Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood is replacing its seven-year-old Cipresso restaurant with an entirely new signature concept developed by Major Food Group (MFG), the hospitality company behind CARBONE, Torrisi, and ZZ's Club. The move, confirmed August 5, advances a strategic partnership between Hard Rock International and MFG established in 2024 to curate distinctive dining experiences across Hard Rock's global resort portfolio.
Cipresso served its final guests July 19 after seven years on property. Rather than leave a gap in the resort's more-than-20-outlet food and beverage program, Hard Rock immediately redirected Cipresso's signature menu items — Nonna's Meatballs, Bolognese, and Bone-In Veal Chop Alla Parmigiana — to Abiaka Wood Fire Grill beginning July 27. Abiaka has simultaneously expanded to seven-day-a-week service, a scheduling and staffing adjustment that keeps covers flowing while the new concept's kitchen build-out is planned.
What the Build-Out Signals
For equipment specifiers and foodservice consultants working the integrated resort segment, the transition is a textbook example of how large casino-hotel operators manage dining program changeovers without revenue gaps. The Cipresso-to-Abiaka menu migration buys time for MFG and Hard Rock's design teams to spec the new outlet from scratch — culinary direction, equipment suite, ventilation load, and front-of-house design are all still being finalized, with a full reveal promised this fall.
The scale of the property sets the context for the kitchen investment ahead. Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood's $1.5 billion expansion completed in 2019 added the Guitar Hotel and brought the resort to 1,271 guestrooms, 120,000 square feet of meeting space, and more than 20 food and beverage outlets on 87 acres. Building a new signature restaurant inside that footprint typically means a ground-up back-of-house specification: new cooking suites, refrigeration and cold-chain infrastructure, ventilation make-up air systems, and ware-handling lines sized to a fine-dining throughput profile. MFG's portfolio — which spans over fifty restaurants across fifteen cities — skews toward high-ticket, table-service formats that demand precision cooking equipment, custom hood and exhaust engineering, and walk-in cold storage matched to a chef-driven prep program.
Partnership Context
The Hard Rock–MFG relationship has already produced one high-profile kitchen activation: a Carbone residency at Cipresso in December 2023, timed to the historic introduction of craps, roulette, and sports betting at Seminole Gaming properties in Florida. That pop-up gave both organizations an operational read on how MFG's kitchen protocols mesh with Hard Rock's existing commissary and service infrastructure — useful intelligence when sizing a permanent build-out.
Jim Allen, Chairman of Hard Rock International and CEO of Seminole Gaming, called the forthcoming MFG concept "an exciting next step" that "reflects our continued investment in world-class dining and hospitality." MFG Co-Founder Jeff Zalaznick framed it as "a restaurant that's exciting, extraordinary, and gives guests yet another reason to love Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood for many years to come."
For dealers and reps covering the Southeast hospitality corridor, the project represents a significant capital-equipment opportunity. Integrated resort signature-restaurant build-outs at this tier routinely carry seven-figure equipment budgets spanning commercial cooking equipment, ventilation systems, refrigeration, and ware-handling. The fall announcement of culinary direction and design renderings will be the trigger point for formal specification work to begin.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
