1 day Ago By Rod Stafford Hagwood
The Bucc is back.The Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill — perched right on the Intracoastal waters of Palm Beach Shores — has reopened after almost 20 years spent sea-shuttered.And it has a bona fide celebrity executive chef at the helm: Paul Niedermann, who won Gordon Ramsay’s TV cooking competition “Hell’s Kitchen” in 2011.
Known by longtime locals as “The Bucc,” the dining destination opened in 1956, enjoying highly favored status (authors Ernest Hemingway and Frederick Exley were known to visit) for decades before eventually falling out of fashion and closing in the early 2000s. Now, after a seven-year makeover, the restaurant reopened on March 18 to a packed house of gastronomes, local political leaders and other VIPs.“We call it a resurrection, restoration and renovation of The Bucc, because it’s been a staple on the waterfront for so long,” says Ryan Steely, executive VP and chief marketing officer of Sharfi Holdings Inc.
, which purchased the property 10 years ago and initiated the major makeover. The other partners/owners are Ben Sharfi (CEO) and Joshua Miron (president and general counsel).The restaurant sits in the middle of a waterfront property called Buccaneer Marina & Resort with recently rebuilt docks and a marina scheduled to open May 1.
By year’s end, developers say 18 remodeled, two-story condominiums should be ready.“The town of Palm Beach Shores has been absolutely crucial and amazing in helping us get this thing going,” Steely says.Opening week was a triumph, he adds, due in large part to Niedermann and to the Palm Beach Shores/Singer Island/Riviera Beach area.
“Everything was fantastic. We were completely sold out the first week,” he says. “That’s a credit to not only the heritage that the Buccaneer has, and the lore that surrounds the Buccaneer, but [also] to chef Paul Niedermann and his crew .
..“His reputation is really catapulting us very quickly into success.
”Niedermann says his culinary direction is “a simplistic yet refined approach to waterfront dining,” adding: “I took a lot of my travels and put it in the menu.”Some of the menu options include Floridian Style Crab Cake with grain mustard aioli; Lamb Lollipops with roasted garlic hummus, and a Center Cut Filet with fingerling potato, applewood smoked bacon, tomato concasse and red wine jus.Alissa DragunPan Roasted Local Mahi with charred broccolini, romesco sauce and lemon at the Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill.
(Alissa Dragun/Courtesy)Niedermann lives in Boca Raton and admits, despite being a boater, that he hadn’t spent much time in the specific coastal area surrounding the Buccaneer, just a little north of the Palm Beach/Lake Worth Inlet.“I didn’t really know a lot about Palm Beach Shores or a lot about Singer Island,” the avid fisherman says. “But when I joined on and .
.. everybody told me the stories of how this was an iconic place back in the day .
.. and all the passion behind it.
I couldn’t help but get excited. And then I saw the space, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I could definitely deal with this.’ ”Niedermann — who is also corporate executive chef for Sharfi Holdings — has fed famous faces such as Hilary Duff, Tyra Banks, Danny McBride and Rob Dyrdek.
Alissa DragunChef Paul Niedermann in the kitchen at the Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill in Palm Beach Shores. (Alissa Dragun/Courtesy)The Johnson & Wales University graduate, who grew up in Davie, returned for “Hell’s Kitchen” appearances in seasons 11, 12 and 15. Since his foodie fame, Niedermann has had SoFlo stints cooking up the cuisine at The Jupiter Grill, Salt7 in Fort Lauderdale and Delray Beach, The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, The St.
Regis Bal Harbour Resort, The Ritz-Carlton, Fort Lauderdale, as well as at the long-closed Hudson at Waterway East in Delray Beach.Here is more about the Buccaneer in comments from Niedermann and Steely that have been edited for length and clarity.Q: What was it about the Buccaneer?Niedermann: Because of the passion that everybody had in talking about this place.
I’ve traveled a lot, and I’ve worked for a lot of different ownership groups. This is the first group I’ve ever met where their passion about the project and the passion about the community is intoxicating. I can’t think of a better fit for me because of how driven and passionate I am about what I do, and then having somebody behind me with the passion to drive it to the stratosphere that I could never even fathom is why I chose this project.
Steely: There are many, many, many stories that go along with it. There are a lot of folks that ..
. tell the stories about being at the Buccaneer with either their grandparents, father, mother — it’s a very community-driven marina. They would have fishing competitions off the docks for the kids.
Alissa DragunA mural at “The Bucc,” which reopened to the public in March 2025. (Alissa Dragun/Courtesy)Q: What makes chef Niedermann a good fit for the reborn Bucc?Steely: Ben [Sharfi] is an Israeli, so Paul comes in and he says, “Let me make you guys something.” I wasn’t there.
I wish I would have been so I could see Ben’s face. He made an Israeli dish for Ben ..
. these lamb chops ..
. and homemade hummus. Ben appreciated the fact that Paul had enough guts to serve an Israeli an Israeli dish and just absolutely knocked it out of the park.
So we love that he’s got no reservations about trying new stuff or really pushing boundaries.Q: What’s on the menu?Niedermann: The menu itself is simplistic. Take my crab cake.
I make a great crab cake that fits up here ...
where we’re seafood-driven. I love Lombardi’s clam pie in Manhattan, it’s my favorite thing in the world. Nobody around here can make it.
So I made my version of it (Cherry Stone Clams pizza).Alissa DragunCenter Cut Filet with fingerling potato, applewood smoked bacon, tomato concasse and red wine jus. (Alissa Dragun/Courtesy)Living in California, the trips I would take to San Francisco, I fell in love with Cioppino.
I think it’s probably one of the best dishes you can have. It pairs with everything, and it can make anyone happy who’s a seafood lover. You don’t like the shrimp, great — I’ll give you more fish.
You don’t like the fish, great — I’ll give you more shrimp. Everyone’s happy. [Our Local Grouper Cioppino] is a big bowl of happiness.
I think that classic desserts are making a comeback, and I think that there’s a lot of things that people like that they don’t realize they like because they don’t want to make it at home. Bread pudding is one of those things. Everybody’s like, ‘I love bread pudding and I will never make it at my house.
’ So stuff like that is where I pull the inspiration [of using] Fruity Pebbles. We’re in Florida. We’re very fruity-driven around here, between the citrus, between the berries, between everything we grow.
I thought it would be a nice, fun, playful thing — Fruity Pebble Bread Pudding. And I like the nostalgia. Nostalgia nowadays carries a lot more clout than ingenuity.
I want to invoke a memory. I want to invoke when you’re a little kid on Saturday morning, eating Fruity Pebbles, watching TV, watching the cartoons. I think that’s fun.
Alissa DragunThe dining room at The Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill. (Alissa Dragun/Courtesy)Q: What can you tell us about the pizzas made in a brick oven brought over from Italy?Niedermann: My life has come full circle from a 16-year-old working at Luv’n Oven [Pizza & Pasta] in Cooper City, making pizzas, to coming back to making pizzas on the waterfront. Again, I want to be very different than everything around here.
...
I spent a lot of time in Key West with my wife. There’s this little food truck that does this street corn pizza. And it’s pretty much the only reason why we go down there.
I took the idea of that, I tweaked it into my own take, Mexican street corn pizza with lobster (elote).Alissa DragunThe entrance of The Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill. (Alissa Dragun/Courtesy)Q: What’s going to wow visitors?Steely: The bar at the Buccaneer was iconic.
You talk to people and it was always the bar at the Buccaneer. I’ve heard many, many stories about it, and we knew that with the bar there was something special. So when we tore down the old bar, we wanted to build a new one that was reminiscent of the old bar.
We kept fixtures, we kept pieces of wood, we kept parts of the old bar, and then integrated them into the bar that’s there now. So if you frequented the Buccaneer back then, and you walk in now, it still feels like a little piece of home, even though it’s brand-new. We put a new spin on it but we never lost sight of what the Buccaneer has been and meant to a lot of people.
The bar top is composed of maps of all of the islands around, so when you’re sitting facing south, right in front of you are accurate nautical maps of all the islands you would see. And as you change direction on the bar, every direction that you face, you get the islands that are there. Our tables .
.. all have names of islands, and the tabletops are also maps of islands, so that’s just another fun nod to the area.
Niedermann: Our Lobster [Elote] Pizza, probably. It’s the most ordinary yet extraordinary thing I have on the menu, and it’s gonna wow the diners. It’s a little bit of a leap, but it’s definitely worth the jump.
The Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill is located at 142 Lake Drive, Palm Beach Shores. Visit buccgrill.com or call 561-202-5791.
BEHOLD THE BUCC’S MENUSticky Beef Skewers with Sesame, Coriander, Red JalapeñoMussels Scampi cooked in White Wine, Butter, Fine Herbs, LinguiniGrilled Spiny Lobster with Cajun Crab Stuffing, Garlic Beurre Monte, LemonLamb Lollipops with Roasted Garlic Hummus, Chickpea Salad, Calabrian Chili RelishLemon & Rosemary Brick Oven Chicken with Sauté Spinach, Dark Chicken JusBuffalo Chicken Brick Oven Pizza with House-made Ranch, Crumbled Blue CheeseA raw bar with Shrimp Cocktail, East & West Coast Oysters, Stone Crab Claws and Bloody Mary Shrimp CevicheAlissa DragunThe Paper Boat (Walker’s Cay Bourbon, amaro, Aperol, lemon) and Siren’s Call (New Amsterdam Watermelon Vodka, house-made margarita mix, cranberry and watermelon). (Alissa Dragun/Courtesy)Alissa DragunThe restored bar at the Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill integrated parts of the old “Bucc” bar such as wood panels and fixtures. (Alissa Dragun/Courtesy)Alissa DragunThe Buccaneer Marina & Resort with 18 renovated two-story condominiums slated to reopen by the end of the year.
(Alissa Dragun/Courtesy).
