Where To Eat In Lake Worth Beach This Fall: What's New, What's Back, What's Next

For most of the year, dinner in Lake Worth Beach follows a predictable rhythm. You walk Lake Avenue, or you drive to the pier. This fall, that rhythm is temporarily broken. The Casino and Beach Complex has gone quiet for a nine-week renovation, and while it is dark, three downtown projects are stepping into the vacuum on Lucerne Avenue, on Lake Avenue, and up on North Dixie.

The practical result for anyone who lives here is that the map of a good Friday night looks different in September than it will in November. If you keep walking to Ocean Boulevard out of habit, you are going to find a locked door.

The Casino side is closed until early November

The single biggest change to the fall dining map is that Oceanwalk by Benny's on the Beach shut down on Labor Day. The temporary closure is tied to a roughly $500,000 renovation, including a long-overdue replacement of an air conditioning system that hasn't properly pumped cool air in years. The work is expected to last nine weeks, and the restaurant plans to reopen in early November with a new AC system, larger air ducts and an upgraded kitchen hood.

That is not a cosmetic refresh. The project replaces two 8-ton HVAC systems, and all ductwork is being resized because it was done wrong when the casino complex was originally constructed. The building the city owns is finally getting the mechanical repair it has needed since it opened, on the tenant's dime.

Two things worth knowing during the blackout:

• The main Benny's location on the Lake Worth Pier remains open and will employ most of the Oceanwalk staff during the renovations. If you were an Oceanwalk regular, your server is likely a two-minute walk west.
• Benny's manager Dylan Lipton has said Oceanwalk may unveil a new menu when it reopens in November, and the kitchen is now led by Executive Chef Angelo Romano, a Palm Beach County native with a decade of experience at top New York City restaurants, including a New York Times review and Critic's Pick, and a Bib Gourmand distinction. The reopening is a genuine relaunch, not a light-switch flip.

For residents, that means eight to nine weeks where the default beachfront table is the pier, not the Ocean Boulevard sit-down. Plan around it.

Lucerne Avenue is finally filling in

While the beach side rebuilds, downtown is doing the opposite. The corner of Lake Avenue and J Street and the Lucerne block one street south have absorbed two new tenants in roughly a year.

The one already open is Pomona. Pomona debuted July 16 at 717 Lake Ave. with a soft opening and a preview of Chef Johnny DeMartini's comfort-inspired cuisine and beverage manager Janina Silva's cocktails, and held a grand-opening ribbon-cutting at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 28. The team behind it comes from Ravish Off Ocean in Lantana, and the building itself has downtown history. Longtime locals remember 717 Lake Ave. as the home of L'Anjou, a popular French restaurant that enjoyed a 33-year run after opening in 1977 and scoring a cameo in the 1981 classic "Body Heat."

The hours are the useful part for anyone who lives within walking distance. Pomona is open at 3 p.m. every day and closes at midnight Sunday through Thursday and 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday. That is a late kitchen for downtown Lake Worth Beach, and it changes what a Tuesday night looks like on Lake Avenue.

The one still coming is Man Ray, and it has been coming for a while. Man Ray, the latest addition to Rodney Mayo's Subculture Group restaurant lineup, is coming together at the northeast corner of Lucerne and L Street, with a July opening planned, though an exact date has not been set. That target has since slipped, with the current window pushed further into the year while permitting continues.

When it does open, Man Ray will not be a subtle addition. It takes the Lucerne Avenue space once occupied by The Cottage and C.W.S. Bar + Kitchen, and the interior is being built around a specific idea:

A 30-foot-wide mural in the alfresco dining room features 13 influential artists, from Alexander Calder and Max Ernst on the left to Marcel Duchamp and Ernest Hemingway on the right, with the guest of honor, Man Ray, in the middle. Custom wooden tables will be cantilevered off the wall, flowing into the mural to give guests the illusion of dining with the restaurant's namesake and his contemporaries.

Local artist Fernando Cano created the artwork. The menu leans into mid-century American nostalgia. Man Ray will offer an expansive menu of Retro Americana cuisine, showcasing riffs on nostalgic, mid-century specialties from around the United States, with house signatures such as Cedar Plank Salmon with huckleberry-miso, Country-Fried Steak Frites 'Au Poivre' and a Chicken Cordon Bleu 'Cubano.' The operational twist is that the space works two shifts: once the restaurant is up and running, Man Ray will add a Subculture Coffee shop in the morning and afternoon, with live music on the weekends.

The Dixie corridor, quietly

The third piece is the one nobody outside downtown is talking about yet. RuRu's Tacos and Tequila is coming to 1132 N. Dixie Highway, which sits north of the Lake Avenue core and pulls the dining footprint into a stretch that has been mostly furniture stores, small offices, and one very well known glass studio.

That glass studio is worth naming, because it explains why Dixie is starting to matter. McMow Art Glass on Dixie Highway just north of downtown Lake Worth Beach has anchored the strip for years, alongside the Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts a few blocks further along. Add a taco and tequila room to that mix and Dixie starts to read the way Lucerne did five years ago.

Two corridors, one downtown

The easiest way to hold this in your head is a simple split.

The Casino corridor is temporarily one restaurant lighter. The downtown corridor is temporarily one restaurant heavier, with a second on the way. By early November, the map balances out again, but the mix of what is here will be permanently richer than it was in August.

A Saturday, mapped

If a friend from out of town lands next weekend, here is what actually works right now, using only businesses currently open and named above.

1. Morning coffee at the Oceanside Farmers Market near the Casino Complex, then a walk on the pier. Benny's on the pier is serving breakfast; Oceanwalk next door is not.
2. Midday, drive or walk inland to Lake Avenue. Downtown Pizza and Delicias Cuban Bakery cover a quick lunch without a wait.
3. Late afternoon on Lucerne. Peek through the fencing at the old Cottage space at Lucerne and L Street so you can say you saw the mural before it opened.
4. Dinner at Pomona at 717 Lake Ave. If you sit down at 9 p.m., the kitchen is still running.
5. If you want a nightcap and the taco place on Dixie is finally open by the time you read this, walk north. If not, stay on Lake Avenue.

Come November, step one moves back to Oceanwalk with a new menu, and the whole loop tightens up.

What this actually means if you live here

Two things are shifting under the surface, and both matter beyond dinner.

The first is that the Casino Complex is finally getting mechanical work the building has needed for years, paid for by a tenant instead of a bond. That is a small but real signal about how the city and its beachfront operators are aligned right now, and it lowers the risk that the building goes dark for a longer stretch later.

The second is that downtown's dining core is no longer just Lake Avenue. Lucerne is now a real second block, and Dixie is quietly becoming a third. If you bought a bungalow off J Street a few years ago on the theory that the walkable radius would keep growing, this fall is when that theory stops being a theory.

None of this shows up in a median price. It shows up on a Tuesday night, when the block you live on has a kitchen open until midnight for the first time.

If you have been thinking about how the shape of the neighborhood is changing under your own feet, whether you own here already or are watching from a house further west, the team at The Don Moore Team is happy to talk it through. Reach out for a confidential conversation about what any of it means for your block in particular.