The Bazaar by José Andrés South Beach – Closed

The Bazaar by José Andrés South Beach was the second location of chef José Andrés’s Beverly Hills Bazaar – a temple to avant-garde Spanish cuisine, reinterpreting the original’s menu through a Latin and Singaporean lens. Opened four years after the Beverly Hills restaurant, Florida’s Bazaar was the centerpiece of the luxe new SLS Hotel South Beach, occupying most of its lobby, and represented the absolute pinnacle of Andrés’s team’s capabilities: Key chefs from Washington DC’s minibar personally fine-tuned the menu and plating during its soft opening, combining riffs on South American classics with Asian dumplings, California Bazaar recipes, and a top-tier cocktail program.

While Beverly Hills’ Bazaar was heavily inspired by the revolutionary modernist cuisine (aka molecular gastronomy) Ferran and Albert Adrià pioneered at el Bulli in Spain, as well as Philippe Starck’s futuristic design of the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, the vibe at South Beach’s Bazaar was very different – an illustration, in the era of Andrés’ classically inspired America Eats Tavern, that historic recipes could serve as Bazaar foundations, too. Though Starck returned with a multi-room layout for the Florida restaurant, the first room began as a clean space with solid colors and modern materials, made edgier following the soft opening by adding almost tattoo-style dense calligraphic writing to the walls. A second dining room with sandy tones was further back and more classically French-influenced, a seeming nod to more conservative fine dining tastes.

Around half of the original menu’s dishes and drinks returned, including “air bread” sandwiches, caviar cones, and the nitro caiparinha, a tableside cart-prepared, liquid nitrogen-frozen sorbet made from the famous Brazilian cocktail. Other LA highlights included Japanese baby peaches, watermelon and tomato skewers, and a “Not Your Everyday Caprese” salad made with spherified cheese. Capitalizing on the new locale’s proximity to Cuba (and well-off expatriates), the Bazaar team introduced modernist riffs on Cubano sandwiches, coffee-rubbed steak, and an ethereal version of the Peruvian egg, potato, and cheese appetizer papas a la huancaina. A modernist deconstructed key lime pie from America Eats Tavern re-emerged here as a dessert, along with tembleque, a jiggly coconut and mango swirl that was likely originally conceived for Andrés’ Puerto Rico restaurant Mi Casa. New seafood items also debuted at this Bazaar, including some that later came to Bazaar Mar, a seafood-focused take on Bazaar’s concept that launched in Vegas in mid-2024.