FORT LAUDERDALE | FLORIDA
Del Mar Brings Mediterranean Menu to the Fort Lauderdale Auberge
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By Eric Barton | Nov. 24, 2025
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed Fort Lauderdale restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
I’ve watched Fort Lauderdale Beach slowly trade in its beer-bucket past for white tablecloths and serious wine lists. The latest proof is Del Mar Fort Lauderdale, a 17,000-square-foot Mediterranean restaurant that just dropped into the ground floor of the Auberge with enough terrace space to make every other oceanfront patio feel undersized.
From Columbus originally, Del Mar is now cloning itself in Naples, West Palm, and here in Fort Lauderdale in the former Dune space, which now has more color and greenery. Walk in from North Ocean Boulevard and it feels more Amalfi than A1A: pale woods, warm neutrals, big windows framing the Atlantic, and a tangle of plants that soften the room instead of turning it into a theme park.
Del Mar’s patio
To be clear, Del Mar isn’t connected to the similarly named Dalmar hotel across town or to the nearly identically named Cafe Del Mar just north of Las Olas. At this Del Mar, general manager Travis Cusack runs the floor, and Michigan-bred chef Mitch Brumels came down from the sister restaurant in Ohio. The menu here is a Mediterranean greatest hits tour: Greece, southern Spain, Morocco, Italy, France.
Expect seafood and shareable dishes, starting with an open-fire-roasted shellfish platter served tableside with South African lobster tail, scallops, prawns, clams and mussels. There is lobster spaghetti with sweet garlic tomato sauce and Calabrian chili, a truffle agnolotti slicked with ricotta and shaved truffles, snapper with blistered tomatoes and roasted eggplant, and sea bass in heirloom tomato broth with fennel confit and citrus labneh.
Lobster spaghetti
Brunch, naturally, is set up for people who like their ocean views with bubbles. On weekends, the restaurant offers half-price Veuve Clicquot by the glass and bottle alongside shakshuka with harissa-stewed eggs, a lobster scramble with mascarpone and heirloom tomatoes, cinnamon-orange swirl French toast with mascarpone, and a warm cinnamon date pull-apart bread with orange icing and pistachio labneh butter.
Lamb burger
Lamb rack
Del Mar has big clogs to fill, replacing a restaurant run by celebrity chef Laurent Tourondel, who closed Dune in April. While Dune was fine-dining as designed by an out-of-town chef, Del Mar seems more geared for the masses, with a burger and mezze dips, all things that can hopefully get Lauderdalians out to a property that’s more destination than on their commute home.
Hours are aimed squarely at both locals and hotel guests: dinner Monday through Thursday from 4 to 10 p.m., Friday from 4 to 11 p.m., Saturday from 3 to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 3 to 10 p.m. Brunch will begin Dec. 6 and runs Saturday and Sunday starting at 11. There’s also a weekday happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m. offering deals on signature cocktails, dips, flatbreads and select wines by the glass.
Cinnamon date bread
For the owner, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, which opened Ocean Prime Fort Lauderdale at Las Olas Marina earlier this year, Del Mar reads like a bet that Fort Lauderdale’s future is less beer bong and more grilled sea bass and half-price Champagne with a view of the waves.
