Speaking of trendlines, I saw several in the past year. Maybe most notable is the massive influx of outsiders. After Miami had its moment in the sun in 2023 – Bon Appetit naming it “Food City of the Year,” local restaurants and chefs getting recognized in NY Times’ “Best Restaurants of 2023,” Esquire’s “50 Best New Restaurants,” and Food & Wine’s “Best New Chefs” – the boom was inevitable. While those kudos went mostly to locally-grown products, the wave that followed, as is often the case here, came mostly from without and not within.
Restaurant operators from New York, Chicago, California, Europe, Canada and Latin America have moved into South Florida like a swarm of mosquitos. Only a small handful made this list.
Prominent among the new additions were a lot of big ticket Italian places, most of which, honestly, I’ve blissfully ignored.[1] Of the ones I have tried, the most notable and interesting was Torno Subito, chef Massimo Bottura’s brightly-colored, playful spot downtown atop the Julia & Henry food hall. And yes, I will acknowledge that a Michelin three-starred,[2] “World's 50 Best Restaurants” first-place chef opening a restaurant in Miami is officially a Big Deal. But it didn’t make the list.
As usual, the trends I’m more interested in stay closer to home, and one that I found particularly encouraging was the opening of several inspired, independent restaurants with their own distinct styles. It may be odd to call a handful of new spots that are quite different from each other a “trend,” but the places I’m talking about – Itamae AO, Palma, Recoveco[3] in particular, though there are others – while dissimilar in style, share a focus on great ingredients, thoughtful cooking, and maybe most importantly, their own particular culinary expression. I also put the wonderful EntreNos in this group, even if it doesn’t perfectly fit the timeline as a late 2023 opening.[4] I was very happy to see EntreNos recognized with a Michelin star last year, along with new stars for deserving omakase venues Ogawa and Shingo.[5]
And speaking of omakase: much as I’m a fan, it is probably a good thing that the barrage of new omakase openings seems to have tailed off some. I have my favorites – yes Ogawa, and yes Shingo, and I am quite overdue for a return visit to Naoe – but let’s just say I am not convinced of the sincerity of all these spots. One that I did very much enjoy, and which made this list, was the Inoshin pop-up at the Surf Club. Chef Shinichi Inoue is the real deal.[6]
2024 was also a good year for reboots, the most impressive of which has been Sunny’s. The pandemic pop-up always would have had a special place in my heart, as I still recall the feeling of hope and civility it restored in some particularly weird times. But wow, talk about a “glow up.” More to come on that later. Other exciting reboots: the return of Michelle Bernstein’s Sra. Martinez, now in Coral Gables after a decade-plus hiatus; Niven Patel bringing Ghee back to us folks for whom Kendall is a different country (not quite in the Design District, but close by in Wynwood); and Kojin 2.0, also now in the Gables (in the old Eating House and briefly Lion & the Rambler spot), which I am due to pay a visit.[7]
Anyway, before another year goes by, on to the list. As always, a disclaimer: this does not purport to be a definitive “best of” list, only a very personal accounting of my favorite things over the past year. It is South Florida focused, but follows me around as well when we travel. And there are typically way too many footnotes.
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| HM ribeye - EntreNos (Miami Shores) |
At EntreNos, chefs Evan Burgess and Osmel Gonzalez do some fantastically creative things – turning unripe green mangos into olives, using fish like blue runner, more often treated as baitfish here, in delicious crudos. They also do some very simple things very well. This big-boy ribeye, from HM Cattle Company in Central Florida, is one of the best locally raised steaks I’ve ever had – seasoned and cooked perfectly, and accompanied in minimalist fashion by some pickled vegetables, crispy yucca, and fresh leaves dressed in a sharp vinaigrette. It’s unusual to see young chefs exercise this kind of restraint. Like the motto of one of my favorite restaurants, Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica, says, “Simple Ain’t Easy.”
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| le bison - L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon (Miami Design District) |
It is something of an anniversary tradition for Mrs. F and I to celebrate at an Atelier de Joel Robuchon, going back more than a decade to a visit to L’Atelier Tokyo for #20. The Design District spot is Miami’s only Michelin two-starred restaurant, and curiously, the only U.S. restaurant in the Robuchon empire with more than one star. While I’m not sure I can explain that quirk, I can say that L’Atelier reliably delivers what it sets out to do: French cuisine that is contemporized but far from revolutionary, prepared with precision. This Wellington variation is a great example: bison – lean but flavorful, and with a perfect cook – in place of the usual beef, layers of Swiss chard and mushroom duxelles, a crisp laminated pastry shell, a classic red wine jus.
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| Spaghetti alla Moro - Trattoria al Moro (Rome, Italy) |
A slightly belated anniversary trip took us to Italy, starting in Rome, which is one of my favorite eating towns in the world. Our first-night meal was at Al Moro, an old guard spot just steps from Trevi Fountain. We were somewhat brusquely shuffled into a room that was clearly earmarked for tourists, where everyone was squeezed into one long banquette, and yet I found the place completely delightful. Especially the house signature “Spaghetti alla Moro,” essentially a carbonara with the addition of some hot chili flakes. Nothing fancy, just a great dish, perfectly done.
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| sbagei - Trattoria la Grotta (Riomaggiore, Italy) |
I was led to believe that while the views in Cinque Terre are fantastic, the food was not so much. Still and yet, there were some local specialties I quite enjoyed – anchovies in all sorts of variations, lovely stuffed mussels in a spicy tomato sauce. But the most interesting, and unexpectedly delicious thing we ate was this dish of sgabei – a frybread with origins in Lunigiana, a region bordering Liguria and Tuscany – accompanied by dried tuna bresaola and a quenelle of prescinseua, a soft, fresh Ligurian cheese.
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| calamari in zimino - Ora d’Aria (Florence, Italy) |
In Florence, we paid a visit to Ora d’Aria, a restaurant run by chef Marco Stabile, who for a time was also associated with Miami’s Toscana Divino. It is a posh place – gold-rimmed white china and pressed linens – but the food actually pays tribute to a much humbler style of cooking. When you start a meal with a teacup of cavolo nero brodo – pot-likker, basically – you have won my heart. Nothing is deconstructed or reinvented or a “play” on anything here, it’s just cooked really well. Kale also played a feature role in my favorite dish there, a stew of tender baby calamari in zimino stewed in a dense, hearty green broth.
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| pici all’aglione - Osteria il Borro (Arezzo, Italy) |
We headed into the Tuscan countryside for a couple days to Il Borro, an absolutely magical estate near Arezzo which incorporates an old medieval village. They make excellent wines, they run a farm, they have cooking classes, all in a jaw-droppingly beautiful setting. During the day we learned to make pici, the rustic hand-rolled Tuscan pasta. At night we ate the professionals’ version of the dish, dressed with garlic, herbs, pepperoncini and anchovies. Much better than mine.
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| nigiri omakase - Wabi Sabi (Miami Upper Eastside) |
Sometimes you want a great sushi dinner, but you don’t want to spend $200-$300 a head. Crazy, right? When that craving hits me, which is often, you will find me at Wabi Sabi, where the omakase platter offers a dozen pieces of nigiri plus a maki roll for $100. This is not a “cheap” meal by any means. But this is also a chance to dine on high quality fish, flown in from Japan, the selection changing with the market and the seasons, prepared with care and attention. It is exponentially better than many of the places selling commodity-grade sushi for the same prices, while still a fraction of the cost of Miami’s top sushi-yas. I feel incredibly fortunate to have this so close to home. Gochisosama!
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| onion, truffle, parmesan - Tambourine Room (Miami Beach) |
While Mrs. F was off traveling somewhere, I took myself for a solo dinner to the Tambourine Room in the Carillon Hotel on the north end of Miami Beach. Though this is around the corner from home, it had taken some time for me to get there. The delay was partially attributable to Mrs. F’s aversion to tasting menus, but also to some skepticism on my part. German born and trained chefs (head chef Tristan Brandt, and chef de cuisine Timo Steubing) cooking Asian-influenced food in a Miami Beach resort seemed … incongruous? Still, pretty much every dish was well executed and beautifully presented – like an oyster draped in green ranch dressing with dots of nam prik sauce, an Arpège-style egg topped with hamachi tartare and wasabi foam, a scallop atop foie gras in a frothy arugula bath. My favorite was a dome of puff pastry filled with an entire roasted onion, sauced with a parmesan emulsion and a black truffle jus, combining haughty and humble. Having visited, I still feel a disconnect – there is no sense of place, this menu and dining room could be in Düsseldorf or Dubai or Denver – but I can also appreciate what they’re doing there.
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| radicchio Caesar - Silverlake Bistro (Miami Beach) |
Silverlake Bistro is another of our regular neighborhood haunts, and their fantastic burger made an appearance on this list back in 2019. That burger is still a favorite, but they are back here with another dish: a Caesar salad of julienned radicchio. Aside from the substitution of the crimson chicory for green romaine, this is pretty much a straightforward Caesar – good anchovies, good parmesan, crispy croutons, rich, tangy dressing – but the change-up works wonders, the bitterness of the radicchio a welcome contrast to all those salty, intense flavors.
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| riz au lait - a. kitchen + bar (Philadelphia) |
In April, we took a weekend jaunt up to Philadelphia to visit child #2, and I was kind of bewildered when I kept on spotting famous food people everywhere. Hey, there’s Alain Ducasse! Was that Ruth Reichl checking into our hotel? Then I ran into semi-Miamians Brad Kilgore and Nina Compton, and they clued me in: I’d stumbled into The Chef Conference,[8] and our hotel was ground zero for the event. No wonder it had been so hard to score reservations anywhere! But turns out we ate just fine, as we found spots at the counter of a. kitchen + bar, one of a great group of restaurants run by Ellen Yin. We had a bunch of good things, including some fascinating Slovenian wines from Gabernik 23, but the most memorable was a simple, delicious dessert: rice pudding ("riz au lait" if you’re fancy) with a bay leaf infused custard, topped with a richly caramelized roasted pineapple. 10/10.
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| corn chawanmushi - MAASS (Fort Lauderdale) |
I probably have not said enough about MAASS, the restaurant that chef Ryan Ratino opened in the Four Seasons on Fort Lauderdale Beach in late 2023. Ratino has a couple highly regarded spots in DC – Jont (**) and Bresca (*) – and in addition to MAASS, also opened Omo by Jont in Winter Park last year. Both MAASS and Omo each just contributed another Michelin star to that list with the expanded statewide Florida coverage for 2025, and Omo's also been named a finalist for the James Beard Foundation’s nationwide “Best New Restaurant” award. It’s not easy to run one great restaurant; running four, in three different cities, is kind of mind-boggling. And from my experience at the chef’s counter, MAASS is indeed a great restaurant. This was another solo trip for the chef's counter tasting menu (though MAASS offers a la carte as well), and while it was in some respects very much a stereotypical contemporary tasting menu,[9] it was also really, really well done, with not a single miss all night. There were a couple other contenders for my favorite dish of the night – it could have been the koshibuki rice with maitake, vin jaune, comte and shaved black truffles, or the dry-aged duck breast with a duck sausage stuffed morel riding sidecar. But the final vote was for this lush, sweet corn chawanmushi, topped generously with bafun uni and kaluga caviar. Great flavors, great execution, great presentation. Also really delightful service – someone has clearly closely read Will Guidara’s “Unreasonable Hospitality.”
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| basque cheesecake - Edan Bistro (North Miami) |
In case you couldn’t tell from his name, Aitor Garate Berasaluze is real-deal Basque. He opened Leku at the Rubell Museum back in 2020, then moved on the following year to open his own place, Lur, in the Time Out Market in Miami Beach, then went full brick-and-mortar in North Miami with Edan Bistro in late 2023. The 8-course tasting menu he offers (in addition to a full a la carte menu) skews more contemporary than traditional – beet and citrus gazpacho, tuna tartare on a crispy cheese cracker, a fantastic chaud-froid dish of caramelized peas and onions topped with cool steak tartare – but closes with a classic Basque cheesecake. It’s pitch-perfect: a burnished, caramelized exterior, giving way to a rich, creamy, tangy center, somewhere on the cusp between solid and liquid.
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| bluefin tuna & rice - Itamae AO (Midtown Miami) |
I have been following the “Chang Gang” for 7+ years, starting with a pop-up called “Nisei” by siblings Val and Nando that hinted at great things to come. Sure enough, every step since then – opening spaces in Design District and Wynwood food halls, then Itamae’s stand-alone spot, then Val’s opening of Maty’s, and most recently Nando’s reopening of Itamae AO as an omakase counter inside Maty’s – has been another leap forward. It’s been a thrill to watch them both garner the recognition they have worked so hard to earn: both siblings named as Food & Wine “Best New Chefs,” Val getting the James Beard Foundation “Best New Chefs: South” award, Maty’s being named by the NY Times among “America’s Best Restaurants,” Itamae AO getting recognized in Esquire’s “Best New Restaurants” and then picking up a Michelin star.
At Itamae AO, Nando is doing things that I just don’t think are being done anywhere else in the U.S. – dry-aging and curing fish comparable in quality to what’s found at top sushi-yas, and serving them with inspired takes on the vibrant flavors of the Peruvian-Japanese mash-up that goes by the name “Nikkei.” The leche de tigres for his cebiches have an almost electric intensity, rippling with tangy citrus and chilies fresh and fermented, but my favorite dish from one progression at the counter was like an oasis of calm: silky tranches of bluefin tuna, paired with a luscious bowl of cilantro rice. Simple. Perfect.
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| caviar service 'za - Walrus Rodeo (Buena Vista Miami) |
It is no secret that Boie De is one of my favorite restaurants in Miami. It is also no secret that it has become a near impossible reservation. The good news, albeit not much of a secret either, is that Alex Meyer and Luciana Giangrandi opened up another spot next door, Walrus Rodeo, which is more spacious and where it’s much easier to score a seat on short notice. Like its big sister, the offerings at Walrus Rodeo seem to morph a bit every time I visit. The menu’s anarchic tendencies (e.g., kanpachi crudo with green juice, carrot tartare with mole, jerk spiced quail with tzatziki, kingfish marinated in beet juice, romano beans with chile crunch) are anchored by a rotating selection of pizzas with ethereally light crusts and some occasionally esoteric toppings themselves. One night we treated ourselves to this “caviar service ‘za” which came topped with creme fraiche, crispy shallots, a poached egg, and a quenelle of caviar. It was a winner.
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| aori ika nigiri - Ogawa (Little River Miami) |
I first dined with chef Masayuki Komatsu when he was popping up at the counter of Wabi Sabi while they were building out the Hiyakawa space in Wynwood. He moved over to Hiyakawa, then moved again to Ogawa, all part of the same group run by Alvaro Perez Miranda, when it opened in late 2023. Ogawa – hidden away in an unassuming storefront along the railroad tracks in Little River – is the most fully realized vision of a high-end omakase venue that this group has wrought, and is s close to Japan as I have ever felt in Miami. Honestly, I loved everything about it – the setting, the decor, the incredibly attentive service, the variety of raw and cooked items that precede the rounds of nigiri, the selection of neta that went beyond the usual (kohada, amaebi with its roe, hatsu katsuo, kamasu, tairagi). Hard to pick a favorite bite, but I sure enjoyed this nigiri of aori ika (big fin reef squid), its slightly sticky texture moderated by some delicate cross-hatched knifework, topped with a generous dollop of osetra caviar.
OK, that covers my favorites through June of 2024. More to come … soon?
[1] There is also another sub-genre of new Italian or Italian-ish (one is actually Peruvian?) restaurants serving almost exclusively pasta (i.e., Pasta, Pasta e Basta, Otto & Pepe), which is mystifying to me because it seems impossible in these carb-dodging days to find a dining companion willing to order themselves a bowl of pasta; and when I do so myself, I feel like I should furtively cover my head with a napkin as if I’m indulging in ortolans. Some of these places look good, but nobody will go with me. No doubt there are many other trends that I have also blissfully ignored. For instance: apparently there are now smashburgers everywhere? OK.
[2] Yes, I know: restaurants get Michelin stars, chefs don’t. But I don’t think Osteria Francescana is getting three Michelin stars without Massimo Bottura, nor do I think Massimo’s packing his knives and leaving there any time soon.
[3] Recoveco was a late 2024 opening, but did not make this list because I didn't make it there before year end. I'm pretty confident it will be on my 2025 list (whenever that comes out!)
[4] Sadly, EntreNos recently announced that they are closing at the end of next month – which I suppose was inevitable, given that it was always just a "pop-up," but a loss nonetheless. I am hopeful that its talented chefs Evan Burgess and Osmel Gonzalez will be back at it in a permanent home soon.
[5] It is a testament to just how far behind the curve I am that Michelin already came out with its 2025 ratings while I was in the middle of drafting this post.
[6] Unfortunately, Inoshin just packed up shop at the Hemingway Tower and Chef Inoue is headed back to New York, while still awaiting a permanent restaurant down here that has been in process for years.
[7] The counterpoint to the “good reboot” trend has been the “reverse upgrade” trend: 27 Restaurant (a place that did a beautiful job of capturing local flavors in a relaxed, casual format) getting replaced by “Ray’s,” some sort of NY faux dive bar with $17 margaritas; Shuckers getting replaced by Palm Tree Club, a DJ-themed douchebag magnet. Ray’s claims to have “food by Michelin starred chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske.” While I’d be thrilled to see the super-talented chefs from Contra cooking in Miami, I suspect the closest they’ve come to this place was taking a consulting fee for spending ten minutes scratching out a menu of nachos, hot wings, wedge salads, and smashburgers while sitting on the crapper. And while Shuckers was not exactly a dining destination, it was at least a place where you could relax and hang out by the water and have a beer or two while watching a game, and their wings did not suck. Now there's a half-dozen police cars lining 79th Street Causeway every other weekend managing traffic headed to some DJ set.
[8] This looks like a fantastic program, and if I wasn’t completely asleep at the wheel I’d have realized it was happening again in Philadelphia last month.
[9] The contemporary tasting menu starter kit: lots of little bites, preferably in delicate little pastry cups; lots of Japanese influences (a raw fish, a chawanmushi, a rice course, a kakigori dessert); a white sauce broken with a green sauce; lots of luxe ingredients (caviar, uni, truffle); a couple big proteins, preferably a dry-aged this, a wood-fired that.
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