Icon, reborn
Delano Miami Beach (South Beach)
GETAWAYS • Staycation
South Beach simply isn’t South Beach without the Delano operating at its full potential. After its shocking 2020 closure, the historic Art Deco hotel returned in June as part of Ennismore. The iconic Rose Bar and famed infinity pool are back, joined by new food and beverage offerings and revamped interiors.
South Beach locals know the lore, and anyone who’s properly visited Miami in the last 30 years has doubtless graced the Delano’s lobby. It was hotelier Ian Schrager who put the hotel back on the map in the 1990s with a surrealist Philippe Starck-designed lobby, creating a legendary nightlife hub graced by the likes of Madonna, Kate Moss, and Lenny Kravitz.
Ennismore, knowing it had some big shoes to fill, smartly tapped Schrager protégé Ben Pundole as chief brand officer. A talented hospitality veteran in his own right, Pundole was also responsible for ushering in the good vibes at EDITION Hotels (another Schrager venture).
In the revamped lobby, I was pleased to see the original Dalí Leda chair and Gaudí Calvet chair reinstalled in a seating vignette, right as you walk through the door. Kravitz’s Lucite piano is back, and a dramatic white marble-clad pool table has replaced the old one — all elements that made the former lobby iconic.
Starck’s original color palette of whites and creams with apple green accents has also been honored, via potted palms and a voluminous, sculptural sofa. The grand flow-through lobby also features a modern interpretation of its former billowing white curtains with gauzy chandeliers and wallcoverings. It all comes together to feel like an appropriate and luxurious modernization of the space, while paying homage to what made the lobby one-of-a-kind.
Rooms: also updated to excellent effect. Luxurious finishes, textures in the familiar monochrome of whites and creams, all decorated with a glass green apple objet d’art (a nod to the green apples that famously furnished the old rooms). Bathrooms: full of marble, with modern rainfall showers, Byredo products, and amorphous backlit vanity mirrors, another gesture to Starck.
The property’s 150-foot-long infinity pool has been restored, with its signature café table wading in the far shallow end. It’s reimagined as a beach club, anchored by the indoor-outdoor Gigi Rigolatto, an Italian Riviera-inspired Mediterranean restaurant, with plush cream-colored lounge chairs, fringed umbrellas and cabanas. There’s also a new rooftop pool and amenity space on the fourth floor, including a fitness center, and a Delano Members Club, wooing locals back to the scene.
The hotel’s former subterranean nightlife space is being reimagined — disappointingly, to some of us — as a spa, slated to open by the end of the year.
Elsewhere on the fourth floor, Mimi Kakushi (intel) is a modern Japanese restaurant inspired by 1920s Osaka, with a theatrical flair and an impressive cocktail program. It’s reserved exclusively for hotel guests and Delano Members Club members. On my visit, the waiter helped us craft the perfect order, including a selection of beautifully fresh nigiri, Hamachi crudo, wagyu and foie gras gyoza in truffle soy butter, a steak and bone marrow tartare, miso black cod and wagyu striploin.
After dinner, we descended to the lobby and found seats at the Rose Bar. Pundole and a Delano Members Club relations manager were milling around the lobby with groups of fashionable looking guests. A tourist couple bellied up to the bar next to us. The woman didn’t know the Delano had closed, but she had fond memories of being there fifteen years ago and wanted to show her husband. The scene felt right: the same familiar motley crew of South Beach characters still roaming the lobby, all these years later. I’m happy to say the Delano is back, baby, and order has been restored to South Beach. –Shayne Benowitz
→ Delano Miami Beach (South Beach) • 1685 Collins Ave • Summer rates from $728.