Three to sea: Deerfield Beach’s dining scene welcomes trio of oceanfront restaurants

Steps from the sand, sunbathing tourists and a revitalized fishing pier, a trio of new seaside restaurants have set their sights on Deerfield Beach.

Two are already open, Bravo Mar (Oct. 1) and Lucky Lou’s Raw Bar (Oct. 15), while the third, The Break House Kitchen & Beach Bar, is expected to debut next month. Serving up Peruvian and Caribbean fare — and the city’s first rooftop bar — the beachfront eateries aspire to bring a culinary renaissance to an area once known for surf shops and low-slung bungalows.

All within three blocks of the beach, they line the city’s so-called S-Curve, north of Hillsboro Boulevard, where North Ocean Drive sharply hooks east and north beside the pier.

And the timing is right, since the city has been investing millions to spruce up public infrastructure around Deerfield Beach’s International Fishing Pier, which partly reopened to the public in September after a 15-month facelift. The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has spent more than $8 million on upgrades, including new pier buildings, lighting and an observation deck.

“The S-Curve is really starting to come to life,” says Danielle Rosse, owner of Oceans 234 and the upcoming Break House Kitchen and Beach Bar next door. “We’re excited to see the pier reopen, and the city just put in walkways and lighting fixtures down our street. There’s a lot of great energy now.”

Lou Moshakos, a real-estate developer and co-owner of the new Lucky Lou’s Raw Bar, has likewise been bullish about Deerfield Beach’s growth since the pandemic.

In 2023, he spent $6.5 million for a dramatic makeover of The Cove Waterfront Restaurant & Tiki Bar on the west end of the Intracoastal Waterway. He also spent $10 million on a 1.7-acre patch of land, directly north of The Cove restaurant, property records show, where he hopes to build a parking deck, an apartment tower and a Mediterranean restaurant.

“For many years, Deerfield Beach was a sleepy little strip,” Moshakos says. “But now I think it’s on the upswing like Pompano was eight years ago. It’s fixing to really come back alive and better than ever.”

Below, meet Deerfield Beach’s newest class of oceanfront eateries.

Bravo Mar

1965 NE Second St., Deerfield Beach; 954-531-0330, BravoPeruvianKitchen.com 

As a child in Lima, Peru, Vanesa Oliva recalls her dad shopping for fresh scallops in their shells, sprinkling butter, herbs and Parmesan on top and broiling the bivalves until the melted cheese bubbled.

Now Conchas a la Parmesana — hard to find in South Florida but a staple of Peruvian cevicherias — are a signature dish at Bravo Mar, which opened Oct. 1 three blocks west of Deerfield’s pier. Here, Oliva and her chef-husband, Dennis “Beto” Quiroz, specialize in ceviches, Nikkei-style sushi, causas (a potato-layered classic with lime, aji amarillo and fish), and seared octopus and corvina brightened with the citrusy marinade called “leche de tigre.”

Seafood wasn’t the focus of the couple’s popular Bravo Peruvian Kitchen locations in Wilton Manors (open since 2008) and Coral Springs (2020), but Deerfield Beach “cried out for” coastal Latin cuisine, Oliva says.

“When we saw this spot in Deerfield, we felt it in our bones,” she says. “Right now, it’s not the touristy part of the season, but we opened it close to the beach to bring the coastal flavors from Peru to a community place.”

Still, fans of Bravo’s sandwich-counter roots and meat dishes needn’t worry, since Bravo Mar also carries chicharron, fried corvina and marinated grilled chicken handhelds on crusty French bread, alongside wok-fried lomo saltado, braised beef over mushroom risotto and chimichurri-dressed skirt steak.

Bravo’s 40-seat dining room is awash in aquamarine and wood accents, nautical oars and ribbons of cloth running along the ceiling like ocean waves. They have a beer and wine license, but future plans include building out a separate next-door space, already leased, with a full-liquor bar pumping out pisco sours, white sangria and mojitos, Oliva adds.

“There’s a few seafood joints over here, but a cevicheria is good for the beach and something we’re missing,” she says.

Lucky Lou’s Raw Bar

123 NE 20th Ave., Deerfield Beach; 954-531-0943; LuckyLousRawBar.com

Lou Moshakos’ restaurant group wanted a sports-pub chain. But after visiting the building himself, he envisioned a Caribbean-accented hub for hand-shucked oysters — and a callback to his South Florida roots.

Lucky Lou’s wouldn’t look anything like the original Seafood Shanty, the dark and windowless surf-and-turf shack he and his wife, Joy, brought to Hillsboro Boulevard back in 1978. But the new modern oyster bar, which opened Oct. 15 two blocks from the city pier dressed in ocean blues and historical photos, would be special enough to bear his name.

“In a way, it’s Seafood Shanty 2.0,” says the co-founder of Raleigh, N.C.-based LM Restaurants, which also runs waterfront eateries Oceanic, Lucky Fish and nearby The Cove Waterfront Restaurant and Tiki Bar. “The building didn’t really fit the shanty vibe, but being so close to the beach, it made me think of shucking clams and oysters with my wife here 50 years ago.”

Framed black-and-white photos of bygone beachgoers from Florida’s past adorn industrial faux-brick columns in the dining room, but that’s where the “shanty vibes” end. Here, the sporty raw bar, under new executive chef Amanda Currie (Season 23 of “Hell’s Kitchen”), turns out coconut curry cod, herb-marinated brick chicken and oysters prepared 10 ways, from oyster tacos to oyster po’boys.

The Orlando-raised Currie, formerly a sous chef at Oceanic, emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago at age 6 and moved to Pompano Beach in 2013, where she experimented with flavors to “give Floribbean cuisine a new awakening,” she says.

Coconut Curry Cod, one of Lucky Lou’s signature entrees, uses a West Indian technique of caramelizing brown sugar in Thai red curry sauce. She’s just as proud of the mahi sandwich, topped with a Haitian-style pikliz that includes grilled pineapple and cilantro aioli; and of her sticky chicken wings, glazed in a mahogany sauce of guava, pineapple and habanero peppers she calls “Caribbean teriyaki.”

“You ever smell guava right from the tree? It’s like flowers and fruit had a baby,” Currie says. “In Trinidad, oysters are street food, so this place speaks to who I am. And the produce we have is close to the same produce we get in the Caribbean, and no one knows about it. I’m excited to bridge that gap here.”

The 6,000-square-foot restaurant also offers six flatscreen TV sets, a weekday oyster happy hour with discounts on well drinks and bar bites, along with daily live music at sunset on its covered 80-seat patio.

The Break House Kitchen & Beach Bar

202 NE 21st Ave., Deerfield Beach; TheBreakHouse.com 

With trendy tuna poke bowls by day and the city’s first rooftop bar by night, owner Danielle Rosse’s new all-day cafe makes the clearest argument yet that Deerfield Beach, at long last, has entered its cosmopolitan era.

Slated to open “before Thanksgiving,” Rosse says, the Break House is partly a grab-and-go market and partly a casual sit-down with beach bites and a cocktail lounge — in other words, a “totally different idea” from Oceans 234, the upscale seafood eatery Rosse has owned next door since 2012. The beachfront 145-seater is perched beside the pier in a city-owned building that once held the long-running Deerfield Beach Cafe.

“There’s three guest experiences but they’re all aimed at beachgoers,” Rosse says of her 4,200-square-foot cafe. “You can order from a kiosk and a server brings you chef-driven food, or grab a chicken salad sandwich from the cold case and go, or head upstairs for a relaxing drink.”

She says the Break House pays homage to her late mother-in-law, Lois Pallaria, who started mentoring Rosse when she was a 19-year-old waitress at Ocean’s 234’s predecessor, the Ranch House.

The menu comes from culinary director and James Beard-nominated chef Dean Max (3030 Ocean, Even Keel Fish Shack), who “knows exactly what this beach needs,” Rosse adds.

Breakfast, served daily until noon, includes breakfast burritos, salmon bagels with cream cheese, and farmer’s toast with whipped ricotta, zucchini, spinach and eggs. Lunch and dinner features barbacoa mussel bowls, truffle grilled cheese with Moroccan tomato jam, Cuban sandwiches and smash burgers, boardwalk-style french fries, and Nana’s Hot Dog, a nod to her mother-in-law’s favorite food.

Meanwhile, the rooftop bar, unambiguously named Upstairs at The Break House, will seat 85 and sling seven craft cocktails from aperol spritzes to mojitos.