Boat Show Week From Harbordale's Side of 17th Street, With Three New Tables to Try

SE 17th Street picked up three new restaurants between August and October. This week the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show turns the east end of that same street into its transportation hub. The two overlap only partly. Hula Kai Tiki Bar and CAVA have addresses in the 1000s and 1300s, west of the show's garages and shuttle routes. Barchetta, the newest of the three, sits at 1880 SE 17th St., next to the Broward County Convention Center that the show uses as its base. For anyone living in Harbordale, the street number tells you which new spot still works through Sunday and which one makes more sense after the yachts leave.

The three openings, by address

Addresses on SE 17th Street climb as you head east toward the Intracoastal. Harbordale's blocks line the lower numbers, and the show's footprint begins around the 1800s.

Hula Kai took a long time to arrive. The Sun Sentinel reported that the 5,000-square-foot bar opened after four years of tiki theming and construction delays. It is a two-story complex with 200 seats and bars on three levels, topped by a shaded rooftop bar with views of the downtown skyline. Owner-developer James Flanigan of Old School Hospitality is behind it. His group also runs four Quarterdeck restaurants in South Florida. He told the Sun Sentinel, "There's plenty of room in Broward for tiki restaurants." Per the same report, the pu pu platter comes with crab rangoon, chicken satay, lumpia, chili sticky ribs and tiki tots.

The Sun Sentinel's summer and fall openings roundup listed CAVA's grand opening for Aug. 10 in South Harbor Plaza. The chain's location page for SE 17th Street shows the restaurant active at 1344. Of the three, it is the quick weeknight option, in a plaza that sits outside the show's parking map.

How the show uses the east end of the street

The show opened yesterday and runs through Sunday, Nov. 1. Its venues are the Broward County Convention Center, Bahia Mar Yachting Center, Hall of Fame Marina, Las Olas Marina, Superyacht Village and Pier Sixty-Six Marina. FLIBS calls the Convention Center its transportation hub, and the purple, light green and blue shuttle routes all run through it.

These are the hours that matter for anyone trying to avoid the crowds or get around them:

1. Show floor. Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 29 to 31, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday's Preview Day ran from noon to 7 p.m.
2. Shuttles. They start an hour before the show opens and stop an hour after it closes, which means about 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Purple runs a loop between the Convention Center and Bahia Mar. Light green goes Convention Center to Superyacht Village to Bahia Mar. Blue links West Marine Center to the Convention Center.
3. Water taxi. The Water Taxi's FLIBS service carries passengers from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

FLIBS also lists parking right on the corridor. That includes the Balfour Beatty Garage at 1799 SE 17th St., the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina at 1881 SE 17th St., Pier Sixty-Six Marina North and Superyacht Village at 2150 SE 17th St., and the Pier Sixty-Six Hotel at 2301 SE 17th St. The Convention Center garage at 1950 Eisenhower Blvd. is on the list too. The two sources give different numbers for that garage. FLIBS advertises more than 3,000 spaces at the Convention Center for a flat $40 a day. The venue's own parking page says the garage holds 1,500 spaces, with a $25 daily maximum for standard vehicles as of Oct. 1, 2026, and notes that event rates can change.

Barchetta's front door is at 1880, between the Balfour Beatty Garage at 1799 and the Hilton marina lot at 1881. During show week, the new chophouse shares a block with show traffic.

What the overlap means for each table this week

Barchetta serves dinner only, Tuesday through Sunday from 5 to 11 p.m. It stays open until midnight Friday and Saturday, and the kitchen closes nightly at 10 p.m. Reservations go through OpenTable. Through Saturday, the show floor closes at 7 p.m. and the shuttles run until about 8, so Barchetta's first three hours of service land while the show is emptying out around it. Sunday changes that. The show closes at 5 p.m., the water taxi stops at 6, and a Sunday dinner reservation after that falls in the hours after the crowd has gone.

The Omni's opening announcement calls Barchetta a coastal Italian chophouse overlooking the Intracoastal, led by Executive Chef David Caceres. The menu includes a Bistecca Fiorentina, a prime T-bone for two, and a Bucatini Cacio e Pepe with black truffle. On the bar side there is the Pomodoro Negroni, made with tomato-basil-washed gin. It joins the hotel's other restaurants and bars, which include Reef 76 Kitchen + Bar, Fair Ketch, Ibis Sky Lounge, Hidden Key, Tide Coastal Kitchen and Leeward Market. One address detail could trip up a GPS. An earlier Sun Sentinel preview put the restaurant at 1850 SE 17th St. The opening release gives 1880, and so does this post.

Hula Kai and CAVA are about half a mile of address numbers west of the show's lots. Neither one appears on the FLIBS parking map. On show days, a Harbordale resident can reach either one without driving into the shuttle zone at all.

The bridges that set the week's traffic

Two drawbridge schedules shape the corridor this fall, and only one of them has anything to do with the show.

The SE 17th Street Brooks Memorial Bridge runs on a federal schedule that took effect Feb. 19, 2026. It opens on the hour and half-hour. On weekdays from 6:50 to 9:10 a.m. and from 3:50 to 6:10 p.m., it opens only once an hour, at the top of the hour. That rush-hour limit covers Thursday and Friday of show week. No special FLIBS bridge schedule was posted, so the regular rules apply.

The second bridge is a mile and a half north. FDOT started rehabilitating the East Las Olas Boulevard bridge in May 2026. Its project page estimates completion in summer 2027, and a later closure notice says late 2027. When FDOT closed that bridge for 48 hours from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1, it named the 17th Street Causeway as the alternate route. According to the City of Fort Lauderdale's traffic advisory, the bridge's north side closed after that and traffic moved to the south side, one lane each way. The city expects that setup to last through late 2026. So beach traffic is already squeezed at Las Olas, and FLIBS has added a week of show traffic on the other causeway.

The corridor after Sunday

When the show leaves on Nov. 1, the Convention Center goes back to its regular calendar. Its events page lists these dates:

• Nov. 4 to 5. The 18th Annual Southeast Florida Climate Leadership Summit.
• Nov. 22. The Orange Bowl Cheer Championships.
• Dec. 12. The Seminole Hard Rock Winterfest Boat Parade runs 6 to 8:30 p.m. The official viewing area is at Las Olas Intracoastal Promenade Park, where gates open at 4 p.m. and the parade should pass around 6:30. The organizers say dates can change.

That leaves most of November without a big event at the east end, so it is the obvious time for a Barchetta reservation.

Broward County's expansion page still describes public access to the waterfront plaza beside the Omni as "opening 2026." The same page says the county put off seeking an additional waterfront restaurant there. Barchetta is open on that plaza now.

Change is also coming on the west side, closer to Harbordale. The Sun Sentinel reported in August on a proposed Live Local Act project called Terrasse. It would put three towers with 765 apartments on the former Winn-Dixie and Crown Liquors site at 1625 and 1645 Cordova Road. The developer's representative told the paper construction could start in mid-2027 or early 2028, with completion in 2029 or early 2030. The project was still under city review when the story ran. Hula Kai's owner told the Sun Sentinel he pictures a broader entertainment district along 17th Street, possibly with upscale retail and a chocolate shop. He has not named any tenants or dates.

If you're curious how the new restaurants, the Terrasse proposal and a busy Convention Center calendar might affect your home's value on Harbordale's side of 17th Street, Lauren Kahn Group tracks this corridor closely. Contact Lauren for a personalized market consultation.