Sea View Hotel, Bal Harbour, On The Ocean

“Business Day at the Sea View”

I arrived today for a meeting with clients and had the opportunity to wrap up our appointment while having lunch at The Emerald Room. The service was excellent and the food quality outstanding, from the fresh salads to the shrimp scampi. It’s the perfect place to hold a business meeting in a calm a… more

I arrived today for a meeting with clients and had the opportunity to wrap up our appointment while having lunch at The Emerald Room. The service was excellent and the food quality outstanding, from the fresh salads to the shrimp scampi. It’s the perfect place to hold a business meeting in a calm and elegant setting. Truly an impeccable experience. Bernardo Olmos

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“So pleasantly surprised and delighted”

A hidden gem! Some other reviewers found it dated but I strongly disagree. It’s an elegant and well-maintained landmark hotel. A quiet oasis in Miami Beach. Jennifer and Albano in the coffee shop are magnetic personalities. Warm and sparkling pool. Great history here. Large beachfront section. We … more

A hidden gem! Some other reviewers found it dated but I strongly disagree. It’s an elegant and well-maintained landmark hotel. A quiet oasis in Miami Beach. Jennifer and Albano in the coffee shop are magnetic personalities. Warm and sparkling pool. Great history here. Large beachfront section. We can’t wait to return. What to improve? Friendly, helpful information at check in.

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“Nice "vintage" hotel that serves over-priced food and terrible coffee.”

The Sea View hotel in Bal Harbour, Florida, is a “vintage” property that is well maintained and a pleasant place to stay. It is also reasonably priced (for Bal Harbour) and conveniently located about a quarter-mile from an upscale shopping center that contains three good restaurant choices – an im… more

The Sea View hotel in Bal Harbour, Florida, is a “vintage” property that is well maintained and a pleasant place to stay. It is also reasonably priced (for Bal Harbour) and conveniently located about a quarter-mile from an upscale shopping center that contains three good restaurant choices – an important feature because the hotel restaurant is bad. The hotel rooms have bathrooms with circa 1960s bathtubs, shower curtains and low-sitting toilets but they all function just fine. The pool and surrounding area is very pleasant and is where you should spend most of your time. The ocean is a short walk from the pool area and the beach is also a great place to spend your day. That said, the hotel has some serious flaws. Firstly, no coffee available before the restaurant opens for breakfast at 07:30 AM. The rooms have coffeemakers but they produce crappy coffee. There is a Starbucks located about a half-mile walk that opens at 06:00 AM. The coffee it serves is head-and-shoulders better than any you will get at the hotel. One alternative you might consider is to bring your own ground coffe and a Melita pour-over brewer cup and make your own morning coffee. The room coffeemaker will produce the boiling water needed. Now on to food. We ate in the hotel’s Terrace Restaurant the night we arrived. That one meal was enough to discourage ever coming back for dinner. We ordered one breaded Calamari appetizer. It was mostly greasy breading and tasteless. We left most of it untouched. The appetizer came before we ordered our main entrees so we were forewarned to order food that would be hard to screw up. We settled on the Shrimp Scampi pasta dish, which was a good choice. It consisted of eight small shrimp surrounding a mound of pasta. The shrimps were slightly overcooked but still tasty and the garlic-lemon-butter sauce was quite good. If I had to eat dinner at the hotel I would order this dish again. Lastly, the wine selection – which sucked. The one wine on the menu that I was familiar with, Duckhorn Chardonnay, was unavailable. We settled for two glasses of Pinot Gregio, which had a rough finish. I wanted a second glass of wine but something better than what I just had. Our server brought out several open bottles of different white wines, all of which were poor. We turned them down and ended the dinner. For convenience, I ate all of my breakfasts at the hotel but my partner (an early-riser) ate at the off-site Starbucks. The hotel coffee was consistently weak and lacking in flavor. One breakfast choice, Avocado toast, was very good! Two eggs (your chosen style) over two slices of toast covered with Avocado and Arugula salad. This was delicious and more than ample in size. Two people could easily share this dish. I also tried two different omelets. Both were overcooked and dry. If you want eggs order then separately and specify exactly how you what them cooked. My last two breakfasts were the Greek yoghurt, granola, and fruit parfait. The first one included about twice the 6 oz described on the menu but only about a ¼ cup of granola. The second on included about the stated t6 oz but substituted a chopped walnuts for the granola. My server said the kitchen ran out of granola. Say what??? Granola has a long shelf life. Running out is unacceptable for a hotel restaurant. It’s a clear example of poor, sloppy management. Lastly, the service in the Terrace Restaurant is lackadaisical – at best. The afternoon we arrived we ordered two sandwiches for lunch – and waited 40 to get them. We were told our server neglected to press the “enter” button to send the order to the kitchen. Apparently, that excused our long wait. There is a separate diner-like coffee shop on the premises where the service is great and the ambiance is informal and friendly. The menu includes a delicious, fresh roasted Turkey Club sandwich that is HUGE! Large enough for two people. It also serves hot oatmeal. Unfortunately, the coffee is just as bad as in the Terrace Restaurant. Another troubling issue was the hotel’s propensity for erroneously double-charging so I caution you to carefully review the final bill. The hotel offers laundry service for a $20 flat rate, which is a good deal. However, at checkout we were charged twice that amount. The front desk called housekeeping that said we had mixed white and colored garments in the bag, which had to be separately washed. While reasonable, that detail should have been stated in the brochure in the room. We were also charged twice for the two glasses of wine we had at dinner the first night. I had to directly appeal to the hotel’s manager who refunded the excess charge. While this review may appear damning, the hotel is actually a good deal given how expensive the surrounding hotels are. You just need to avoid the pitfalls and also minimize ordering food from the hotel restaurant. There are at least three good restaurants at the shopping center: Carpaccio (Italian) Hillstone (American) and Makoto (Japanese). Makoto stands above the other two for food quality but it is also substantially more expensive.

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