Goodbye grub: Star chef to close acclaimed West Palm Beach destination restaurant

One of the county’s most highly acclaimed restaurants permanently closed in West Palm Beach on Saturday, Oct. 21.

The Regional Kitchen, Chef Lindsay Autry’s homage to her Southern roots, served its final meal at dinner service that night. The restaurant recently celebrated its seventh anniversary after lasting more than twice as long as any other dining establishment in the high-profile Okeechobee Boulevard space.

“It was very hard to make this decision, but we felt it was no longer sustainable,” said Autry, who will continue to operate her newer restaurant, Honeybelle, at the PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens.

She cited the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising food and labor costs, as well as rising taxes among the factors leading to the closing.

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“The cost of everything has gone up,” she said. “Our taxes more than doubled at the beginning of the year. That’s a lot of money that we have to come up with on top of everything else.”

Autry’s business partner, restaurateur Thierry Beaud, said the restaurant struggled with “the hangover of post-COVID” after reopening. Add to that the setbacks caused by “major mechanical” repairs, a slow summer and other costly issues, he said.

“The odds started stacking up against us, and we never fully recovered from the pandemic. We got to a point where, economically, it didn’t make much sense to go on,” said Beaud, whose TITOU restaurant group also owns Pistache French bistro in downtown West Palm Beach and PB Catch seafood restaurant in Palm Beach.

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Autry’s cooking and rising-star appeal drew local and visiting foodies, guest celebrity chefs and anyone else seeking modern Southern dishes and Autry’s destination fried chicken. Her sweet-tea-brined, fried boneless chicken thighs earned national raves and was declared the “best fried chicken” in Florida by the Food Network.

A sophisticated fixture located steps away from the Kravis Center and across the street from the Palm Beach County Convention Center, The Regional inhabited a 10,000-square-foot space that’s part of The Square plaza, which has been rebranded twice since the restaurant’s debut in September 2016.

The Regional’s menu showcased Autry’s elevated takes on Southern classics such as pimento cheese with house-made club crackers, warm tomato pie, fried green tomatoes, Lowcountry boil (featured on Food Network’s “Best Thing I Ever Ate” in 2018) and roasted bone marrow with barbecued short rib and pickled onions. But it also exalted Florida fish and seafood and regional produce.

Location wins and woes

While The Regional’s prime location made it a frequent stop for diners attending Kravis shows and conventions, that flow of customers stopped due to the pandemic. Autry and Beaud decided to temporarily close The Regional. The closure lasted 17 months.

“The sheer size of the restaurant made us dependent on the convention center, the Kravis and the group dining, which was a big reason why we were closed,” Autry said.

They reopened with new optimism in late December 2021. Autry approached The Regional’s reopening like the debut of a new restaurant. She elevated the menu and focused on a chef-driven dinner service.

Weeks after reopening, hoping to draw area newcomers seeking a more cosmopolitan lounge experience, Autry and Beaud reworked The Regional’s “Public House” bar into a sophisticated new lounge called Mockingbird.

But even when some of the diners began to come back, it was too late for the restaurant, Autry said.

“It was very hard for us to build up the momentum when we reopened. At the end of the day, playing catch-up just created an unsustainable business model,” she said.

A representative for The Regional’s landlord, plaza developer Related, praised the role the restaurant has played on the local dining stage.

“We have appreciated The Regional as an integral part of the culinary scene these last few years at The Square. We wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors," Gopal Rajegowda, partner at Related Southeast, said in an emailed statement.

Dining destination

Autry and Beaud opened The Regional at a pivotal time for the West Palm Beach dining scene. Independent, chef-driven restaurants were beginning to carve out a new South Florida dining destination.

With its polished, Southern-meets-World cuisine and its stream of visiting culinary stars, The Regional would help solidify that emerging hub.

The restaurant served as a stage for visiting celebrity chefs and other food personalities, especially during the Palm Beach Food & Wine Festival, which Autry co-organizes with her husband David Sabin, the festival’s director and co-founder.

Each year, during the festival’s “Southern Revival” lunch at The Regional, Autry’s kitchen buzzed with star chefs from all over the country. Among them were James Beard Award-winning chefs Alon Shaya, Stephen Stryjewski, Tory McPhail, Ashley Christensen, Michelle Bernstein and many others.

Martha Stewart headlined a dinner at The Regional during a 2019 South Beach Wine & Food Festival foray into West Palm Beach.

Autry also served quite a few famous diners who visited the restaurant through the years, including First lady Jill Biden, NBA great and businessman Michael Jordan, tennis superstars Serena and Venus Williams and others.

Chef on the rise

Autry was already a rising chef with national recognition when she opened The Regional. In 2012, she had been a finalist on Bravo TV’s “Top Chef” Season 9.

She was also known to Palm Beach County foodies for her cooking at fine dining restaurants, first as executive chef at Michelle Bernstein’s eponymous restaurant at former Omphoy resort in Palm Beach, and later as head chef at the iconic Sundy House in Delray Beach.

But it was at The Regional where Autry came into her own as a chef. It was there that she earned three consecutive semifinalist honors for a prestigious James Beard Award for “Best Chef” in the South.

“I’m really proud that I was able to lean into who I am as a chef and as a person, and have this community embrace it,” said Autry. “It was the first time in my career that I leaned into being Southern and cook Southern cuisine as a chef.”

At The Regional, the North Carolina-born chef created refined Southern dishes inspired by her childhood on her family’s peach farm, adding to the menu Mediterranean touches inspired by her Greek grandmother and other global notes gathered throughout her travels and her time as executive chef in Yucatan, Mexico, where she opened and led a restaurant for Bernstein, her James Beard Award-winning mentor.

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A storied space

Autry filled The Regional space with mementos from her native North Carolina, such as photographs from her family farm and her grandfather’s vintage butcher table.

The sprawling restaurant and bar space had previously housed a series of restaurants, none surviving longer than The Regional.

◾  In 2001, the space welcomed Angelo & Maxie’s steakhouse, which closed in 2004.

◾  Next came an outpost of Tampa’s famed Columbia Cuban-Spanish restaurant, which opened in 2005 and closed in 2008.

◾  After that, the seafood-focused McCormick & Schmick’s restaurant opened in the fall of 2009 and closed in late March 2012.

◾  Following that closing, the Brazilian-inspired Pampas Grille opened in 2012 and closed in 2014.

The space was empty for two years before Autry and Beaud gave it a makeover and debuted The Regional.

Sad farewell

Some days before closing, Autry gathered her employees and delivered the sad news. It was the most painful part of the decision to close, she said.

“The hardest thing for me is how this affects the staff,” said Autry.

She and Beaud say they’ve offered jobs to those who wish to stay with their concepts. Said Autry: “We do have opportunities for all of our staff.”

She and Beaud issued a restaurant statement to announce the closing.

“We are grateful to our community for all of the support over the years, the incredible staff that has made this our home, and are proud of all the milestones and memories we have created,” they said. “This isn’t goodbye, just see you soon.”

The Regional Kitchen and Mockingbird Bar

Open until Saturday, Oct. 21, from 5 p.m. through the end of dinner service.

Located at 651 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach, 561-557-6460, EatRegional.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Regional Kitchen restaurant to close in West Palm Beach near Kravis