Have you walked through Huizenga Park lately? If the last time you tried a Dine Out Lauderdale menu was 2023 or 2024, the honest answer is probably no, because there wasn't much of a park to walk through. Construction fencing sat where the Civic Lawn is now. The fountain was dry. The corner of Las Olas Boulevard and the New River that anchors this whole stretch of downtown was, for two years, a work site.
That changed in January. And it means the version of Dine Out Lauderdale running from August 1 through September 30 this year sits inside a genuinely different downtown than the one longtime residents remember from past summers. The menus are familiar. The blocks around them are not.
The park that wasn't there last time
Huizenga Park, at 32 East Las Olas Boulevard, reopened to the public on January 24 and 25, 2026, closing out a two-year, $15 million redesign of the 3.6-acre riverfront site. The redesign restored the Spirit of Fort Lauderdale Fountain, added Poppy's Play Patch and downtown's first enclosed dog run, The Dog Spot, and brought in public art from Manolo Valdés and Cey Adams. Landscaping added more than 13,500 plants across 58 species and 88 new shade trees along the New River.
None of that existed the last time most people in this city planned a summer around discounted dinners. The park is now programmed too. A multi-year partnership with Cleveland Clinic is sponsoring more than 100 free wellness sessions this year, from yoga to Zumba on the Civic Lawn, and the park is expected to host over 150 events total, most of them free. Jenni Morejon, president and CEO of the Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority, put it simply when the park reopened: "The programming is what gives the park its rhythm."
That rhythm matters if you're planning an evening downtown this month. A dinner reservation used to be the whole plan. Now there's a reason to arrive an hour early, walk the riverfront seating, and let the fountain and the shade trees do some of the work a restaurant used to do alone.
What's actually on the table this year
Dine Out Lauderdale has run since 2008, but the mechanics are the same every year: participating restaurants offer three-course prix fixe menus at set price points, roughly $35 for lunch and $45, $60, or a $75 luxe tier for dinner, running from August 1 through September 30. This year Visit Lauderdale is promoting it as the largest edition yet, with more than 140 restaurants signed on.
A few names worth knowing if you're deciding where to spend a Tuesday night:
- Ocean Prime, which opened this past May at the new Las Olas Marina at 171 Las Olas Circle, its first East Coast location, is offering a $75 luxe dinner nightly with choices like scallop and lobster risotto and filet mignon.
- Del Mar, the Mediterranean-leaning reimagining of the former DUNE space at Auberge Beach Residences, has a $60 three-course dinner built around snapper, salmon, or roasted chicken.
- Burlock Coast Seafare & Spirits inside the Ritz-Carlton is running both the $35 weekday lunch and a $60 dinner, Sunday through Thursday.
- Casa D'Angelo, which has held its place as one of Fort Lauderdale's Northern Italian standbys for more than 25 years, and Chima Fort Lauderdale, a steakhouse offering a $60 menu tied to a reservation code, round out the higher end of the list.
What's new in 2026 isn't just who's participating but what "participating" means. Temple Street Eatery is running dumpling-making classes alongside its menu. The Wilder has built out a dedicated Cocktail Club. There are guided culinary walking tours along Las Olas Boulevard itself, turning what used to be a discount card into something closer to a self-guided food tour of a corridor that's changed more in the last year than in the five before it.
The boulevard that gets you there without a car
Parking on Las Olas has never been the easy part of any of this, and this year it's arguably harder, because the city is in the middle of redesigning the boulevard itself. Downtown Fort Lauderdale foot traffic on Las Olas has climbed 19% since 2021 and now tops five million visits a year, and the city is responding with plans for wider sidewalks and an expanded shade canopy supported by more than 90 new trees. That's good news for the boulevard long term. It's one more reason to skip driving this particular summer.
The Water Taxi solves the practical problem. The yellow hop-on, hop-off boats run routes as far north as Pompano Beach down to Hollywood, which means a resident living anywhere along that stretch can reach the Fort Lauderdale riverfront corridor without hunting for a spot near Las Olas or Huizenga Park at all. Book a Water Taxi stop near the marina, walk to Ocean Prime, cross to the park afterward for a stroll past the fountain, and the whole evening happens without a single parking decision.
That's a genuinely different way to spend a Tuesday than it was two summers ago, when the same trip meant circling for parking next to an active construction site.
Why this exact version won't come around again
Here's the part worth sitting with. Next year's Dine Out Lauderdale will run on the same dates, with roughly the same price tiers, because that's the format the program has kept since 2008. But the boulevard it runs through is still moving. The sidewalk widening and the shade canopy expansion the city has planned for Las Olas haven't happened yet. Sweetwaters, the waterfront restaurant slated to anchor Huizenga Park itself, is still headed for a fall opening, not open yet. By next August, the corner that just reopened in January will have had a full extra year of programming, a finished sidewalk redesign, and a restaurant inside the park that doesn't exist today.
Which means the resident doing Dine Out Lauderdale this particular August and September is catching downtown Fort Lauderdale in a specific, temporary state: newly reopened, mid-redesign, one restaurant short of finished. It won't look quite like this again. That's less a discount dining season than a two-month window on a downtown that's still becoming whatever it's going to be next.
If you've been meaning to see what changed since the fencing came down, this is the season to go look. Not every price tier lasts, and neither does this exact version of the city.
For more on what's happening across Fort Lauderdale and its surrounding neighborhoods, or if a move within Broward County is somewhere on your horizon, Lisa Stephenson is always happy to talk local. Let's Connect.
