As Stet News reported in July, in mid-June, a couple who had opened a 60-seat Italian restaurant three weeks earlier were turning away diners for lack of tables. They hadn't run an ad. They hadn't hired a publicist. A single glowing post on a neighborhood social media feed helped fill a room in Lake Park on a random weeknight.
That restaurant is Due Cuori Ristorante, and its sudden popularity says something about this stretch of town that the marina redevelopment headlines have been missing. The big, publicly negotiated version of a "new Lake Park waterfront" is still tied up in litigation. The small, privately funded version already opened, and it's busy.
A Block That Got Interesting Ahead of Schedule
The geography here matters. Due Cuori sits at 405 Federal Highway, in a plaza its owners describe as sitting just north of Nautilus 220, the twin 24-story condo towers at 220 Lake Shore Drive that anchor the Lake Park waterfront. Nautilus 220 finished construction late enough in 2025 that its 330 units landed on the town's tax rolls just under the wire for the 2026-27 budget year, with a certificate of occupancy issued December 22, 2025. Inside that building's ground floor, Forest Development built out commercial space anchored by a restaurant of its own, with a second concept slated to follow.
So within about a block of Lake Shore Drive and U.S. 1, you now have new restaurants that didn't exist a year ago, sitting beside a town marina that is still, as of this writing, the subject of an active lawsuit between the developer and the town over who owes what to whom. The restaurants opened. The marina deal did not close. Those are two different stories, and conflating them is the mistake most write-ups make.
The One Nobody Marketed
Due Cuori is the story worth sitting with, because it's the one that happened without a marketing budget. Owners Alfredo Verrone, who grew up near Bologna and ran restaurants in Italy before relocating, and Monique Rabyor, who lives in Loxahatchee and brings more than 22 years of hospitality experience to the front of house, opened the restaurant over Memorial Day weekend 2026 in a space that used to be a diner. For the first few weeks, business was slow enough that Rabyor still had time for her own lunch. "That hurt a little," she told Stet News in July. "I love my lunches."
Then a customer posted a review on a neighborhood social feed in mid-June, and the dynamic flipped. The restaurant started closing for lunch entirely just to prep for dinner crowds it hadn't planned for. "We have created a monster," Verrone told Stet News.
The menu leans into what Verrone calls actual Italian technique rather than the red-sauce-and-cheese version most Americans expect. There's no Alfredo sauce and no vodka sauce on the menu, by his own account, because neither exists in the Italy he grew up in. The one dish that broke that rule anyway is chicken Parmesan, which Rabyor admits isn't found in Italy but has become the restaurant's most requested plate regardless. The pizza program is run by Pasquale Parente, a retired pizza maker from Brooklyn whom Verrone talked out of retirement, and the pies have shifted from an American-Italian style toward something closer to what you'd find in Naples, Italy, with a ricotta base topped with eggplant, guanciale, mushrooms, and spinach.
The owners are already planning a side patio for fall, reasoning that the same breeze off the water that makes the marina pleasant will make outdoor seating work here too. Verrone told Stet News that the patio would be a space for "the beach people" and for customers who want to bring a dog, with plans for weekend car shows in the parking lot and eventually a Sunday brunch service.
What Opened First, and What It Actually Is
Before Due Cuori existed, the restaurant conversation in this part of Lake Park was about David Burke. The chef, known for his New York restaurants including Park Ave Kitchen on Lexington Avenue, opened SeaHawk Prime by David Burke inside Nautilus 220 in early January 2026, choosing the waterfront setting deliberately. "The waterfront inspired us to balance the menu between land and sea," Burke told Palm Beach Illustrated at the time, describing a steakhouse that leans on Prime cuts but also works in fresh, local seafood. Sunday brunch followed on January 18, 2026, and Burke told the magazine he planned a companion concept, Birdie Dockside Bar & Grill, next door for early February.
The distinction that matters here: SeaHawk Prime sits inside Nautilus 220's own ground-floor commercial space, built and controlled by Forest Development as an amenity to the condo project itself, with Birdie Dockside slated to join it next door. Neither required a town vote, a 99-year land lease, or Cabinet approval from Tallahassee. SeaHawk Prime opened because a private developer built a private building and leased out the storefront.
Why the Marina Itself Is Still Waiting
The part of this project that has stalled is a separate piece of land entirely: the town-owned marina and the adjacent 2.5 acres where Forest Development has leases to build a 260-room hotel, a 30,000-square-foot stand-alone restaurant, and a 280-boat dry storage facility. That plan needs sign-off from the state, because it involves converting public underwater land, and the approval process hit friction when the Town Commission postponed a required appearance before the Governor and Cabinet. Forest notified the town that the delay put it in default of the lease terms, and in late December 2025 it filed suit against the town in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.
The dispute widened from there. In February 2026, Lake Park resident and attorney Pablo Perhacs sued the town separately, arguing that the closed-door meetings back in 2021 that first selected Forest as the town's development partner may have violated Florida's Sunshine Law, a claim that could theoretically unwind the whole arrangement if a judge agrees. The construction side got messier too: general contractor Kast Construction placed an $11.4 million lien on the Nautilus 220 project on May 13, 2026, and by mid-July each side had escalated to a lawsuit, with Forest accusing Kast of incomplete work and water damage from poor subcontractor oversight, and Kast countersuing over more than $11 million in monthly progress payments it says Forest never made.
None of that touched the restaurants. SeaHawk Prime and Due Cuori both opened and are operating while the marina lawsuits work their way through the courts. If you've been waiting for some sign that the "big" waterfront plan has to get sorted before Lake Park's food scene actually changes, the last eight months argue otherwise. The change already happened, on private ground, while the marina project remains in litigation.
If You're Heading Over This Week
A few practical notes worth knowing before you go:
- Due Cuori is open Tuesday through Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 10 p.m., and Sunday from 4 to 9 p.m. It's closed Mondays. Reservations are strongly recommended given the current wait times, and takeout is available by phone or online, though delivery isn't offered yet.
- SeaHawk Prime serves dinner Thursday through Sunday, with a Sunday brunch service that launched January 18, 2026.
- Both restaurants sit within a short walk of each other on Lake Shore Drive and U.S. 1, near the marina and Kelsey Park, so a single evening can realistically include both if you're comparing notes.
- The planned Due Cuori patio isn't open yet. If outdoor seating and a dog-friendly setup matter to your plans, fall is the target, not now.
The Actual Takeaway
The lesson here isn't that Lake Park got a few new restaurants, which is the version of this story every other roundup will tell you. It's that the restaurant scene and the marina redevelopment are running on entirely different clocks, so the two developments can be understood separately. The marina hotel, the public boat storage, the promised waterfront boardwalk, those are still pending a courtroom outcome that could take months more to resolve. The dinner reservation you can't get into on a Saturday night already exists, three blocks from where the lawsuits are being argued.
That gap between the paperwork and the actual neighborhood is worth paying attention to beyond just where to eat. It's usually the first sign of where a place is heading before the official version of the story catches up.
If you're watching this corner of Lake Park for reasons beyond dinner plans, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground read Naples Coastal Living tracks closely across Florida's coastal markets. Request a Private Market Update if you want that same lens applied to what's actually happening in a neighborhood, not just what's been announced.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
