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New York - Miami-Style
 Gansevoort South’s Philippe restaurant is a glossy box of black, white and Chinese red. |
All the new hotel flash in Miami has a strong New York accent. And no address says hip downtown Manhattan like Gansevoort South.
The name is that of a narrow street in New York’s meatpacking district, a once-bloody neighborhood that became the coolest precinct south of Chelsea. The first Hotel Gansevoort opened there in 2004 as old slaughterhouses and cold storage gave way to galleries and bistros.
Now the old Dutch name — and its associated New York style — are on Collins Avenue, at the northern end of South Beach. Gansevoort South is so downtown that the signage on the sweeping facade is barely perceptible, and the doors are hiply unmarked. Step inside, and you’re in an extravagant lobby of cartoon chairs, raw wood tables, 20-foot columns of gauze and a trimly dressed desk staff that appears to have been outfitted by Dr. No.
 The lobby of the Gansevoort South |
Upstairs is a gym/spa/salon that rivals the best Miami clubs. It should; the fitness stylist is Chelsea’s David Barton. The first restaurant, Philippe, is a glossy box of black, white and Chinese red, opened by the owner of New York’s top-dollar Chinese restaurant Mr. Chow.
The New York-Miami hotel connection is, of course, longstanding, and 1.5 million New Yorkers still visit each season. The Fontainebleau and neighbor Eden Roc have been New York faves for 50 years. When they reopened in mid-beach after major renovations, the Fontainebleau’s steak restaurant was run by Alfred Portale of Gotham Bar and Grill, and the Italian restaurant by Scott Conant of New York’s Alto and L’Impero.
The rebirth of the art deco hotel likewise had plenty of New York actors, including hotelier Ian Schrager’s Delano. Now Mondrian, one of Delano’s sisters in New York’s Morgan Hotel Group, is on the west side of SoBe — with design by Marcel Wanders, luxurious and madly sensuous, as much L.A. as N.Y.C.
This month, W, the cool lodging brand started in midtown 10 years ago, opens its first Miami Beach hotel. And Giuseppe Cipriani has a beachside resort in the works as well.
New Yorkers cannot live by bed alone. Émigré chefs and kitchens include Nobu Matsuhisa, Daniel Boulud, Anthony Bourdain (Les Halles), Kobe Club and China Grill and soon Laurent Tourondel’s BLT.
Yet even in a Big Apple transplant like Gansevoort, Miami’s flavor comes out. The hotel’s slickest amenity is a two-story coffee bar, Café Bustelo, with two walls of coffee cans — the first cafe venture by Miami’s Rowland Coffee Roasters.
