La Sirena, the Italian restaurant in West Palm Beach, reopened for service on November 3 under new owners Alex and Amanda Gaudelet. The sale closes a chapter for founders Marcello and Diane Fiorentino, who built the spot into one of only four Grand Award restaurants in Florida, and opens one defined by a brand-new liquor license that lets the restaurant serve cocktails for the first time in its history.
A Deal Years in the Making
According to Wine Spectator, the sale included the business, the property, and the wine cellar, though the price was not disclosed. Marcello and Diane Fiorentino had planned to sell once their children went off to college, and they considered multiple offers that did not work out before choosing the Gaudelets, whom they said were the best fit to continue La Sirena's legacy. The couple told Wine Spectator the wine program was central to the deal, and that the Gaudelets understood both its value and the responsibility of keeping it going.
Marcello Fiorentino joined the restaurant, which his father had opened, to help his mother after his father's death. He and Diane had no formal restaurant or wine training, but they shifted the menu toward Italian fine dining and built a wine list to match it, using the restaurant's summer closures to travel through European wine regions, per the same account. As the Palm Beach Post reported, Diane and Marcello Fiorentino sold the longtime family restaurant to Alex Gaudelet, a principal partner in Palm Beach's The Polo Room, and his wife Amanda Gaudelet.
New Owners Bring Decades in Fine Dining
Alex Gaudelet was born in France and apprenticed as a sommelier for a year at La Tour d'Argent in Paris, a restaurant whose cellar at the time held roughly 9,000 wine references and about half a million bottles, Wine Spectator reports. He went on to serve as vice president of food and beverage at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, as COO of the B.R. Guest restaurant company, and later as CEO of Invest Hospitality, a firm that specializes in restaurants, while also building the wine list at Joël Robuchon's restaurant into a Grand Award winner over a career spanning 20 years at Grand Award-winning and Michelin-starred restaurants.
Alex and Amanda Gaudelet met while both were working at The Breakers in Florida, where Gaudelet began in 2000 — the same period he started working alongside noted sommelier Virginia Philip and the team there, later sharing his first wine experience with Philip and colleagues in 2002. Amanda Gaudelet has held multiple restaurant management positions of her own. The couple have several silent partners in the sale, according to the same Wine Spectator account.
First Cocktails and a Growing Cellar
The new owners completed a light renovation and obtained a liquor license, which for the first time allows guests at La Sirena to order cocktails. Per a report from Miramar FL News, the Gaudelets described the renovation as decorative, with capacity remaining roughly the same, and said the restaurant will now operate year-round rather than close for the summer as it once did.
On the wine front, the new owners plan to open with almost 1,500 wine references. Alex Gaudelet said they had already added 300 SKUs to the list and expects to add at least another 500 wine labels before the end of the year, with particular growth anticipated in Bordeaux, Burgundy and California selections, Wine Spectator reports. La Sirena's cellar currently contains 5,100 bottles, and the restaurant's wine list includes more than 1,220 selections, according to Wine Spectator — though other published accounts have cited different totals, including a separate estimate of more than 2,000 selections from Miramar FL News, so those numbers should be read as reflecting different counts rather than one confirmed current figure.
A List Built From Scratch
The wine program's growth has been dramatic over four decades. When Marcello Fiorentino joined the family restaurant in 1994 following his father's death, the list he inherited offered just 12 whites and 12 reds. Within three years, he and Diane had expanded it to 250 selections, earning their first Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in 1999, and the restaurant went on to earn its first Wine Spectator Grand Award in 2015.
Fiorentino has noted that the local wine scene has shifted dramatically in that time. Nearly all new restaurants that open now carry at least 100 wines on the list, whereas 20 years ago nobody had more than a couple dozen, he told Wine Spectator. As for his own next chapter, Marcello Fiorentino said he plans to enjoy the fruits of his labor, relax, travel and spend time with his family.
