Sixteen floors up, the view never needed help. Biscayne Bay on one side, the Miami River on another, Brickell and the Downtown skyline filling the rest of the glass. Area 31 built its name on that perch nearly twenty years ago, and now it’s back.
The restaurant at Kimpton EPIC Hotel has reopened after a $2 million redesign, with a rebuilt dining room, a new chef, and a bar program that leans hard into technique. The hotel sums it up as a timeless Miami destination, reimagined. Reading the new menu end to end, I’m inclined to say the ambition is real, and a grand reopening celebration lands Thursday, November 12.
A coastal room, rebuilt around the horizon
RoseBernard Studio led the redesign under a concept it calls Illuminate: The Fusion of Architecture and Nature. Miami’s bold architectural lines meet the softness of the sea and the tropical landscape. The room splits the difference gracefully.
Inside you’ll find richly veined stone, organic forms, sculptural wall treatments, and greenery worked through the space in planters and corners. Layered lighting keeps the room in gentle motion as the light outside changes, so the 6 o’clock table and the 9 o’clock table feel like cousins, not twins.
The interiors open onto the outdoor terrace, the room’s real anchor.
Daylight, sunset, after dark: the horizon stays in frame for all three acts, and every design decision in the room seems made to protect that single fact. Plenty of Miami dining rooms are prettier on paper. Very few can put the bay, the river, and the skyline in one turn of the head.
Context helps here. This room first welcomed guests nearly twenty years ago, in a very different Downtown, and it held its place through every dining cycle since by selling the one thing no new tower can copy. The renovation bets on that permanence. New room, new kitchen leadership, same coordinates.
Seafood first, cooked with restraint
Executive Chef Alvaro Rayón de Jaime leads the kitchen, and his Spanish heritage shapes a philosophy of simplicity and restraint that runs through the whole menu. The name Area 31 nods to one of the world’s designated sustainable fishing regions, and the cooking follows that thread with responsibly sourced seafood and seasonal Florida produce. It’s a menu with a point of view, written by a chef who grew up eating the Mediterranean way.
Dinner opens with an Ossetra caviar bite and scallop crudo, then moves to the Florida catch of the day and a Spanish-inspired Arroz de Pulpo, with Australian Wagyu covering the land side and a Florida heirloom tomato salad keeping things bright.
The Snow Crab Fried Rice is the signature. Dessert closes with Basque cheesecake or a tableside sundae.
Breakfast runs Monday through Friday from 7 to 11, brunch takes Saturday and Sunday from 8 to 2, and dinner serves Sunday through Thursday from 6 to 10, with Friday and Saturday stretching to 11. Three dayparts, three different rooms, really: a quiet working breakfast over the bay, a slow weekend brunch, and a dinner service that dresses the same view up for the evening.
We begin with exceptional seafood and seasonal Florida ingredients, then treat them with restraint, the chef says. It’s a good rule this close to the water.
Technique at the bar, music after dark
Lead Bartender Eric Vargas built the cocktail program on fermentation, clarification, milk-washing, and oleo, backed by rare spirits, distinctive liqueurs, and zero-proof drinks that earn their place on the list instead of apologizing for existing. This is a bar program with homework behind it, and it shows in the glass, in the ice, and in the garnish choices that most hotel bars would never bother stocking.
Look for a Pêche de Vigne with grapefruit and aloe vera served as a sour, a milk-washed and clarified tequila and mezcal cocktail, and a house-fermented tepache for the table that wants something nobody else in Miami is pouring this week.
As evening settles, DJs, percussionists, instrumentalists, and intimate vocal sets carry a laid-back Mediterranean mood from dinner into the night. The bar pours Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 10, and Friday and Saturday from 6 to 11.
The view does the rest.
There’s a private dining room for up to 30 guests, aimed at board dinners, rehearsal dinners, and celebrations that want the view without the full room’s noise.
Clement Durand, the hotel’s director of food and beverage, frames the reopening as building on what made the place special while giving locals a fresh reason to come up. That local aim is the part I’d underline. A 16th-floor room lives or dies on repeat Miami tables, not on visitors alone.
You’ll find Area 31 on the 16th floor of Kimpton EPIC Hotel at 270 Biscayne Boulevard Way in Miami, and reservations are open through the restaurant’s own site. Book the terrace if you can. At sunset, it’s the table the whole redesign was built around, and the rest of the room knows it.