Review: Four Seasons Hotel at The Surf Club, Surfside, Florida

Give us an establishing shot. Imagine a cool, calm hacienda owned by a fabulous South American aunt. So classy and well-proportioned, every touch here is on point. Home to some of the best restaurants in town, the most elegant bars, it feels like a breath of elegant air in a sometimes clubby Miami scene. Ascend the coral stone steps and enter its palm-filled, beamed lobby, and it might still be 1931—except that the buzz from the bar is a signal that prohibition has clearly been lifted.

Sounds like there's a backstory here... Back in the day, rum runners from Cuba and the Bahamas ensured the Surf Club rarely ran dry, so there was always a party in the cabanas here, drawing the likes of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Gary Cooper, Henry Ford, and John Harvey Kellogg. (Later, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner honeymooned here.) So put away the idea that Four Seasons is a faceless Canadian brand of business hotels; this place is practically a national landmark that has been transformed into a 21st century beacon of high-rise living by Richard Meier, with interiors by Joseph Dirand.

Importantly: Tell us about your room?
Exquisitely minimalist, calm and beautiful and so thoughtfully designed that you can see the sea from the shower. The category to choose is an Oceanfront room; they’re even lovelier than those in the double-aspect Premier category. The less expensive city-view category is great, too: they look across Biscayne Bay to mainland Miami, which offers the opportunity to see some striking sunsets.

What do we have for food and drink here?
The hotel’s main dining room is now Lido Restaurant (revamped from the opening Le Sirenuse concept) and helmed by Executive Chef Marco Calenzo and it specializes in Mediterranean cuisine with decadent pastas and grilled fish and steak. The setting for all this Italian bounty is the grandeur of The Surf Club’s fabled ballroom, once home to the 20th century’s most talked about parties and culinary affairs and now an arched mahogany dining room that gives way to the ocean views of the Lido Terrace. Thomas Keller’s Surf Club restaurant has earned a Michelin star tow years in a row and serves up top-notch throwback cooking with Lobster Thermidor and Beef Wellington in a polished jewel box of a dining room. It’s always busy, so reserve a table when you book your room.

How did you find the service?
Unexpectedly international (my breakfast was brought by a Russian on Four Seasons’ fast-track management program) and reassuringly slick, as one has come to expect from the brand.

Who else is staying here?
Despite three swimming pools and direct access to the beach, one senses the polished, well-heeled, outwardly conservative ‘business-casual’ clientele are mostly in town for meetings, at least midweek. (It may be less preppy on weekends.) The restaurant crowd—much of it local—glams up in the evening, but the Faena it isn’t.

What about the neighborhood? Are we in a notable location?
Compared with South Beach (20 minutes south in an Uber), the Surfside area of northern Miami Beach is fairly dull, residential and lacking in shops and restaurants.

What's the one thing you'd change?
They shouldn’t—as they did when I stayed—levy a 20 percent service charge on the ‘admin fee’ of a room-service order as well as the food, bringing the cost of a modest breakfast (coffee, orange juice, and granola) to an astonishing $43.80, including sales tax (at least they didn’t add service to that), excluding the further ‘gratuity’ they solicit below.

Anything else of note?
If you’re waiting in the lobby, the photo-filled vitrines are an intriguing visual history of the place.

Bottom line: worth it?
As long as you don’t use room service, it’s a real treat. Glamorous, gorgeous, and the spa is heaven.