After more than 30 years, Hard Rock Cafe at Bayside is closing for good

After more than 30 years, the Hard Rock Cafe at Bayside Marketplace is closing.

The news was first reported by Miami blogger Burger Beast (aka Sef Gonzalez) on his Patreon account. He wrote that he was one of the thousands of curious people who lined up to get a look at the restaurant’s grand opening in 1993.

The brand told the South Florida Business Journal in a statement that its lease is up this year and it was decided not to renew it.

The restaurant will close permanently on Aug. 19, according to the Business Journal, with 117 employees losing their jobs. The Hard Rock Cafe at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino will remain open in Davie.

The brand, which opened its first Hard Rock Cafe in London’s Mayfair neighborhood in 1971, caused quite a stir when it arrived in Miami, taking over what had formerly been Reflections on the Bay with a brash, loud new style.

The 350-seat restaurant opened to great fanfare, with a keyboard and a rotating neon guitar on the roof. The guitar — which weighs about 18,000 pounds and was lowered onto its home of a steel pillar with the help of two construction cranes and able to withstand winds of up to 120 miles per hour — drew oohs and aahs. Viewers were apparently unable to imagine a future in which an entire Hard Rock hotel might be shaped like a guitar.

Like its brethren in the chain, the Hard Rock Cafe Miami was filled with memorabilia, including golden records, guitars, clothing and letters from such musical luminaries as Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Elvis Presley. Highlights’ included Jackson’s $8,000 studded leather jacket, an embroidered coat costing $6,000 that Madonna wore in the movie “Truth or Dare” and a $15,000 Gibson Flying V electric guitar that belonged to Jimi Hendrix.

Trying to get a look and a table on the weekends was a challenge.

“To say that the Hard Rock has been successful in its month of existence here is understatement,” wrote Miami Herald dining columnist Kendall Hamersly in 1993, adding that weekends brought long lines outside and inside.

“Inside is pure bedlam,” he wrote, adding that “If you are suspicious that the carnival atmosphere might reduce the food to afterthought, you’re essentially right.”

Hard Rock Cafe is now owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which acquired Hard Rock International and other related entities in March 2007.