South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
‘Wining and dining is big in Palm Beach Gardens’
How six new restaurants are turning sleepy resort town into a food paradise
Some of the most innovative, James Beard Award-winningest chefs in Florida are turning the shopping-and-golfing paradise of Palm Beach Gardens into a fine-dining capital.
Over the past six months, talented chefs like Jeremy Ford (Stubborn Seed) and Lindsay Autry (The Regional), and big-name hospitality outfits like Major Food Group (New York’s Carbone) have muscled into the region locals call North County.
Let’s be blunt: These aren’t first-time restaurateurs gambling their life savings on fast-casual mom-and-pops. These are multi-hyphenate tastemakers with accolades attached to their names. They’re experimenting with Southern cuisine, turning out cutting-edge Indian dishes, firing prime steak cuts plated with cabernet beef jus reductions.
These are destination restaurants in an ocean of country clubs designed to draw diners from Miami and Orlando and beyond.
These restaurateurs with stellar track records are out to change two misconceptions about Palm Beach Gardens.
One: South Florida’s mighty arsenal of local cuisine doesn’t stop at the West Palm Beach border. And two: Don’t let its vast wonderland of golf courses deceive you — and there are 160, by the way, in the county — but Palm Beach Gardens is officially a food town.
“This area used to be a retirement-type town,” says chef Tim Lipman, 42, who in February combined his two restaurants, small-plates eatery Coolinary Café and cocktail lounge Parched Pig, under one roof in the Shops of Donald Ross Village.
“The pandemic changed everything,” he adds. “Now there’s more Northeasterners who are accustomed to seeing great restaurants, and young professionals are moving north wanting the same thing: an elevated dining experience.”
Put another way: “Wining and dining is big in Palm Beach Gardens,” says chef Pushkar Marathe, chef-owner of upcoming Indian restaurant Ela.
Here are six reasons to plan a day trip to Palm Beach Gardens.
Coolinary and the Parched Pig
4580 Donald Ross Road, Suite 105; 561-249-6760, TheCoolPig. com
Like a rock supergroup, Coolinary and the Parched Pig merges Tim and Jenny Lipman’s pair of popular, chef-driven restaurants — 10-year-old New American kitchen Coolinary Café and its 4-year-old sibling tapas bar, the Parched Pig — into a mega-size, upscale restaurant-pub.
Coolinary, serving lunch and dinner, reopened in December in the suburban Donald Ross Village strip mall after the Lipmans knocked down the walls at Parched Pig, doubling the kitchen size with a new wood-burning oven and revamped menu. And chef Tim Lipman’s ambitious menu changes constantly — every two weeks — with entrees like jalapeno-cheddar waffles with coleslaw, white bean cassoulette and orange ginger pork belly.
“The wood-burning oven opens up a whole catalog of recipes, changing the outcome of the dish because of the cooking source,” Tim Lipman, 42, says. “One of our dishes was crispy fingerling potatoes par-cooked in a court-bouillon and seared on the plancha with herbs, olive oil and pickled mustard seed. But what if I cooked it in the oven with local Florida oak? Vastly different taste.”
The 120-seater will also feature Parched Pig’s cocktail program and tapas-style plates, such as a la carte oysters and charcuterie boards, says Lipman, whose Coolinary Café opened its doors in 2012 as one of the area’s first destination restaurants.
“Now there’s all this money pouring into the area,” Lipman says. “It’s a very affluent demographic that well-cultured and well-traveled. And we’re shifting along with it.”
Ela
4650 Donald Ross Road. Opening in May.
The moment chef Pushkar Marathe opened Stage Kitchen & Bar on PGA Boulevard a month before the pandemic, diners warned him that his globally inspired Indian cuisine was “too adventurous for the neighborhood.” Marathe (Meat Market in Palm Beach, Ghee Indian Kitchen in Coral Gables, 3030 Ocean in Fort Lauderdale) respectfully disagreed, and as lockdowns commenced, takeout orders flooded the phone lines for Indian-spiced chicken liver paté and heritage pork vindaloo over basmati grits.
It was customer demand for more common Indian dishes — butter chicken masala — that inspired Ela, Marathe’s new traditional Indian restaurant in the Donald Ross Village plaza.
Pronounced “EE-la” (a Sanskrit word meaning “cardamom”), Ela