Brightline fares just dropped, a California burger chain is putting its first Florida store downtown, and the French bakery everyone kept asking about is already open out west.

Let’s get into it.

Brightline cut fares and doubled its stops this month, the first time the train has read like a commute instead of a treat.

Boca already put $10 million into the station garage, and another $7 million could go in as early as next year for a second platform.

It has never made a profit, lost $549 million in 2024, and S&P has flagged a $1.2 billion loan payment due in January.

Ride it cheap while the spreadsheet holds.

Source: Boca Raton Magazine

CaliBurger is putting its first Florida location downtown, and a food truck turns up somewhere in Boca at the end of the month before the dining room opens.

The sit-down spot goes in at 508 Via De Palmas, sharing a building with Indian Harvest and Patio Tapas and Beer.

Managing partner Edward Busse has no opening date yet, only that it lands this year. The menu runs on the CaliDouble and a secret sauce, plus tenders, fries and popsicles.

Find the truck before everybody finds the sign.

Source: What Now Miami

Maman started in SoHo in 2014 and has grown past 60 cafes, and the west Boca one opened October 6 as part of the Shadowood revitalization.

It is at 9789 Glades Road, and a second Boca cafe is penciled in at Boca Center for early 2027.

Co-founders Elisa Marshall and Benjamin Sormonte designed the room themselves, vintage furniture and all.

The second one is a year out. This one is open now.

Source: Boca Raton Observer

Lynn’s women send their seniors off against Barry tonight, and they are owed one. Barry was picked tenth in the conference preseason poll and Lynn has not scored in three straight, so this is the game the home side has been waiting for.

Admission is free and you walk straight in, so you can decide at five and still be in a seat by six.

Kickoff is 6pm at Bobby Campbell Stadium on the Lynn campus, and it runs about two hours with the half.

Bobby Campbell Stadium, Lynn University, 3601 N Military Trail, Boca Raton. 561-237-7000.

Bring a jacket. The field gets a breeze after dark.

A beer bar runs a comedy showcase in the back where anyone gets five to eight minutes, and then a booked headliner, Perry Sak, closes it. You get the good sets and the car-crash sets in the same hour, which is the entire appeal.

It is free, so a bad comic costs you a sip of your drink and nothing else.

It runs 8pm to 10pm.

Tall Boy, 395 NE Spanish River Blvd, Boca Raton.

Sit near the back. The front row gets talked to.

Sydney Irving and The Creatures are out behind a new album on DEKO Entertainment and Warner Music Group, and the press line on her is “Sheryl Crow meets Tom Petty.” She was named Young Adult Artist of the Year by the International Singer-Songwriters Association and plays well over a hundred nights a year. This is a full electric band, not a stool and an acoustic.

A full touring band is playing a small black box theater, so every seat in the room is close to the stage.

Curtain is 7:30pm and it runs to about 9:30pm, and most of the room is still open.

Boca Black Box, 8221 Glades Rd Ste 10, Boca Raton. 561-483-9036.

Go if you have ever liked a Tom Petty record.

The Cuban Cafe has been a family room on the same corner since about 1992, and in September the readers of the Boca Raton Observer put it first in the city for Latin and Caribbean, over a four location chain. The write-up named the three plates it won on and the Cubano is the one to start with.

They have been pressing the same sandwich since before most of this city moved here, and it just beat everybody.

Order the Cubano at $17.95, one of only eight things the kitchen flags as most ordered on its own menu. The Lechon Asado at $19.95 and the Ropa Vieja at $26.95 are the other two the award cited. Wednesday they are open 11:15am to 8pm, and the lunch menu runs Monday to Friday.

The Cuban Cafe, 3350 NW 2nd Ave, Boca Raton. 561-750-8860.

Bring somebody who orders the same thing every single time.

Lily works out of a single chair and carries two smoothing systems almost nobody else here lists: Magic Sleek, and the Liscio Japanese relaxer by Milbon. Those are a different animal from a keratin blowout, and her dated reviews name both.

Six thousand appointments in and she has never been rated below a five, which is not a thing many chairs in this city can say.

Her booking page carries 5.0 from 316 reviews, 6,009 appointments and 831 clients since 2019. Magic Sleek Express starts at $250 and runs 90 minutes to two and a half hours depending on length, the keratin blowout is $125, a cut and style starts at $80, and the consultation is free. She is in Wednesday 10:30am to 6:30pm.

Lily of New York at Entre Nous Hair Studio, 170 E Boca Raton Rd Ste 6, Boca Raton. 561-808-5008.

Take the free consult first. Your hair picks the method, not you.

Boca Ballet Theatre opens its own studios to adults, the same floor the company rehearses on. This is a room that flies in American Ballet Theatre principals, Skylar Brandt danced La Bayadère here in August, and the readers voted it first in the city for dance studio. School director Jane Tyree has run the school since the early nineties.

You stand at the same barre the company uses, nobody asks what level you are, and the first class is on the house.

Wednesday is Jazz 10 to 11:30am, Tap 11:30 to 12:30, then Intermediate Ballet 7 to 8:30pm and Pointe 8:30 to 9pm. First timers take the jazz or the tap, because the evening ballet is pitched at intermediate. Register as a new student and the first class is free, then it is $25 a class or $110 for five, paid at the front desk. No age or experience requirement.

Boca Ballet Theatre, 7630 NW 6th Ave, Boca Raton. 561-995-0709.

Socks are fine. You do not need shoes to start.

Readers voted Lifestyles Giftware first in the city for gift shops, and Rachel Locker Kaufman has run it as a women-run family business for twenty five years. It is the shop you go to when you have an hour and somebody else’s wedding.

They wrap it for you at the counter, which is the entire reason to buy a gift in a shop instead of on your phone.

Buy the Two’s Company Crystal Clear Cheese Knives at $47, which is what makes a cheese board look deliberate instead of thrown together. Put them next to the charcuterie platter from the chef in yesterday’s issue. The Olivia Riegel Silver Botanica frame is $100 and the Corkcicle Alika tumbler is $40.

Lifestyles Giftware, 284 Esplanade Ste 52B, Boca Raton. 561-347-2933.

Buy two. You will need one in March.

Margaret Schaffer brings in furniture, art and lamps, re-dresses a whole house so it photographs like the listing you would click, and takes it all out again when it sells. She started doing it to her own listings as a realtor. Every designer named on her team is a woman.

The national body for her trade does not just list her, it hands her the microphone to teach the other owners.

It put her on its Ask the Experts panel at its 2025 convention, and that same year made her firm a national finalist for both Occupied and Vacant Project of the Year. She holds an A+ with the Better Business Bureau on eleven years of trading. The way in is Designer for a Day, one day in your house where she picks the paint and the furniture and leaves you the plan.

REH Interiors, 508 NW 77th St, Boca Raton. 561-562-1150.

Call before the photographer, not after.

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Kickoff at Lynn is six, the comics start at eight and the band goes on at half seven, so you can get the soccer and the comedy in the same night if you leave at the whistle. The band is the one you have to choose.

The rest of it keeps. The Cubano has been there thirty four years and is not going anywhere, the ballet floor takes walk-ins every Wednesday morning, the gift shop wraps it while you wait, and the woman who re-dresses houses answers her own phone.

The Good in Boca Team