This Coconut Grove restaurant was an instant hit — but now it’s being sold and closing
Tigertail and Mary was the restaurant that was supposed to mark a new chapter for famed Miami chef Michael Schwartz.
But the experiment has been cut short as the Coconut Grove property appears set to change hands. The restaurant, based in the new Park Grove Residences building, abruptly announced it will close on Oct. 23 “due to circumstances beyond our control,” according to a statement.
The 5,731-square-foot space is listed on the commercial real estate site Loop Net as under contract for an asking price of $6 million.
“We’re incredibly disappointed,” Sunil Bhatt, the CEO of Genuine Hospitality, which runs Schwartz’s restaurants, told the Miami Herald. “We sunk our heart and soul into that restaurant, and it is very successful by every metric.”
The restaurant, which opened in May 2019, had a 10-year lease through October of 2028 with three 10-year options, according to the real estate listing. But the property was listed for sale in March. The deal has not closed yet, according to Fabio Faerman, the agent representing the seller.
“I’m limited to what I can talk about from a legal perspective,” Bhatt said.
Schwartz’s Genuine Hospitality restaurant group employs more than 400 employees across seven restaurants, and Bhatt said the company will try to find jobs for the Tigertail and Mary crew within other locations.
Schwartz, a Philadelphia native but Miami resident of more than 25 years, won a James Beard Foundation award in 2010, the industry’s highest honor, for his gastropub-style restaurant Michael’s Genuine in the Design District. For Tigertail and Mary, Schwartz had hoped to create a new style of cuisine that was vegetable-focused, lighter but flavorful — a more modern interpretation of his creative food.
“The older I get, the more simple I want things,” Schwartz said when it opened. “(This) restaurant is a great representation of how my cooking and my palate has evolved.”
Since then, Schwartz has temporarily closed Michael’s Genuine to remodel the space and the menu, hoping to reopen it for the fall tourist season. He also owns Harry’s Pizzeria, including one location in Coconut Grove and another on the way in South Beach, as well as the high-end Amara at Paraiso in Miami and Traymore at the Como Metropolitan Miami Beach. Schwartz also created the delivery-only Genuine Burger through the REEF Kitchens ghost kitchen.
This story was originally published August 6, 2021 at 1:24 PM.
