Hakkasan Miami – Cantonese glamour on the Fontainebleau's rooftop

Hakkasan Miami sits on the fourth-floor rooftop of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, the 1954 Morris Lapidus hotel whose curved facade still defines Collins Avenue. It opened in April 2009 as the first United States address for Alan Yau's Hakkasan, the London Cantonese house founded in 2001, and quickly became the city's reference point for modern Chinese cooking at a moment when Miami Beach dining still leaned towards ceviche counters and steak. The name itself carries two cultures: a nod to the Hakka people of Hong Kong's New Territories, paired with the respectful Japanese honorific 'san'. Today the restaurant is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, a distinction that places it among a small number of Chinese kitchens in Florida to earn inspectors' attention, and it still trades on the same woks, dim sum steamers and lacquered ducks that built the Hakkasan name in Hong Kong, London and New York.

01The room and the setting

Guests ride up through the Fontainebleau's lobby to find a dining room that reads as a world apart from the hotel's postwar sparkle. On its opening night, reporters described the space as a maze of carved teak seating areas lit low and dark, with turquoise leather chairs setting the colour key against the gloom. That design language has held: contemporary accounts still note the dimly lit space glowing with the restaurant's signature blue and teal lighting, its walls captivating guests with intricate wood carvings and leather banquettes.

Marble recurs throughout — dramatic lights, sleek marble tables and ornate wooden slat dividers give the room its imperial register, while the restaurant's position on the hotel's upper level means it still functions, as it did at launch, as a rooftop enclave rather than a street-level dining room.

02The chef

The kitchen is led today by Executive Chef Hing Fung Matt Chan, who arrives with more than three decades of Cantonese and regional Chinese training. Originally from Hong Kong, Chef Hing Fung Matt Chan brings over 30 years of culinary expertise rooted in Cantonese and regional Chinese cuisines, having held executive roles at luxury Chinese restaurants across the US, including China Epcot at Disney World. His brief, as the hotel's own description puts it, is to pair dramatic lighting and imperial marble tables with contemporary creations inspired by Cantonese tradition and reimagined with bold, modern flair.

Insider tip

Dinner only, nightly; smart-elegant dress code; valet parking at the Fontainebleau.

03The cooking and what to order

The à la carte menu, read on the restaurant's own site in October 2026, runs from small eats such as the Black Truffle Spring Roll and Salt and Pepper Calamari through to showpiece seafood: Lobster Dumplings, Florida Pink Prawns with Black Truffle, and a Maine Lobster offered steamed with garlic, stir-fried with ginger and scallion, or Singapore-chilli style with a sweet bun. The kitchen's own XO sauce, made with aged dried scallops and shrimp, is served alongside many of these dishes and sold by the ounce for guests who want more.

Set menus are built for the table rather than the individual: the four signature menus, priced per person for parties of four or more, climb from a vegetarian Chrysanthemum menu to the Dragon menu, which opens with Peking duck finished with Osetra caviar. Elsewhere the card holds Char Siu Beef, Black Pepper Beef Tenderloin and a Crispy Duck Salad that has featured on the menu for years, alongside rice and noodle dishes such as XO Fried Rice with Shrimp & Beef.

04Wine and drinks

Hakkasan's wine programme is sized to match the Fontainebleau around it. The large format section alone, featuring bottles from Champagne, Napa, Burgundy and Bordeaux, is quite impressive, and the restaurant has built a reputation as one of Miami Beach's more serious Chinese wine lists rather than an afterthought to the food. The hotel also runs a separate Exclusive Wine Tasting Experience at the Wine Counter inside Hakkasan, guided by expert sommeliers and drawn from a collection of more than 1,000 acclaimed wines housed within the wider Fontainebleau cellar.

05When to go and booking

Hakkasan Miami serves dinner only, daily, from 6pm to 10pm Sunday through Thursday and 6pm to 11pm on Friday and Saturday, according to the restaurant's own site in October 2026. The dress code is smart and elegant, in keeping with a room built for evenings rather than quick lunches, and reservations run through the restaurant directly or its online booking page; weekends fill well ahead of the week.

06The neighbourhood

The address alone is the draw for many first-time visitors: designed by Morris Lapidus, the luxury Fontainebleau hotel opened in 1954 and remains the defining example of Miami Modern, or MiMo, architecture on Collins Avenue. Hakkasan occupies a private corner of that landmark, a short walk from the hotel's pools and private beach, putting a London-born Cantonese kitchen inside one of the most photographed hotel facades in Florida.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.