Miami Nights

I attended the swanky and somewhat puzzling opening of Dune Oceanfront Burger Lounge at The Ritz-Carlton on Key Biscayne. We don't normally cover Key Biscayne on Miami Nights because Key Biscayne is one of the most boring places on earth, yet it is simultaneously too crushingly beautiful and relaxing to be able to convincingly talk shit about it. Anyway, Dune aims to be something like Nikki Beach away from South Beach: a relaxing spot to have a cocktail and detox without the hordes of drugbabies that you'd encounter at the regular parties. How burgers fit into this I'm not sure, but those were damn good burgers.

Would I go back? Hard to say. Everything was comped so I don't have any idea about drink prices, but as the hotel runs $600 per night at 100% occupancy, I would imagine they won't be doing 2 for 1 specials. The food was good, but the crowd had a credit rating higher than the types of people I usually choose to associate with. The music was good in a sort of loungey house way, but they flew in DJ Bruno from Ibiza, so it's hard to say what the regular night may hold. Parking was (free) valet only, if you like that sort of thing: I prefer to slang my wreck into a spot on my own.

Suggestions for Dune staff if they happen to be reading this: find unique, quirky, unusual people and pay them with bottles to attend on a regular basis. You have to be unusual enough to make people drive the ~15 minutes into the key, past a toll. You have the raw materials to make this work with that location and the fresh reputation. Also, where are the spice worms?