Miami Spice usually rewards patience. The restaurants that show up on the list every August are the ones that have been open long enough to need a slow-season nudge, the rooms where a $65 dinner menu is a proven way to fill Tuesday tables when half the city is out of town. This year in Brickell, that math is running backward.
Two of the newest, most talked-about restaurants in the neighborhood, Seia and The Mexican, are already on the 2026 Miami Spice list, discounting a meal at rooms that four months ago didn't exist. Meanwhile Uchibā, the one restaurant Brickell has actually been waiting on since Hai Hospitality first announced it for the neighborhood in May 2025, isn't on the list at all. It still hasn't opened.
The Usual Miami Spice Math
Miami Spice is marking its 25th year in 2026, running August 1 through September 30 with more than 300 participating restaurants across Greater Miami and Miami Beach. The Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau sets the pricing bands: $40 for lunch or brunch, $50 or $65 for dinner. New this year is a Miami Spice Reserve tier starting at $95, aimed at chef-led tasting formats rather than the standard three courses. Optional donations at checkout benefit Camillus House, and the program's first $25,000 in guest donations gets matched by the GMCVB.
The program has always worked best for restaurants with a track record, a room that needs a reason to fill on a Tuesday in the middle of hurricane season. That's not who's showing up first in Brickell this year.
Seia Skipped the Wait
Seia opened to the public on March 14, 2026, on the 54th floor of 830 Brickell, with a private members' club, Seia Club, occupying the floor above it. The restaurant is a joint project between OKO Group and The Bastion Collection, the hospitality group behind ten Michelin stars since 2019, and the 178-seat dining room sits under an art collection that includes a Warhol Camouflage piece and a Damien Hirst work titled The Human Voice, on view in the private club.
Five months after opening, Seia began its first-ever Miami Spice on August 3. The lunch menu runs Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., for $40, with options like charcoal-grilled artichokes or wagyu carpaccio followed by ravioli scarpariello or tagliolini al limone. Dinner runs Sunday through Thursday, 5 to 10:30 p.m., for $65, and includes fritto misto, tortelloni alla Napoletana with red wine braised short rib, and grilled octopus with yellow Vesuvian tomatoes, finished with tiramisù. That's a discounted seat, on the 54th floor, at a restaurant whose regular dinner service on Friday and Saturday nights runs until 11:30 p.m. for a room built to feel exclusive.
The Mexican Fills the Table Brickell Key Actually Needed
Brickell Key spent the better part of a year without an obvious answer for dinner. La Mar closed when the Mandarin Oriental Miami began a major renovation in May 2025, leaving the island known mostly for its jogging path and skyline views rather than a kitchen worth staying in for.
The Mexican answered that gap when it opened on April 9, 2026, at 601 Brickell Key Drive, a 10,000-square-foot waterfront space designed by architect Paulina Morán with art and furniture sourced from Monterrey, the hometown of owner Roberto González Alcalá. The restaurant seats more than 330 guests across indoor dining rooms, two private rooms, and terraces that step down toward Biscayne Bay.
Now, in its Miami Spice debut, The Mexican is offering a three-course $40 lunch and $65 dinner Tuesday through Friday, with a menu built around aguachiles, tortilla soup, morita marlin tacos, enchiladas suizas, salmon piquín, and petit filet. Like Seia, it's a restaurant using its first Miami Spice season to introduce itself, not to reward regulars who've been coming for years.
Where Brickell's Newest Rooms Stand Right Now
| Restaurant | Opened | This Year's Miami Spice Status | Signature Offer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seia | March 14, 2026 | First-ever Miami Spice, starting August 3 | $40 lunch / $65 dinner |
| The Mexican | April 9, 2026 | Miami Spice debut | $40 lunch / $65 dinner, Tue-Fri |
| Uchibā | Not yet open | Not participating, past original spring target | No date confirmed |
The Restaurant That's Still Missing
Uchibā is the third piece of Hai Hospitality's Miami trilogy, following Uchi in Wynwood, open since January 2021, and Uchiko in Miami Beach's Sunset Harbour, which opened in March 2025. When the group announced Uchibā for Mary Brickell Village in May 2025, the timeline was spring 2026, with the concept taking over the former Toscano Divino space at 900 S. Miami Avenue.
Spring has come and gone, and as of this writing Uchibā still hasn't opened its doors, with no updated date announced beyond that original spring 2026 target. It's worth noting Uchibā's build is a more complicated one than either Spice debutant. The 3,500-square-foot space is planned around a 56-seat dining room, a 40-seat covered patio, a 16-seat cocktail bar, an 8-seat sushi bar, and an 8-seat lounge, five distinct zones that each need their own finish work before a single reservation can go out. Seia and The Mexican are, by comparison, one big room each. Uchibā is five smaller ones stitched together, and that kind of build takes longer to get right.
For now, it means the restaurant most people in Brickell have actually been asking about isn't part of this year's Spice conversation at all.
What Else Is Moving Into Mary Brickell Village
Uchibā isn't the only change underway at the center. Alongside the restaurant, Kimco Realty, which owns the 200,000-square-foot Mary Brickell Village, announced two more tenants joining the property: a 4,000-square-foot Rivian showroom and a Van Leeuwen ice cream scoop shop. Those additions join the center's existing lineup, The Hampton Social, North Italia, Moxies, and a high-volume Publix, on a 5.2-acre stretch that already anchors a lot of daily foot traffic on South Miami Avenue.
None of that changes what's happening this Spice season, but it's worth knowing the block has more than one storefront still in motion. The same stretch of Mary Brickell Village that's mostly known for lunch right now is one restaurant opening away from a very different after-dark reputation.
How to Actually Use the Next Two Months
A few things worth keeping in mind if you're planning around this year's calendar:
- Seia's Miami Spice dinner only runs Sunday through Thursday, so a Friday or Saturday visit means full menu pricing.
- The Mexican's Spice menu is Tuesday through Friday only, and reservations for both restaurants are running through OpenTable and SevenRooms respectively.
- Komodo, already an established Brickell fixture, is also participating this year with a $65 dinner menu running Sunday through Friday, including its Hamachi Truffle Maki and Maine Lobster, a useful contrast if you want to see what an experienced Spice participant looks like next to two newcomers still figuring it out.
- If Uchibā is the one you're actually holding out for, there's no reservation to chase yet. It's already past its original spring target with no new date announced, so watch for updates rather than planning around a guess.
The version of Brickell that shows up on a restaurant list looks settled, full of names that have been there for years. The version residents are actually living in right now is younger than that, with two of its most photographed new rooms already discounting themselves into your calendar and the one everyone's actually waiting on nowhere to be found. That gap between what's open and what's still coming is worth watching, because it says something about how fast this stretch of the neighborhood is still changing.
If you're curious about what that kind of change means for property values or timing a move into the neighborhood, Alive Sherman has spent two decades tracking Brickell block by block. Book an appointment to talk through what's actually happening here, on the restaurant side and beyond it.
