Fire gutted the tiki hut at this popular Palmetto Bay seafood spot. Now it’s back up
The cooler, October weather was always the best time to sit under the tiki at Golden Rule seafood restaurant in Palmetto Bay — before a fire gutted the hut.
But three months after an errant firework torched the tiki, the restaurant has built a new outdoor hut and will debut it Oct. 22, just in time for cool Miami weather, the owner of the family-run restaurant said.
“We really needed it. That’s the draw, what people come here for,” said manager Courtney Reeder, whose family has owned the market and restaurant since the 1960s.
The fish market, open since 1943, never closed after a neighbor’s July 4 firework landed in the palm thatch roof and set the cedar wood structure ablaze. Firefighters kept the flames from leaping to the main building — where her grandfather had worked as a bagboy since age 12 before his family later bought the business.
But Reeder said she spent the summer fielding calls from longtime patrons who had stayed away, thinking the whole business had burned down.
“It’s been the hardest summer we’ve ever had,” she said. “It definitely impacted us.”
The family wasted no time, though. They set up tables inside and reopened the next day — the first time they opened the inside since the pandemic forced restaurants to set up outdoor dining rooms.
Reeder knew the tiki was crucial to Golden Rule’s success. So first, they built a smaller tiki hut in their separate garden area, which they’d used for private parties.
Then, they got to work on the larger tiki, which went up in four days. They had to build a new bar and buy new tables, kindling for the July fire. They salvaged a couple of chairs, she said — “they have a more distressed look to them now” — and even the taxidermy fish.
“It looks smoked now,” she joked.
Now she hopes patrons who had stayed away will return, just as they did in the early days after the fire, putting in to-go orders and buying up inventory to help the family offset some of the early losses.
The weather couldn’t be more perfect for it.
“Even though this was such a difficult time, we have had a tremendous amount of support from our community,” Reeder said. “We wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for all of the support we received from fellow business owners, friends and amazingly loyal customers.”
