Walk the ground floor of the Shops on a Wednesday evening this July and the tenant map reads nothing like it did eighteen months ago. Le Zoo is gone. Aba is gone. The original Makoto room has a new name on the awning. In their place: a Stephen Starr steakhouse designed to feel like a 1940s screening room, and a returning ninety-fives Miami dining room that helped invent South of Fifth as a neighborhood. For anyone who lives inside a five-minute walk of the koi ponds, the practical question isn't whether the new lineup is good. It's which room fits which night.
The thesis is simple and worth stating up front. The Shops has quietly swapped its mid-2010s cohort of chef-driven neighborhood concepts for a lineup of legacy brands and revivals, and the shift changes the calculus of eating here as a resident rather than a visitor. This isn't a refresh. It's a repositioning.
The swap that actually happened
The tenant cycle at the Shops moves slowly by Miami standards, which is precisely why the last twelve months feel abrupt. The mall is in the middle of a multi-year tenant cycle with several anchor restaurants moving at once. Aba departed first, followed by Le Zoo at the end of April 2025 after a ten-year run. Makoto, Starr's longtime Bal Harbour sushi flagship, already relocated within the property in 2022, freeing up the original ground-floor room that Slim's now occupies.
| Then (2015–2025) | Now (2026) | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Le Zoo | China Grill | Ground floor, main entrance (Suite D135) |
| Makoto (original) | Slim's | Ground floor, original Makoto space |
| Aba | (in the leasing cycle) | Ground floor |
| Makoto (relocated) | Makoto | Level 3 |
| Carpaccio | Carpaccio | Ground floor, poolside |
The pattern here is worth pausing on. Whitman Family Development is curating an F&B mix that will define the next leasing cycle, and the tenants moving in are either established brands like China Grill or established operators expanding within the property like Starr and Makoto. Neighborhood-scale chef concepts have been replaced by rooms that were already famous somewhere else. That is a deliberate answer to a specific problem the Shops has, which is drawing a resident on a weeknight and a São Paulo shopper on a Saturday without asking either to compromise.
Slim's, and why it isn't the room Le Zoo was
Slim's is a new glamorous steakhouse concept by acclaimed restaurateur Stephen Starr and Starr Restaurants, located at Bal Harbour Shops at 9700 Collins Ave, Bal Harbour, FL. The 183-seat restaurant opened on March 17, 2026, in the original space formerly occupied by Starr's Makoto restaurant. It is designed by GACHOT and inspired by the golden age of cinema. Slim's culinary program is led by Chef Anthony Micari. The menu honors steakhouse tradition with standout offerings, including Wagyu, a refined raw bar and caviar experience, and Starr Restaurants' signature Cheesesteak made with hand-cut Wagyu, black truffle, foie gras, fried onions, and Cooper Sharp cheese on a freshly baked sesame roll.
The tell is in the room itself. Plush leather banquettes, rich textures, and a striking 1930s-inspired mural evoke supper-club splendor in a transportive setting that feels at once timeless and distinctly of the moment. The menu centers on exquisitely prepared classics and nostalgic indulgences, where prime cuts, a refined raw bar, and caviar service give way to a signature Wagyu cheesesteak and towering slices of coconut chiffon cake. At the bar, martinis are served with a sense of ritual, poured tableside along with a benchmark wine program curated for Miami's contemporary jet set. Le Zoo drew you in with a French brasserie's daytime rhythm, closer in spirit to a neighborhood cafe with white marble and rosé than a destination room. Slim's inverts that. It wants dinner. It wants the martini course. Lunch runs Monday through Friday from 11:30 to 4, but the room is engineered for after dark, with dinner service pushing to 11 on Fridays and Saturdays.
China Grill, back in the room that started South of Fifth
The second half of the swap is the more emotionally loaded one for anyone who was in Miami Beach in the late nineties. The iconic restaurant reopened on June 9, 2026, at the entrance of Bal Harbour Shops, 9700 Collins Avenue, Bal Harbour, FL 33154, claiming one of the most coveted dining addresses in South Florida.
The reopening carries weight because of what the first version did. When Chodorow first brought the concept to Miami Beach on September 27, 1995, betting on the then-unproven southern edge of South Beach at the corner of Fifth Street and Washington Avenue, he helped catalyze the rise of South of Fifth as the neighborhood it is today. The original China Grill, with interiors by the late Jeffrey Beers, earned four stars from the Miami Herald, attracted a global clientele, and ran as one of the city's most influential dining rooms for more than fifteen years.
The menu is meant to be recognized on sight. The reopened menu brings back staples such as lobster pancakes, lamb spare ribs, tempura sashimi, crispy spinach and wasabi mashed potatoes, while adding inventive dumplings, globally inspired seafood and a Peking duck service. Hours: Sunday through Thursday, 12:00 pm to 11:00 pm, and Friday and Saturday, 12:00 pm to 12:00 am. The format matters as much as the food. The format encourages sharing, with dishes arriving continuously and building momentum throughout the meal. It is designed to feel dynamic and social, whether for a celebratory dinner, a business gathering, or a spontaneous night out.
One detail from the lease timeline is quietly telling for residents who have watched construction hoardings move around the property. Jeffrey Chodorow signed the Bal Harbour Shops lease in July 2021, and China Grill, the South Beach restaurant he closed in 2012, opens at 9700 Collins Avenue in summer 2026. Five years from signature to service, fourteen years from the original closure. The 2021 deal landed Unit 135 on the first floor, the space Stephen Starr's Le Zoo had operated since late 2015. Le Zoo's lease ran through April 2025 and Chodorow had to wait. The lag is a good reminder that the tenant map here is set on a decade horizon, not a season.
What this all sits inside
The two openings are the visible edge of a much larger repositioning. Bal Harbour Shops has announced an ambitious new phase of growth that will add approximately 200,000 square feet of new retail space to the Miami luxury shopping destination. Coinciding with its 60th anniversary, the next phase will introduce more than 30 new stores and expansions to existing boutiques, with a strong focus on luxury and experiential brands designed to elevate the shopping experience. Whitman Family Development recently secured a $740 million loan to fund construction and continued growth.
The economics behind the F&B curation are unusually stark. The center continues to post exceptionally strong performance, with annual sales estimated at $2,000 to $3,000 per square foot, well above typical U.S. mall averages. Dining remains a cornerstone of the destination's success, generating nearly $70 million in annual sales through signature restaurants such as Carpaccio and Makoto. A restaurant lease here has to justify itself against a retail per-square-foot benchmark that most operators in the country will never see. That is why the ground-floor rooms keep going to operators with a proven Miami track record and a national brand behind them, and why the Shops previewed both concepts to residents before either opened. The 60th-anniversary celebration also offered a first taste of what's ahead, as China Grill and Slim's previewed their highly anticipated restaurants coming to the Shops in Spring 2026.
Which room fits which night
For a resident, the practical shift is this. The old lineup gave you a daytime brasserie, a modern Mediterranean, and a top-floor sushi flagship, and that was largely the entire evening argument. The new lineup gives you two rooms built explicitly for dinner and one that has always been.
- A quiet weeknight dinner near home. Carpaccio poolside is still the answer for a two-person, no-agenda evening. Nothing about the swap changed that.
- A birthday, a promotion, an out-of-town parent. China Grill's shared-plate rhythm and the twelve-to-midnight Friday and Saturday window are built for a table that grows through the night.
- A martini before dinner, then dinner. Slim's is the room where the drink and the meal are treated as a single choreographed sequence.
- Sushi at the bar. Makoto on Level 3 is unchanged in intent and quieter than it used to be now that the ground-floor traffic has redistributed.
- A quick lunch between errands. Café on 3 at Neiman Marcus and Avenue 31 Café still absorb the midday crowd without a reservation.
The larger point is that the Shops has stopped being a place where residents ate on a Tuesday because the alternative was driving. It is now a place where residents eat on a Tuesday because two of the rooms happen to be among the most talked-about openings in the city this year, and both of them are a walk from the front door. That is a different kind of neighborhood asset than the one Bal Harbour had eighteen months ago, and it will show up in how the surrounding blocks are used long before it shows up on any listing sheet.
If you own here and you are thinking about how these changes affect the way your address reads to a future buyer or a returning tenant, I am happy to have that conversation. Reach out through Jelena Khurana for a private consultation or a complimentary valuation of your Bal Harbour residence.
