If you don’t feel like making dinner out of the milk and cookies you left for Santa, here are five local restaurants that will do all the work so all you have to make are reservations.
For putting on the ritz, there’s no place like the Ritz Carlton Palm Beach (100 S. Ocean Blvd., 561/533-6000) has plenty of options. It’s offering both Eve and Day dinners at its swanky Angle restaurant, where you can feast on a la carte selections like duck confit pot pie. There will also be two buffets: Christmas Eve at Temple Orange from 5 to 10 p.m. and Christmas Day in the ballroom from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
At Café Boulud in the Brazilian Court Hotel (301 Australian Ave., Palm Beach, 561/655-6060) chef Jim Leiken has created both brunch and dinner menus for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. A three-course brunch will be offered from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for $38 per person both days. Dinners run from 5:30 to 10 p.m. and feature a trio of courses for $95 per person Christmas Eve and $85 per person Christmas Day.
Another hot chef, Michelle Bernstein, will present five-course dinners for $75 both Eve and Day at her MB Restaurant at the Omphoy resort in Palm Beach (2842 S. Ocean Blvd., 561,586-6542. There will be selections off the regular menu and specials like ribeye steak with chanterelles and celery root gnocchi. The resort will also offer a breakfast brunch on the terrace both days.
At New York Prime (2350 Executive Center Dr., 561/998-3881), the posh Boca Raton steakhouse will be rolling out its regular menu on Christmas Eve and Day so you can celebrate the holidays with old favorites like oysters Rockefeller, jumbo lump crabmeat with sauce remoulade, creamed spinach and hashbrowns. And, of course, a full roster of USDA Prime steaks aged for 21 days.
And a Burt Rapoport’s good-timey Deck 84 (840 E. Atlantic Ave., 561/665-8484) Christmas Eve and Christmas Day brunch, with the restaurant’s signature DIY Bloody Mary bar and live music both afternoons. If smoked salmon and dill-spiked mascarpone on flatbread doesn’t do it for you, maybe eggs Benedict with beef tenderloin medallions and roasted shallot hollandaise will.
