The Forge on Miami Beach has been closed two years. David Grutman is going to reopen it
The Forge is Groot.
Nightclub owner David Grutman’s Groot Hospitality, which has been expanding from nightclubs into restaurant ownership over the past five years, will take over The Forge, the historic but shuttered Miami Beach restaurant, a representative told the Miami Herald. The Real Deal first reported Grutman’s involvement.
The Forge, which was converted into a restaurant on West 41st Street in the 1950s, became a second home to celebrities and a fine-dining playground for the wealthy, both locals and out-of-towners. Its cellar of more than 300,000 vintage wines, estimated to be worth more than $3 million, kept the party going.
Shareef Malnik, whose father, Alvin, opened The Forge in the 1950s, still owns the building, according to property records, but leased the space and The Forge name to a new tenant that plans to remake the restaurant, a representative of the company handling the renovation told the Miami Herald in December. So it appears Grutman plans to resurrect The Forge name.
The restaurant had been remodeled several times over the years, including an extensive $10 million renovation in 2010. When it closed in 2019, it was with the intention of remaking the space yet again.
Instead, the restaurant remained shuttered and auctioned off everything inside in December of 2020, from kitchen equipment to the lush quilted leather chairs and the modern chandeliers made of Venetian blown glass.
“It’s a total auction sale,” Jay Sugarman, whose company was to host the auction, said at the time.
Enter David Grutman.
Grutman, 46, who founded the nightclubs LIV at the Fontainebleau and Story, has gone all-in on restaurants since opening Komodo, an Asian fusion restaurant in Brickell in 2016. His intent: to capture the aging nightclub crowd with restaurants that retain the buzzy, big-night-out atmosphere.
Since, he has opened Swan in the Design District, Papi Steak in Miami Beach, and was perhaps the first major South Florida restaurateur to embrace vegan and vegetarian-first dining with Planta on South Beach and Planta Queen in the revamped Coconut Grove.
This month he opened the Goodtime Hotel and Strawberry Moon restaurant inside with the entertainer Pharrell Williams, revitalizing a stretch of Washington Avenue that was for years the heart of Miami’s club scene.
This story was originally published April 27, 2021 at 11:03 AM.
