The Grove Cup ends this weekend. The FIFA World Cup final is Sunday. Play the Grove, the sculptural pitch that took over CocoWalk Plaza for a month, was packed up eight days ago. What is left, if you live here, is the more interesting question: which of the routines that the tournament pulled into the neighborhood are actually going to stick.
The short answer is that most of them will, because the Grove Cup was not a festival that got parachuted in. It ran through venues residents already use.
What the tournament actually did to the calendar
The Coconut Grove BID opened the Grove Cup on Saturday, June 13, from 5 to 8 p.m. with a public Brazil vs. Morocco watch party at Peacock Park, 2820 McFarlane Road, with live match viewing, music, local food vendors, and activities for all ages. That first event alone drew more than 3,000 people to a park most residents think of as a dog-walking loop.
The point was never the one screening. Grove Cup programming continued for the following five weeks, with restaurants, bars, and waterfront venues across Coconut Grove hosting watch parties, specials, and community gatherings for fans following the matches. If you drove up McFarlane at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday in late June you saw why the neighborhood BID kept pushing the idea: the tournament handed local operators a reason to program weekday afternoons, which is exactly what the Grove has been missing.
Alongside the matches, from June 10 through July 10, CocoWalk Plaza hosted PLAY THE GROVE, a free interactive art installation that transformed the plaza into an immersive environment where a deconstructed soccer pitch became a larger-than-life playscape. The piece was designed by architects MIRTH Studio in collaboration with estudioLAAVA, whose work combines architecture, public art, and placemaking. It is gone now. The habit it built, of walking to CocoWalk after school with kids and staying an hour, is not.
The CocoWalk anchor is finally usable on a Tuesday
The gap the Grove has quietly had for two years is not weekend dinner. Weekend dinner is oversubscribed. The gap is Tuesday at 4 p.m. and Thursday at 10 p.m.
That gap closed in May. Grand Public Kitchen + Bar opened in May 2026 in the former Planta Queen space on the second floor, directly above Chop steakhouse, at 3015 Grand Avenue, Suite 201. The room is a 7,400-square-foot indoor-outdoor space built by hospitality veterans Matthew Tsoumaris and Ryan Bassels, blending modern American cuisine with global coastal influences, with Chef Leo Pablo, whose background includes working alongside Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Michael Mina and Joël Robuchon in the kitchen.
The programming residents will actually use, though, is the schedule. Grand Public runs a daily happy hour from 3-6 p.m., followed by a reverse happy hour after 10 p.m. That cadence is the practical answer to the CocoWalk vacancy problem, and it is the first anchor at that scale in the second-floor slot since Planta Queen closed.
"Grand Public is about creating a place people want to return to. We're excited to introduce a place that blends great food with attentive service. Coconut Grove's close-knit community made it the ideal home for our concept." — Matthew Tsoumaris, co-founder
The peacock logo on the door is a signal, not a coincidence. The restaurant's peacock logo nods to Coconut Grove's well-known wild peacocks, a symbol that feels instantly local.
The recurring weekly map, as it stands right now
Once you strip out the World Cup one-offs, the Grove's summer calendar has settled into a repeating shape. It is worth writing down, because the density inside a square mile is unusual.
| Day | Anchor | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Weekdays, 3–6 p.m. and after 10 p.m. | Grand Public Kitchen + Bar happy hour and reverse happy hour | CocoWalk, 3015 Grand Ave, Suite 201 |
| Saturday | Regatta Grove waterfront gathering, tropical cocktails and curated food overlooking Biscayne Bay | Regatta Grove |
| Sunday | Glaser Farms Organic Farmers Market, weekly through January 2027 | Grand Avenue |
| Sunday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. | Grove Bazaar brunch and vendor market from Chef Giorgio Rapicavoli, with rotating vendors including Mann, Left on Saturn vintage, and Mintage Records | Mayfair courtyard |
| This Saturday, July 18 | WDNA Jazz Gallery afternoon of vinyl, tropical grooves and contemporary art | WDNA Jazz Gallery |
Sources for the weekly map: Regatta Grove runs a weekly waterfront gathering with tropical cocktails, curated food and a relaxed outdoor atmosphere overlooking Biscayne Bay through May 2027. Glaser Farms runs its organic farmers market weekly on Sunday through January 2027 with organic fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds and raw vegan foods. The Mayfair courtyard runs the Grove Bazaar on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., organized around brunch from Chef Giorgio Rapicavoli, who now runs the Mayfair Grill at the Mayfair House Hotel, with vendors including Miami women's clothing brand Mann, Left on Saturn vintage, and Hallandale's Mintage Records. Rapicavoli's résumé matters here: he previously launched Glass & Vine and has a long history in the neighborhood. And this Saturday specifically, vinyl, tropical grooves and contemporary art come together for an afternoon inside WDNA's Jazz Gallery on Jul 18, 2026.
Five of the anchors sit within a walkable radius of each other. That is the unusual part.
What is landing next on Main Highway and Grove Isle
Two additions are close enough that residents should be tracking them now, not in the fall.
The first is a room most people have already walked past without noticing. At 3190 Main Highway, the restaurant 3190 opened in the narrow space between longtime Grove institutions Lokal and Atchana's Homegrown Thai. The name is also the address. No menu required, per the Coconut Grove Spotlight's reporting in November 2025, the format is fixed and the room is small, which is a reliable sign that someone has thought hard about what they actually want to cook. A fixed-format room next to Lokal is a very different bet than a 200-seat concept.
The second is the pizza that used to require a downtown trip. Miami Slice, the downtown pizza operation, is preparing its first South Florida expansion at 2996 McFarlane Road. If you walked kids through Play the Grove for a month, the pizza is landing on the same block.
The third, and the biggest lever on the Grove's dining map for the next twelve months, is on the water. In 2026, Gioia Hospitality Group will debut La Sponda, a coastal Italian concept inside Vita at Grove Isle, a luxury condominium development nearing completion on the Grove's private island, with a menu rooted in seasonal ingredients and dishes inspired by the Italian coastline. The team behind it is Gioia Hospitality Group, the team behind Daniel's Miami in Coral Gables, which was added to the Michelin Guide within six months of opening. Interiors are by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, and the address is 4 Grove Isle Dr. The detail that changes the calculus for residents: it will be open to the public, not limited to Vita residents. That is a Michelin-lineage kitchen with Bay views that does not require knowing anyone on Grove Isle to book a table.
Further down U.S. 1, the commute story: the first Chick-fil-A in Coconut Grove will open along U.S. 1 in 2026 at 3510 S. Dixie Hwy., opening sometime in 2026 or early 2027, and this will also be the closest Chick-fil-A to the University of Miami campus. If you drive 27th Avenue in the morning, factor that in when it opens.
Why the density matters if you already live here
Zoom out. In roughly a square mile this month, a resident can walk to a weekday happy hour at CocoWalk, a Saturday waterfront cocktail hour at Regatta Grove, a Sunday morning organic market on Grand Avenue, a Sunday brunch bazaar in the Mayfair courtyard, and a Saturday jazz-and-vinyl afternoon at WDNA, with two new restaurants opening on McFarlane and Main Highway inside the next quarter and a Brudnizki-designed room landing on Grove Isle after that.
None of those individually is a headline. Together they are the answer to the question the Grove was asking itself twelve months ago, which was whether the neighborhood could sustain weekday programming after the 2025 wave of closures on Main Highway. The World Cup did not answer that question. It gave the local operators a reason to test the answer in public, in June, with 3,000 neighbors watching. What comes after Sunday's final is the real result.
If you are thinking about how these shifts affect a home you already own in the Grove, or a property you are considering here, Luxury by Monica offers private, discreet consultations grounded in the block-by-block texture of this neighborhood. Schedule a Private Consultation.
