The Thursday Night Map of Singer Island Just Got Redrawn

For twenty years, a Thursday evening on Singer Island had one gravitational center. You walked the seawall at Sailfish Marina, bought a grouper dog from the pop-up, listened to a guy with a guitar work through the Jimmy Buffett catalog, and watched the sun drop behind the Intracoastal. That was the ritual. It still is. What has changed, quietly, between 2025 and this summer, is that the ritual is no longer the only option.

The thesis in one sentence

The island now has a real waterfront dining circuit for the first time in a generation, because two long-dormant addresses came back online while a third rebranded, and the practical effect for anyone who lives here is that Thursday night has genuinely competing plans for the first time in a long time.

The four anchors, at a glance

Four anchors within a fifteen-minute drive of one another. That has not been true here in a long time.

The Buccaneer is the story most residents underestimate

If you have driven past the Buccaneer Marina in the last few years, you saw a landmark in slow-motion repair. The Buccaneer Marina & Resort and its restaurant were a cornerstone of the Singer Island community for 50 years. While the restaurant shuttered in the early 2000s, it was resurrected in March as the Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill. It is the first phase of a large-scale reinvention; the new marina opened in May and a full transformation of the resort will be unveiled this fall.

Two things are worth pulling out of that timeline.

First, the kitchen is led by a name that would be unusual for a marina restaurant anywhere. Chef Paul Niedermann, the season nine winner of Hell's Kitchen, has put his spin on casual coastal cuisine, to include raw bar bites and locally sourced seafood. His resume before Palm Beach Shores ran through a Chef de Partie position at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, a Junior Sous Chef stint at the St. Regis, the September 2012 Hell's Kitchen win, and the head chef role at BLT Steak in New York City. That is not who usually ends up running a dockside grill on the Lake Worth Inlet.

Second, the menu is not what "waterfront American" usually means around here. The raw bar features East and West Coast oysters, shrimp cocktail and stone crab claws, and the brick oven pizzas include Mexican street corn with cold water lobster, Buffalo Chicken with house-made ranch, or Cherry Stone clams topped with Pecorino Romano. A lobster elote pizza is a strange, specific thing to put on a menu at an address that has been a fisherman's bar since 1956. That is the point of the reinvention.

The fall unveiling of the resort side is the piece to watch. When the rooms come online, the Buccaneer stops being a restaurant you drive to and starts being a destination people fly in for. That changes how the block around Lake Drive feels on a Saturday.

Ocean Ave Kitchen is the shoe about to drop

The stretch of North Ocean where Mulligan's Beach House used to be has been dark long enough that some residents assumed it was staying that way. It isn't.

Ocean Ave Kitchen & Bar is under construction at 2551 N Ocean Ave, Riviera Beach, with owners Donna Qvarnstro and Antonio Huerta targeting a mid-January opening. The new restaurant is taking over the former Mulligan's Beach House space on Singer Island, and the buildout will accommodate about 260 seats including an event space, with plans for full-service lunch and dinner seven days a week. The owner has described the concept as fresh seafood and innovative, very heavy on craft cocktails, in a bright, modern space that leans into its beachside location.

Two hundred sixty seats is a big number for this stretch of the island. For context, that is roughly the seat count of a mid-size hotel restaurant, sitting on a beachfront corner that used to draw a specific tourist crowd. The craft-cocktail lean is the tell. Someone is betting that the demographic on Ocean Drive has drifted upmarket enough to sustain a fresh-seafood bar program at that scale, seven days a week. That is a real capital bet on the island's evening economy, and if it lands in January the shape of a weeknight here changes again.

A Thursday routine that uses all four addresses

If you want to actually use the new map, here is one order of operations that works with the calendars as they stand:

1. 5:30 p.m. Park at Sailfish Marina. Walk the seawall while the artists are still setting up. Every Thursday evening from 6pm–9pm, Sailfish Marina hosts the Sunset Celebration with works from over 35 artists including wood sculpture, pottery, watercolors, blown glass, and handcrafted pieces.
2. 6:15 p.m. Grouper dog from the marina pop-up. This is not dinner. This is the appetizer that gives you permission to walk another loop.
3. 7:00 p.m. Sunset from the seawall itself, not from a table. The light on the water reads better standing than sitting.
4. 7:45 p.m. Six-minute drive to the Buccaneer for the actual meal. Reservations required, especially now. Ask for the upper deck if the wind is quiet.
5. 10:00 p.m. If you still have energy, the bar at the Marriott.

That itinerary was not possible in July 2024. It is possible now, and the second half of it did not exist eighteen months ago.

The two quieter anchors

Not every Thursday needs a circuit. Two of the four addresses are better on their own terms.

ONA Coastal Cuisine at the Marriott is the one that flew under most residents' radar because it opened during a busy stretch. Singer Island's newest coastal eatery, ONA Coastal Cuisine, hosted a grand opening celebration that brought together members of the North Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce, officials from the City of Riviera Beach, and prominent locals at the Palm Beach Marriott Singer Island Beach Resort & Spa on May 9. The menu leans contemporary coastal cuisine using fresh, local ingredients with subtle Mediterranean influences. It is the address to know when you want ocean views without a soundtrack.

Caretta Caretta, tucked in on Singer Island, takes its name from the loggerhead sea turtle, which is a fitting bit of local branding on a coast that runs one of Florida's more active nesting seasons. Coastal-inspired menu, breakfast through dinner, quieter room. If you are the household member who never wants to go where the crowd is, this is your Thursday.

What this actually means for the island

Three data points, taken together, tell one story about where Singer Island and Palm Beach Shores are heading:

• A Hell's Kitchen winner is running the kitchen at a marina that used to be famous for Hemingway stories and mahi sandwiches.
• A 260-seat beachfront restaurant is being built on speculation that the Ocean Avenue corridor can absorb it, opening around the peak of the winter season.
• The Marriott's signature restaurant has been rebuilt from the ground up under a new coastal-Mediterranean concept.

Those are not three unrelated updates. They are three separate operators, in the same eighteen-month window, deciding that the ceiling on Singer Island's evening spend is higher than the market has been pricing it. Residents notice this first at the table. It shows up in property conversations later, and by then the story has already moved.

For the next few months, the useful thing to do is show up. Try the lobster elote pizza before the fall resort opening changes the reservation math at the Buccaneer. Get a Thursday in at Sailfish before January, when a new address across the causeway starts pulling for the same evening.

If you are thinking about how the changing waterfront dining scene fits into a longer look at Singer Island or Palm Beach Shores as a place to own, Joel Poulin is happy to talk. Schedule your complimentary listing consultation and market snapshot when the timing is right.