Travel Tips
Three Days, Nine Meals: The Restaurants of Miami, Florida
Miami is known for beautiful beach bodies, celebrities and yachts, but this glitzy Floridian city is also a foodie destination.
With new restaurants popping up daily to serve inventive cuisine and long-standing favorites, this coastal city has something for everyone.
Courtney Crowder uncovers a food lover’s picks for a long weekend—just be prepared to hit the gym in between gorging fests to whoop your body back into beach shape.
DAY ONE
Lunch
Start your trip to Miami with a traditional taco made by two men who hail from Oaxaca, Mexico. Orale is a taco truck that is essentially a trailer painted with Mexican flag colors and attached to a pick-up truck.
This roadside kitchen is known for turning out tacos and quesadillas as well as any four-star restaurant, with fillings such as chicken, fish, carnitas, steak, and some more exotic flavors like pig cheek. Diners can top off their tacos with a variety of sauces of increasing levels of heat. Meals are available to go, of course, but a better option is to grab a seat next to the cart—just in case you want seconds. Normally located on 28th Street just east of 37th Avenue in Coral Gables.
Don’t miss the Ask the Locals Travel Guide: Palm Beach, Florida
Dinner
Owner and constant dining room presence Claudio Giordano has incorporated his life-long passion for fishing into the menu at AltaMar. The cuisine is mainly seafood, almost all freshly caught with Mediterranean-inspired flavors. Located just off Miami’s touristy strip, the interior setting is romantic and packed with locals.
Start with the octopus carpaccio with olive oil and parsley potatoes for an interesting and exotic bite. While they do have pastas, the fish entrées are really the way to go. Try the pan-roasted black sea bass with truffled butter sauce or the Florida Keys snapper filet with mixed citrus and a Pinot Grigio sauce.
Servers are more than happy to recommending a wine pairing to go with your seafood. For dessert, the restaurant excels at fruitier opinions like passion fruit mousse with crème anglaise or the mango cheesecake. 305-532-3061
The secret to The Pit Bar-B-Q’s delicious flavors is its homemade basting sauce and the special oak wood used for cooking, producing a meat that is both sweet and smoky. Guests can choose to dine inside the kitschy wood dining room or outside under the new tiki hut.
The menu includes typical grilled meat sandwiches and platters of chicken, beef, pork, and catfish. Biscuits, fries, onion rings, potato salad, and baked beans make up the side menu. But for those who prefer to step out of the norm, go for the more unexpected options such as Everglades frog legs and gator bites. 305-226-2272, www.thepitbarbq.com
Looking for more Miami travel information? Check out our Off the Brochure Travel Guide: Miami, Florida.
DAY TWO
Breakfast
With a dining room that is situated around the open kitchen, the Icebox Café on Michigan Avenue gives off a modern feel. Icebox is known for its special pancakes and stuffed French toast with flavors that change frequently.
Some of the most interesting items include French toast stuffed with guava and cream cheese, coconut rum topped piña colada pancake, and lemon curd pancake. Those who prefer a more savory breakfast will do fine with an egg dish served with yummy biscuits or the quiche of the day. Coffee is served in giant mugs, a definite deal for the price. Or, if you’d rather start the party early, Icebox offers half price bottles of wine during weekday brunch hours. 305-538-8448, iceboxcafe.com
For more foodie experiences, visit our Culinary Travel section.
Lunch
This is no Domino’s Pizza. Owner Anthony Bruno set out to give the people of Florida the opportunity to taste authentic Brooklyn-style pizza, which he does daily at this mainstay on S. Dixie Highway. Every pizza at Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza is baked in an 800-degree coal oven and served on a very crispy crust.
A traditional pie comes with mozzarella and Romano cheese, Italian plum tomatoes and basil. Additional toppings include sausage, mushrooms, olives, prosciutto, anchovies, onion, pepperonis and sweet peppers. If it’s too hard to make a decision, go for one of the specialty pies, which includes Philly cheese steak, eggplant Marino (a favorite of Dan Marino) or the meatball and ricotta. Even if you leave the meatballs off your pie, it’s definitely worth getting a side order of this perfectly baked dish. Don’t forget a robust red wine to pair with this super-crusty creation. 305-740-5800, anthonyscoalfiredpizza.com
Don’t go MIA in Miami, check out America’s Best Alternate Airports.
Dinner
Versailles was founded by three guys from Miami with a real passion for Cuban food. For over 25 years, the owners have been testing and perfecting their authentic Cuban recipes. The dining room is marked by wall-to-wall mirrors making it the best place to people-watch. For an appetizer try the cassava yucca croquettes sautéed with meat or the mashed green plantains. For a main meal, go with the Calle Ocho special, a sandwich filled with ham, turkey, cheese, and crispy bacon on Cuban bread served with plantain chips. For a slightly lighter meal, try the mahi-mahi served four different ways along with yellow rice and plantains or, finally, either of the Versailles Cuban samplers. Don’t worry about saving room for dessert; this menu is all about the savory—not the sweet. 305-444-0240, 3guysfrommiami.com
Listen to this radio interview to get more on Cuban culture in Miami with Jorge Castillo of Three Guys From Miami.
Salmon & Salmon is a Peruvian restaurant on NW 7th Street serving ceviche that is so fresh it’s (almost) literally to die for. Start with any (or all) of the ceviches and possibly the palta rellena, a stuffed avocado with string scallops.
For the main course try the cau cau de mariscos, which is often made of strips of tripe cooked with sautéed onions, garlic and chunks of boiled potatoes. Or go for the tacu tacu: fried beans and rice served with either lomito or fish filets. You also can’t go wrong with any of the soups, seafood or otherwise. Don’t bother saving room for dessert, if you are still hungry order another ceviche. 305-649-5924
More culinary adventures in other American cities:
DAY THREE
Breakfast
Although the Front Porch Café is located inside a boutique Ocean Drive hotel, it is still worth a visit by non-guests. Portions are large and often savory. Try the beach breakfast burrito, featuring three eggs scrambled with pepper jack cheese, scallions and mushrooms in a flour tortilla served with salsa and sour cream. Alternatively, every omelet comes stuffed to the brim with any combination of veggies, meats and cheeses. Almost every entrée is served with a side of tomatoes, potatoes or fruits and a raisin pumpernickel toast. Round off a great start to a day with a glass of fresh-squeezed juice in orange, grapefruit, apple or carrot. 305-531-8300, www.penguinhotel.com
Lunch
Canela Café is a tapas restaurant, something to be experienced at least once while in Miami. A combination of small plates makes a full meal, much like Chinese dim sum—a good rule of thumb is to order six dishes for a party of two.
Favorites include: baked plantains with queso blanco; garlic and chick peas mixed with sofrito sauce; green plantain cups stuffed with either chicken, pork, or beef on a bed of lettuce; and tapeo Cubano, made of sweet ham, queso blanco, roasted pepper, and Cuban crackers. The restaurant also has plenty of salads, sandwiches and meat entrees for those that desire an individual dish. Make sure to get a pitcher of sangria, which is less fruity than most and serves more than the four cups it claims to provide. 305-756-3930, canelamiami.com
Ready to head to the Miami area? Don’t miss Fun, Funky & Frugal Fall Travel Deals for Palm Beach County, Florida.
Dinner
Prime One Twelve’s homey interior with exposed brick walls is the perfect setting for truly American cuisine with a twist. For starters, the normal peanuts on the bar are bacon strips!
Try the oysters or the deviled eggs with caviar for an appetizer. Then get the arugula salad for no other reason than the goat cheese croutons—mouth-watering balls of soft goat cheese. Meat fans will love the steak grilled with a perfect crust.
Definitely save room for dessert here because the fried Oreos with French vanilla ice cream are truly something to remember. Be sure to pair the whole meal with different beverages from the restaurants award-winning wine and cocktail lists. 305-532-8112, mylesrestaurantgroup.com
Indomania is based on traditional Indonesian cuisine from the perspective of its Dutch owners. Start off with the pangsit, a crispy dough filled with lamb, or the sateh tempeh, marinated and fried tofu and tempeh. For dinner, try one of the Rijsttafel plates—a rice plate served with your choice of toppings, such as chicken in a mild coconut sauce or sweet-and-sour cucumber. Also recommended is the grilled snapper wrapped in a banana leaf with basil and tomato. Once again, if you are still hungry, skip the desserts and go back for more savory and exotic appetizers. 305-535-6332, www.indomaniarestaurant.com
By Courtney Crowder for PeterGreenberg.com.
Get more Miami Travel information:
- Off the Brochure Travel Guide: Miami, Florida
- Fun, Funky & Frugal Fall Travel Deals for Palm Beach County, Florida
- Ask the Locals Travel Guide: Palm Beach, Florida
- Cuban Culture in Miami ~ Jorge Castillo of Three Guys From Miami
More from our Culinary Travel series, Three Days, Nine Meals:
