Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Cooper’s Hawk chain opens restaurant wine bar in Fort Lauderdale
Cooper’s Hawk is a fast-growing chain that is part Napa Valley-style wine-tasting room and part upscale-casual restaurant featuring American comfort food. The newest outpost opened at the Galleria Mall in Fort Lauderdale on Monday. Cooper’s Hawk looks to make a splash one floor above the mall’s ground-level restaurant row, where mainstays such as the Capital Grille, P.F. Chang’s, Seasons 52, and Truluck’s operate.
Over the weekend, workers put the finishing touches on wine-themed décor leading to a new elevator that will take patrons directly to the tasting room. Once inside, guests can sip wines and cocktails at the fullliquor bar or in the tasting room that sells wine merchandise and memberships to Cooper’s Hawk’s wine-of-the-month club. They also can eat in the dining room or a private-party room called the Barrel Room, which holds up to 40.
All told, the 15,000-square-foot restaurant will have capacity for more than 300 guests, with a staff of nearly 160.
The Galleria location is the 10th Cooper’s Hawk to open in Florida, with other South Florida locations in Coconut Creek, Pembroke Pines, Palm Beach Gardens and Doral. Another Cooper’s Hawk is slated to open at the new Dania Pointe complex in Dania Beach.
The restaurant will open daily at 11 a.m. and offer lunch, dinner and wine tastings, with the dining room closing at 9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 9 p.m. Sunday. The bar will close one hour later.
Cooper’s Hawk procures grapes from growers worldwide and bottles wine under its own label at its Illinois headquarters outside Chicago. The chain aims to demystify wine for novices by making it fun and less intimidating, with tasting flights available and a paint-by-numbers approach that pairs each menu item with a suggested wine listed by number.
Wines are grouped into sweet (fruit wines), bubbly, white, red, rosé and international. Diners can ask to taste samples before ordering a glass ($7-$16), bottle ($22.99-$47.99) or 750-milliliter decanter (with an aerator) of Bordeaux drawn from a barrel ($33.99).
Things can get frustrating for more serious wine consumers, as I wrote in a 2018 review of the Coconut Creek location. Specifics of grape origin, vintage and sourcing are unknown. Because there is only one label (Cooper’s Hawk) offered for each varietal — sometimes at different price tiers — drinkers simply have to trust that Cooper’s Hawk winemakers have procured good grapes from good places in good growing years.
Cooper’s Hawk founder Tim McEnery came up with the concept after he visited an ice winery in Illinois and asked, “Where’s the restaurant?” There was none. McEnery, a former country club busboy who went on to work for catering giant Aramark, figured Americans might embrace his vision of a place that blended “the good life” of Napa Valley wineries with good food. He opened the first Cooper’s Hawk, named for a Midwestern bird (a cooper is also someone who builds wine casks), in Orland Park, Ill., in 2005.
With six more restaurants being built and 38 open, there will soon be 44 Cooper’s Hawks in 10 states, with Illinois (13) and Florida (11) leading the way. Others are in Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Food- and price-wise, the chain is similar to J. Alexander’s or Houston’s, with a wide-ranging menu of comforting American and world cuisine such as crispy Brussels sprouts, pork-belly tostadas, Asian potstickers, flatbreads, cheese-and-candied-bacon platters, steaks, chicken, seafood and pasta. Prices range from moderate to expensive, with steak entrees in the low-to-mid $30s.
Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurant is located at 2568 E. Sunrise Blvd., in Fort Lauderdale (inside the Galleria Mall, 2nd floor). Call 754-755-9463 or go to CHWinery.com. Reservations are available by phone or online. Open at 11 a.m. daily until 9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 9 p.m. Sunday (bar stays open one hour later). Free or valet parking.