The time I spent in Delray Beach this year was not only magical, but fierce. This is not your typical Florida area. I have spent the last six or seven years road tripping specifically in Florida and not all areas are welcoming. A lot of the areas are very segregated and I felt uncomfortable to be honest. This area I was in was in the downtown arts district which is more ecclectic and thriving. There are many people my age (Millenials) who are there, I did not really see a lot of a high racial mixture to be honest. A lot of the area is like much of Florida which is older, retired White people.
The hotel I chose to stay at was the Ray Hotel which is a part of the Curio Collection. While I loved this hotel, I did notice that some people were treating us differently who worked there if you get my gist. On the whole, there were way more friendly and amazing employees that helped us than the latter! I dined at all of the restaurants at the hotel and the service met my expectations and actually exceeded them.
I am saying this because Florida has a bad reputation right now right? And I just want to say, there are some areas as a Native Floridian I know not to go into, but the overall idea of Florida is that it is unsafe for Black Americans (right now) anywhere and it is not true. There is racism everywhere and you will experience micro aggressions everywhere (in any place, state, or country).
I say this because I do not let this deter me from going to a new city in Florida. I actually feel more comfortable in South Florida because that is where I am from. So, in all honesty, I had two to three instances where there were issues and I know it was racism against me, or against me and my husband for our interracial relationship, but on the whole, my whole experience in Delray was great.
I would highly recommend this hotel and area if you like boutique hotels, beach, the art scene and good food! The one thing I will note is that they deter people who are not staying there from entering the main hotel period. So, you would think it would be lively and exciting, but it wasn't. Part of the lobby wasn't even open and the lights were off and the vibe was kind of weird for how busy it was, but since they were sending non-hotel patrons up an outside elevator it was just quiet (which isn't a bad thing).
There are a lot of people here and the street that the Ray is on is walkable. The beach is less than 10 minutes away also! I am not much of a Miami girl and I do think this is the closest I have been to West Palm Beach. Delray offers a very similar upscale vibe that is slower paced. My time there was too short to be honest. Hotels in Florida are so much more expensive in February because that is a peak month.
The restaurant scene here is growing, maybe exploding, They have so many restaurants that opened the month of my birthday and a lot more that were supposed to open later this year. I know I have to go back because I did not get to go to as many restaurants as I wanted to (because I was dining also at the hotel).
Taki Omakase as by far the best omakase I have been to to this date. I have my favorites right, but this one was great, My one issue was that they didn't really know what gluten was, so they had to ask me before each course can you have this? That is easy enough and the Chef (Ben) was so great at not cross contaminating any of my food with anyone else. We were also about 8 minutes late because we got lost and they actually held back our first two courses until we got there. It was my birthday though, and we had advised them and. there was no awknowlegement of that so that kind of sucked especially because dinner was $$$.
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