Comté cheese, morel mushrooms, smoked bacon, spinach. That is the entire build of the Ravioli du Dauphine at The Grove, 187 NE 2nd Ave in Delray Beach's Pineapple Grove district, and if it is on the menu the night you go, that is where you start. Here is the catch. The doors open five nights a week, Tuesday through Saturday, 5:30 PM to 11 PM. Sunday and Monday the kitchen is dark.

So you get five shots a week and no more, and the menu does not sit still between them. Reservations run through Tock with a $35 per person credit card hold, which is the first sign of how tightly this room is run.

What You're Getting Into

The Grove sits on NE 2nd Ave in Pineapple Grove, the walkable stretch just north of Atlantic Avenue where the crowds thin out. Dinner only, Tuesday through Saturday, 5:30 PM to 11 PM, and nothing outside that window. No lunch, no brunch, no Sunday. Chef and sommelier Michael Haycook, a Culinary Institute of America graduate who cooked in Carmel and poured wine in Miami before this, has run it since 2012.

That constraint sets the tone. Five services a week, a menu short enough to read twice before you order, and a kitchen that swaps dishes in and out with the season. The restaurant says so itself: the menu is small and ever-changing, and the printed list carries a note that items move with availability. Go for what is good that week rather than for a dish you saw online in March.

On the current list, the Ravioli du Dauphine is the one to lead with. Around it, the Hamachi Crudo comes with pineapple aguachile, baby cucumber, mint and lime. The Roasted Sea Scallops arrive with morels, sweet corn, smoked bacon and potato puree. The House Fettuccine is the heavier pasta play, pulled short rib in tomato ragu with a toasted garlic breadcrumb. The Local Yellowtail Snapper handles the person at the table who wants fish, with french beans, mushroom XO and miso beurre blanc. And there is a Japanese A5 BMS 12 Wagyu Strip, four ounces with aged black vinegar and truffle, for the one who was always going to order it anyway. For dessert, the monkey bread with salted caramel and vanilla ice cream is the one reviewers keep circling back to.

Ask for the patio when you book. The Grove calls it "a garden party oasis with a twist of high society," which is a lot of words for what is really living walls, French brasserie seating and 16 seats total for dinner. Sixteen. That is the seat you want in August, once the sun drops behind the buildings and Pineapple Grove goes quiet. The original dining room is not a consolation prize either. It is candlelit, built around field stone walls with a glass wine cellar looking into the open kitchen, and it seats 22.

The Insider Move

Bring your own bottle on a Wednesday. Tock lists corkage waived on Wednesdays with a two bottle maximum, which on any other night runs $50 per 750mL. If you have been saving something, that is the night to open it, and it is the cheapest upgrade available at this address.

Book early in a specific way. Tables for a given month go live on the first day of the month before, through Tock, and the form lets you pick main dining room, bar dining room, or back patio at the time of booking. That is where you claim one of the 16 patio seats. Online reservations cover parties of two to seven. If you are six or more and want the room built around you, skip the form and email [email protected]. The phone line is (561) 266-3750.

Two more things. There is a $35 per person credit card hold when you book, and late cancellations or no-shows inside the 24-hour window are charged $35 per person, so lock in the night you actually mean rather than the night you might make. And take the early seating if you can get it. First tables go at 5:30 and the patio is at its best before the light goes.

What People Are Saying

Google has The Grove at 4.5 stars across more than 320 reviews. OpenTable, where the sample is people who booked and showed up, has it at 4.7 across more than 800 diners. Yelp carries another 273. The word that comes up over and over in all three is the same one: hidden.

Boca Raton Magazine's Christie Galeano-DeMott reached for it too, back in February 2022, describing a place tucked into the quiet of the Pineapple Grove District that locals had already been calling a hidden gem. Four years on it is still open only five nights a week, which is its own kind of confidence. Fair warning on the bill: recent diners report entrees in the forties and fifties, and both Google and OpenTable list it at the top price tier.

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