Should you wait until October to walk over to the Ritz-Carlton for dinner, once The Grill reopens and the resort's kitchen lineup is back to full strength? If you live in Bay Colony, the answer is no, and the reason has less to do with patience than with arithmetic.
Right now, two of the resort's marquee dining rooms are dark. The Grill, the property's steakhouse with the live piano and the fireplace, is closed through October 2026 for a renovation, with dinner service scheduled to resume that same month. A few steps down the hall, Sofra's dinner seating is paused through September 1, 2026. On paper, that reads like a bad month to bother crossing the gate south of the resort. In practice, it's the opposite. The next five weeks sit inside a pricing and availability window that closes the moment those two rooms come back.
What's actually dark, and what never stopped
The two closures get the attention, but they're not the whole kitchen. Nolita, the resort's New York-style Italian room, has kept its full breakfast, lunch, and dinner schedule running the entire summer. Gumbo Limbo, the waterfront seafood spot, is serving its usual rotating menu. MOKA is still pulling espresso and slicing house-made cakes for breakfast and lunch. RITZ Lobby Bar is open for dinner with its Star Wine List. Sand Bar, the tiki-torch boardwalk spot near the Family Pool, is running on its normal seasonal schedule, though hours there shift enough that it's worth a call before you walk down.
So the honest picture isn't "the resort is under construction." It's four rooms operating normally, one room dark until October, and one room dark until the first of September. That's a meaningfully smaller disruption than the words "temporarily closed" tend to suggest, and it matters for what comes next.
The part most residents will miss
Here's the detail that changes the calculation. The resort's own Summer Dining Passport runs June 1 through September 30, 2026, and its billing describes four participating venues: Dusk, RITZ Lobby Bar, Nolita, and Sofra, each offering a multi-course menu for $45 per person. But Sofra's dinner service is the one that's currently paused. Which means for this stretch, right now, only three of the four Passport venues are actually seating anyone for it. Sofra doesn't rejoin the lineup until its dinner service comes back online September 1, giving it exactly one month, September, to run the deal before the whole Passport program ends on the 30th.
That's not a footnote. It's the actual shape of the offer. If Mediterranean food at Sofra is the draw, the entire window to get it at Passport pricing is four weeks, not four months. If Dusk's Asian-fusion menu is what you're after, that door has been open since June and stays open through the end of September regardless.
The menus themselves are worth knowing by name rather than by category. At Dusk, the Passport spread has included hiyashi wakame, chicken yakitori skewers, and an avomadai maki roll. At Sofra, once it's back for dinner, the multi-course version leans into sesame halva, Levantine-style beef and lamb, and a deconstructed baklava for dessert. That's a several-course tasting sequence at a Five-Diamond resort for $45 a head, which lands differently once you set it against what a normal night at The Grill runs when it's open. Diners posting about that room have mentioned paying $125 for a bone-in filet as a single entree, before sides or wine. The Passport isn't a discount off that kind of dinner. It's a different kind of dinner entirely, priced for locals rather than resort guests running a tab.
The neighborhood's most expensive table is the one that's closed right now. The neighborhood's best-priced multi-course dinner is the one still running. Those two facts don't usually line up in the same season, and this one won't repeat until next summer.
Why October resets the math, not just the menu
Once The Grill reopens for dinner in October, two things happen at the same time. First, the Passport program itself is already finished by then, since it closes September 30. Second, October is also when Naples starts filling back in for the fall and winter season, which means the easy, walk-up rhythm of late summer starts tightening at exactly the moment the resort's priciest room comes back into rotation. You'd be trading a $45 multi-course dinner and a quiet reservation book for a $125 filet and a harder-to-get table, in the same calendar flip.
None of that is a reason to avoid The Grill once it's back. A renovated steakhouse room with a dedicated sommelier and a private wine room for groups up to twelve is worth the visit on its own terms. It's a reason to not treat this month as a placeholder while you wait for "everything to be finished." The version of the Ritz-Carlton available to Bay Colony right now, missing two rooms and running a locals' pricing program on the rest, is arguably the more useful version for a Tuesday night that doesn't require a special occasion.
How to actually use the next five weeks
A few practical notes worth keeping straight if you're timing a visit from inside the gates:
- Through August 31, the Passport is live at Dusk, Nolita, and RITZ Lobby Bar. Sofra's regular dinner seating, Passport included, is not yet running.
- Starting September 1, Sofra's dinner service resumes and rejoins the Passport lineup, giving all four venues one overlapping month before the program ends.
- The Passport closes entirely on September 30, after which pricing at all four rooms reverts to standard menus.
- The Grill stays dark through October, with dinner service scheduled to return that month, landing right as the Passport pricing disappears and the fall booking calendar starts to fill.
- Sand Bar's hours move with the season, so a quick call ahead saves a wasted walk down the boardwalk.
If you're new enough to Bay Colony that you haven't worked this rhythm out yet, it's one of the quieter perks of the address: a five-minute walk gets you a seat at a property most visitors are still planning their entire vacation around, and right now that walk costs less and requires less advance planning than it will in eight weeks.
Naples Illustrated's own coverage of the Summer Dining Passport frames it as a chance for locals, not just resort guests, to work through the property's kitchens at a seasonal rate. For anyone living close enough to treat that as a standing option rather than a special trip, this is the month to use it.
If you're thinking about what it actually means to live at an address where a Five-Diamond dining room is a five-minute walk rather than a reservation you plan around, Annie Hagstrom can talk through what's currently available in Bay Colony and how the neighborhood fits day to day, not just on paper. Book an appointment when you're ready to see it in person.
