Why Boca's Restaurant Row Traded a Michelin Splurge for Prime Rib, and What's Opening Next Door

Stage Kitchen & Bar served its last dinner on Restaurant Row on July 5. Forty-six days later, on August 20, the same chef was back in the same kitchen on Town Center Road with a new name over the door. The menu now had prime rib, matzoh ball soup and tableside martinis, and the chef expected average entrée prices to fall from $65 to $75 down to $25 to $35.

Chef Pushkar Marathe is a James Beard Award semifinalist, and Stage was Michelin-recognized. He didn't leave or sell the space. He and business partner Andy Dugard rebuilt it as Boca Brasserie. Marathe told the Sun Sentinel the change was "a matter of survival" and a nod to "what locals really want." That decision is the clearest sign yet of what the four-restaurant row at 5377 Town Center Road has become: a weeknight neighborhood strip, while the special-occasion dining in this part of Boca moves next door into the mall.

A 200-Seat Room That Filled on Weekends

Stage opened on Restaurant Row in March 2025 with strong early traffic. Marathe said it quickly became a "special occasion" splurge on holidays and weekends. Weekday turnout was middling, though, and that wasn't enough to fill 200 seats.

The menu was part of the problem, in his account. Stage's flagship opened in Palm Beach Gardens in 2020, and Marathe expanded to Boca after hearing that guests were driving north for his cooking. In Boca, though, dishes like tandoori churrasco, Korean barbecue ribs, truffle naan and Peruvian chicken sometimes proved too adventurous for diners who "like to be in their comfort zones," he said.

"We didn't just want to give up on the space. This was a great way to stay relevant and crowd-pleasing. We wanted to bring back American nostalgia classics from Chicago and New York, where a lot of our guests had food from their childhoods." Pushkar Marathe, to the Sun Sentinel

He is describing a room that worked as a destination on Saturdays and needed to work as a regular stop on Tuesdays. Everything about Boca Brasserie is built for the second job.

What Actually Changed Inside Suite 200

Marathe kept the open kitchen and a couple of Stage favorites. He changed nearly everything that sets the cost and pace of a meal.

The menu posted on the restaurant's official site puts the Boca Burger at $23.95. Steak frites and an 8-ounce filet mignon are both $45.95. The steaks run above the range Marathe gave in July, while the burger comes in under it. Even the steaks cost about $20 less than a typical Stage entrée. The rest of the menu is prime steaks, local fish, burgers, salmon, twice-blanched fries with house dipping sauces, and flatbreads that include a margherita, a mushroom version and a Swiss-style tarte flambée.

The dining room has retro photos of vintage Boca Raton. The Palm Beach Post described the concept as a neighborhood dining room for regulars. LocalGrubber reviewed it on September 4, gave it 4.5 out of 5, and praised the Caesar salad, flatbread, burger and salmon.

Marathe also knows how crowded his new category is. "Even though there are seven or eight steakhouses around us, I think we're going to be successful because competition is good," he told the Sun Sentinel, and he plans daily specials to keep regulars coming back.

The Row Had Already Moved in This Direction

Stage isn't the first turnover on the row. PEBB Enterprises bought a two-acre site from CP Group for $2.3 million in 2021 and built the 22,500-square-foot Restaurant Row on it. Fiolina Pasta House closed in December 2024 after about a year. Motek, the Israeli-style restaurant from founder Charlie Levy, took over that space and opened April 2, 2025.

Marathe compared Boca Brasserie's new prices to his "casual next-door neighbors," Motek and El Camino. In effect, the row's most ambitious tenant moved toward the price range of the restaurants that were already open around it. Here's the lineup as of early October 2026:

El Camino is run by Modern Restaurant Group, owned by Brandon Belluscio, Brian Albe and Anthony Pizzo. It was targeting a December 2023 debut, and PEBB later said it opened in late 2023. Pubbelly Sushi's operator site lists the Boca location with regular hours. In December 2025, the Boca Raton Observer called it a recent opening.

How Boca Brasserie Runs on a Weekday

The hours and happy hour are where the weekday strategy shows most clearly. According to the restaurant's site, the dining room is open 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, with the bar open until 10 p.m. From Thursday through Saturday, the dining room runs until 10 p.m. and the bar until 11 p.m.

Happy hour runs from 2 to 6 p.m. every day. The official happy-hour menu lists:

• $8 cocktails
• $7 house spirits and wines
• $5 beers
• $5 olives, with most other bites at $10

In July, the Sun Sentinel's preview listed cocktails at $8 to $12. The posted menu has since settled at $8. Menus and hours on restaurant websites can change without notice, so check the site before planning around a specific special.

The Upscale Openings Are Going Inside the Mall

The rest of the neighborhood is moving in the other direction, toward bigger and more expensive rooms. On September 10, the Palm Beach Post reported that two upscale restaurant brands are coming to Town Center at Boca Raton. Greek seafood concept Limani Grille and Tuscan Italian restaurant Felice have both posted their next locations as "coming soon" at the mall's 6000 Glades Road address, with no opening dates announced.

Boca magazine reported that Felice is planned as a 150-seat restaurant and wine bar, with the opening expected "this fall or winter." Simon, the mall's owner, lists Felice as a mall tenant, so it will be inside the mall rather than a fifth restaurant on the row. Neither restaurant has a confirmed date, so for now both should be treated as coming soon.

The office building next to the row also changed hands recently. Joe Sitt's Thor Equities paid $62 million for Two Town Center at 5355 Town Center Road, Commercial Observer reported on September 8. The 11-story building has 153,213 square feet of office space and is about 90 percent leased, according to a source familiar with the deal. The sale completed CP Group's exit from the Town Center office complex, which it developed in the 1980s. Restaurant Row sits on its own neighboring two-acre parcel, which PEBB developed. Representatives for Thor Equities and CP Group could not be reached for comment, so Thor's plans for the building have not been made public.

A little farther west on Glades Road, the French café and bakery Maman is set to open at Shadowood Square, 9959 Glades Road, with a grand opening on Tuesday, October 6. It will serve pastries, breakfast, lunch, coffee and tea. That gives the Glades Road corridor a daytime café on top of the restaurants opening around Town Center.

Picture a resident who lives near the mall this fall. On Restaurant Row, the former $65-to-$75 entrée room now opens its happy hour at 2 p.m. and sits closer to the prices of its casual neighbors. Just west, at 6000 Glades Road, the mall is adding two upscale restaurants that haven't announced opening dates. Marathe's July decision helped create that split, since it moved Stage's special-occasion menu into the price range of the restaurants around it.

Commercial corridors like Town Center Road change one lease and one menu at a time, and those changes shape what the surrounding Boca Raton neighborhoods feel like to live in. At The Schirripa Group, our development and investment background means we follow these tenant moves closely and look at what they suggest about nearby property. If you own near Town Center, or are weighing a home within reach of Glades Road, we would be glad to walk you through how the corridor is changing. Contact us to start the conversation.