meat preparations. Between these two, the 2026 season is functioning less like a citywide discount and more like an early preview window for two of the year's actual restaurant openings.
The Menu Tier Nobody Explained
The other change this year is structural. Miami Spice has always had two price points: roughly $40 for lunch and brunch, $50 or $65 for dinner. This year adds a third: Miami Spice Reserve, a premium tier starting at $95 for restaurants that wanted to offer something closer to their actual tasting menu rather than a simplified version of it.
Nusr-Et Steakhouse in Brickell is running all three tiers at once. Lunch is $40 daily, with a New York strip sushi roll or a burger with herb-crusted fries. Dinner steps up to $65 for a three-course wagyu-focused menu. The Reserve tier, at $110, adds a welcome glass of Champagne, a choice of shared starters like steak tartare or beef carpaccio, and a main course choice between filet mignon, New York strip, or butter-poached lobster. That is a meaningfully different meal than the $65 version, and it is priced closer to what a steakhouse tasting menu would normally cost on a regular Tuesday.
Casa Zeru, inside the refreshed Brickell Arch hotel, built its Reserve tier around six courses for $95, including scallop with passion fruit and trout roe, an osso buco risotto, and a torrija dessert finished with toasted butter ice cream and black truffle. That menu only runs Thursday through Saturday, while the restaurant's standard $40 lunch and $65 dinner are available Monday through Saturday.
The practical read here is that Reserve is not a marketing label. It is a genuine upgrade path, and at two restaurants in the neighborhood it is priced low enough that trying the top of the menu costs less than booking the same experience outside the promotion window.
The Nights That Actually Work
The catch with all of this is scheduling, and it is the part that trips up residents who assume a two-month promotion means any night will do. Several of Brickell's best-known participants skip the nights people most want to go out.
Claudie, the French Riviera spot known for its garden terrace, offers its $40 lunch on weekdays, but the $65 dinner only runs Sunday through Thursday. No Friday. No Saturday. Casa Zeru's Reserve tier is the opposite, Thursday through Saturday exclusively. Delilah Miami offers its $65 dinner, live music included, Tuesday through Saturday. Hutong keeps its $65 dinner available every day of the week, with the $40 lunch limited to weekdays, and Nusr-Et runs both lunch and dinner daily, which makes it a useful anchor option if your week doesn't line up with the more restricted schedules elsewhere. Quinto, the wood-fired Latin kitchen inside the EAST Miami hotel, keeps its $40 Miami Spice menu to weekday lunch only.
| Restaurant | Miami Spice Price | Days Offered |
|---|---|---|
| The Mexican (Brickell Key) | $40 lunch / $65 dinner | Tuesday–Friday |
| Bagatelle Miami River | $65 dinner | Wednesday–Saturday |
| Nusr-Et Steakhouse | $40 lunch / $65 dinner / $110 Reserve | Daily |
| Casa Zeru | $40 lunch / $65 dinner | Monday–Saturday |
| Casa Zeru Reserve | $95, six courses | Thursday–Saturday |
| Claudie | $40 lunch (weekdays) / $65 dinner | Dinner: Sunday–Thursday |
| Delilah Miami | $65 dinner | Tuesday–Saturday |
| Hutong | $65 dinner (every day) / $40 lunch (weekdays) | See price column |
| Quinto | $40 lunch | Weekdays |
Read across that table and a pattern shows up. The restaurants most protective of their weekend covers, Claudie, Casa Zeru's Reserve tier, are pushing Miami Spice into the slower part of the week and keeping Friday and Saturday at full price. That's a reasonable business decision on their end, and it means the useful strategy for a Brickell resident isn't picking one night and working down a list. It's matching the specific restaurant to the specific night it's actually offered, which is a smaller task than the 300-restaurant citywide guide makes it look, once you're only looking at the dozen or so names that sit inside your own zip code.
What Two Months Actually Gets You
This year's Miami Spice also comes with a charitable layer that wasn't part of the promotion before: Camillus House, the South Florida nonprofit that provides shelter, meals, and job training, is the official 2026 charity partner, and participating restaurants can offer a QR code at the table for an optional donation. It's a small addition, but it fits a season built around access rather than just discounts.
Put together, the actual value of Miami Spice in Brickell this year isn't the $40 lunch you could get most other times if you looked hard enough. It's that a four-month-old restaurant on Brickell Key and a brand-new French spot on the river are both offering their menus at promotional pricing before they've had a full year to build a waitlist, and that two of the neighborhood's steakhouse and Mediterranean kitchens are letting you try their top-tier tasting menus for less than they'll cost once the season ends. The restriction is timing, not selection. You have through September 30, and for several of the best options, only four or five nights a week to use it.
If dining discoveries like this are part of why you love calling Brickell home, that same local read on the neighborhood, what's changing, what's opening, what a building's ground floor says about its future, is exactly the lens Ruben Chamorro brings to buyers and sellers here. Whether you're watching the market from your own condo or wondering what a Brickell Key address is actually worth this year, that's a conversation worth having before the season ends too.
