Best New Bar in Palm Beach

Cucina Dell' Arte has been around for years. Snooty Palm Beachers have stuffed their rich faces full of pasta there since it was a quiet Italian joint on Dixie Highway. Then came the Coniglio family, owners of the raucous and successful E.R. Bradley's. The Coniglios bought Cucina in its new digs on Royal Poinciana Way in April 2003 and appointed the family's next generation, 26-year-old Nicholas Coniglio, owner of the place. The youngster quickly turned Cucina into something else completely. Now Cucina has become the first good reason since, well, ever to make a nighttime journey over to the island. The place is packed on weekend nights with a crowd that has made Cucina perhaps the island's first-ever hangout for us working folk. There's regularly a smattering of the hoi polloi from the mainland mixing with the Palm Beachers in their Easter-egg-colored polos. "We say the crowd is from 21 to 71," says Coniglio, a Palm Beach native and former snowboarding instructor. "And you can get everything from bathing suits to tuxedoes." Coniglio expanded the restaurant's hours, and the place now is regularly packed from opening at 7 a.m. to closing at 3 in the morning. Oh, and that thing poking you in the back while you're on the dance floor? That's the overstuffed wallet of the guy in the tomato-soup-colored blazer.