There are some consequences to delay, and one of them is that some of the places that appear in this list are now gone. Itamae AO. Awarded a Michelin star, chef Nando Chang named James Beard Foundation Best Chef - South in 2025. Entrenos. Also awarded a Michelin star. Both closed in 2025. They each had their reasons, entirely unrelated to the quality of the food and experience. Nando's reincarnation of Itamae as an omakase counter inside sister Val Chang's wonderful restaurant Maty's (Val herself was named Beard's Best Chef - South the prior year) had to close when Maty's shut down last summer – likely a victim of a mismatch between concept and venue, a very large and probably very expensive space in Midtown Miami. And Entrenos was always intended as an impermanent pop-up inside the Tinta y Cafe space in Miami Shores. Since then, chef Osmel Gonzalez went north to open Emelina in West Palm Beach (which itself picked up a Michelin star this year), and now chef Evan Burgess is in process of opening a new restaurant, Yonder, in Coral Gables.
In retrospect, 2025 turned out to be a pretty brutal year for the industry. Longtime stalwarts like Cafe Vialetto, Osteria del Teatro, Sardinia, Sugarcane, La Mar, Le Zoo, and Harry's Pizzeria all appeared in the restaurant obituary columns. So did a bunch of big-name newcomers like New York's Red Farm and Ensenada, Henrique Sa Passoa's Sereia, and Gordon Ramsay's Lucky Cat. All opened in 2024, none made it through 2025. It's tempting to try to discern some broader lesson: Miami rents and operating costs are too high, the market is too oversaturated, Miami diners are too fickle. There is some truth to all of those. If anything, it seems to me to highlight the importance of controlling costs, connecting with the local dining community, and giving people reasons to keep coming back. One thing I note it that many of the restaurants from this 2025 list that are still standing are not in the high-rent hot-spots like Wynwood and Brickell, but instead places like Little Havana, North Miami, South Miami, Little River, and North Beach.
Despite the market's challenges, last year offered some of the most interesting, inspired cooking I've experienced in Miami in quite some time, much of it from a new generation of younger chefs who were opening their first restaurants. That's genuinely exciting. I also had the good fortune to travel, and eat, very well last year outside of Miami, including a return trip to Japan, and visits to Cape Town, Copenhagen, the Bay Area and Hudson Valley. 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 last year. It is South Florida focused, but follows me around as well when we travel. And there are typically way too many footnotes. A new one for this year: em-dashes notwithstanding, all content here is generated by an actual human who pays for all his meals. We're going to do things a little different this year – let's start with the South Florida list, and then do a second round with all the rest of the ground we covered last year. Let's get on with it!
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| stone crab rice - Itamae AO (Midtown Miami) |
Way back in 2017, I went to a one-off pop-up dinner called "Nisei" with a young chef cooking a menu from a genre I was just then starting to grasp: nikkei, the mash-up of Peruvian and Japanese flavors that is a sort of organic example of "fusion" cuisine. The chef (and part-time hip-hop recording artist) was Nando Chang, who I continued to follow as he went from food-hall kiosks to a mostly open-air space in the Design District to the omakase counter he opened as Itamae AO. Every iteration was an improvement and refinement, and every meal was better than the last. This dish is a great example, bringing Florida into the Peruvian-Japanese mixtape: local stone crab, a claw draped with anticuchera sauce, sitting atop a bowl of creamy rice enriched with more crab, chile and herb oil. Unfortunately, this would turn out to be one of the last bites from my last meal at Itamae AO. Nando has been popping up here and there for collaboration dinners since the closing – I'm eagerly waiting for the next track to drop.
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| ballyhoo - Recoveco (South Miami) |
There is such a confidence in the cooking of Maria Teresa Gallina and Nico Martinez, the co-chefs and partners who opened Recoveco, that it is hard to believe it is their first time running their own restaurant. The menu is short – typically four apps, four mains, two desserts. While operating within this self-circumscribed universe, it's also typically pretty weird: one of the staples is chicken-liver mousse over speculoos crackers dotted with tropical fruit jam (could be guava, maybe starfruit, depending on what's growing); what's called "papaya salad" is a mutant hybrid of Thai som tum and Italian (actually Mexican) Caesar. And when it's not weird, it's often pretty minimalist: another staple is their "golden chicken," an Amish bird simply but expertly roasted, maybe served with a piri piri buffalo sauce. But both concept and execution are so consistently, and uncannily, on target that this has become one of my favorite restaurants to visit. This dish of ballyhoo (typically used locally as baitfish, though it's of the same family as Japanese sayori, a/k/a halfbeak) is a great example: the shiny fish fileted, cured, and cut into bite-size pieces, dappled with a white soy and sweet potato vinegar ponzu, and accompanied by a dab of fresh wasabi. Nowhere to hide; no need to.
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| snow crab, corn, uni & caviar chawanmushi - Omo by Jont (Orlando) |
We took the Brightline north to spend a weekend in Orlando, which has long been a haven for excellent Vietnamese food, and has more recently made leaps and bounds in all sorts of other kinds of dining experiences. We have a lot more exploring to do, but on this visit the primary focus was Omo by Jont. Its chef is Ryan Ratino, who has the Michelin two-starred Jont and one-starred Bresca in Washington DC, opened MAASS in Fort Lauderdale in late 2023 (which appeared in my 2024 list, and picked up its own star last year), and then Omo a few months later (which also picked up a star last year). Normally I would be very skeptical of this expansionist approach. But from my experiences at MAASS and Omo, it seems Ratino has some good systems, and good crews, to maintain quality control across his multiple venues. Omo is a really nice experience: the meal starts in a cozy lounge area with several small bites, moves to a dining counter in the open kitchen for several more courses, then finishes with dessert in another little lounge area. Over maybe 18 different bites, there were no misses and several highlights, the most memorable being this chawanmushi with snow crab, sweet corn, Hokkaido uni and caviar.[1]
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| aori ika with osetra caviar - Ogawa (Little River Miami) |
Miami has seen an influx of high-end omakase venues recently. Some of these are better than others. Ogawa, in Little River, is among my favorites. Over the past several years, restaurateur Alvaro Perez Miranda has opened several Japanese spots that hit multiple points of the market: the casual Wabi Sabi (now called Midorie 79, with a sibling in Coconut Grove), the somewhat higher-end Hiywakawa, and the all-out Ogawa. Given the price (currently $395, which includes tax and service charge), it is definitely a "special occasion" spot, while I'm at Midorie 79 nearly every other week. But in my opinion, it's worth it on those special occasions. The narrow dining room with one long counter, in a building that backs onto the railroad tracks, makes me feel like I'm back in Japan. And with chef Masayuki Komatsu behind the counter, usually accompanied by Royce Appling, and sometimes Jaime Liu in the kitchen, the food gives me those feels too. The dishes change with the seasons – during this spring visit, ayu (sweetfish) tempura, sayori (needlefish) nigiri, and sakura masu (cherry trout) nigiri were all featured – but one nigiri that seems to hold steady is this one featuring aori ika (big fin reef squid) topped with a generous dollop of osetra caviar. It's a great combination: the squid slightly sticky and sweet, playing against the pop and salinity of the roe. I'm not generally a fan of the intrusion of "luxe" ingredients into every pricey omakase lineup – save your caviar and truffles and wagyu and toro, give me something perfect and peak of season instead – but this one works.
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