Cotoa’s food always tasted more ambitious than the bizarre food hall it lived in. Now, they have their own restaurant in North Miami, where these inventive Ecuadorian dishes shine with no distractions. The most exciting things on the menu are dishes the chef grew up eating, which she’ll tell you about as she drops plates on the table. The cangrejada is a bowl of tomato bisque with blue crab and plantains that’s sweet, chilled, and made for Miami summers. The menu will probably change often.

For the first time in a long time, we’re excited about a sceney Brickell restaurant. Claudie has an enormous Hollywood vanity mirror in the bathroom made for TikTok engagement. But you can also walk outside and expect an excellent steak. At Claudie, the scene exists without compromising the essential responsibilities of a restaurant. Claudie’s attentive staff, steak frites, and charming group of roving musicians create an appropriately excessive (and expensive) dinner.

Bar Bucce is a big Italian market and restaurant from the Macchialina team. It’s already a great answer for so many occasions. Kids can delight in the roar of passing trains between slices of pizza. It’s a pit stop for niche bottles of amaro and ready-made pastas to cook at home. Most of all, Bar Bucce is Little River’s new neighborhood hero, where friends can meet to share pitchers of vermouth and cola over a wonderful menu of sliced meats, fluffy pizza (get the zucchini), and antipasti.

You can tell the chef at Marc’s has a special relationship with his dough. It crunches where it ought to, is chewy where it needs to be, and has a flavor encouraged by 48 to 72 hours of patient, loving glances. The little restaurant is several notches more formal than your average slice shop (they don't even sell by the slice). You’re coming to sit down and appreciate dough that tastes like a lifetime of obsession. Things are pretty quiet here for now.

Even though it’s on the roof of a shiny new building, Shiso reminds us of hashtagging our way through the Wynwood art walks of the twenty-teens. The indoor-outdoor restaurant has big cement columns tagged with graffiti. Its Japanese menu has Caribbean influences and feels refreshingly original in a neighborhood where everything is either a taco shop or an Italian restaurant. The meat-heavy menu includes dishes like duck dumplings, oxtail udon noodles, and a sliced short rib.

The Joyce doesn’t feel like a restaurant. It feels like the private dining room that publicists call ahead to reserve for clients too famous to eat with civilians. The tiny, windowless steakhouse is expensive, has a doorman, and a Picasso on the wall. They’ll serve you the prettiest ribeye in Miami Beach, refresh your martini glass with panache, and work hard to make you forget you’re eating on one of South Beach’s most touristy streets.

Itamae is back—as a pop-up residency at Maty’s. If you’ve been mourning the conchitas a la parmesana, otherwordly tiraditos, and every single leche de tigre that used to come out of their Design District kitchen, this temporary resurrection feels like an answered prayer from the ceviche gods. For the ones that never got to try the original Itamae, we’re very jealous that you get to experience this ceviche for the first time.

This family-owned spot has only been around for two-ish months and they already have neighborhood regulars ordering the usuals. The Dominican sandwich spot operates like a ventanita. There’s no dining room—only an outdoor counter you can lean against while waiting for cortaditos and chimi sandwiches. Takeout is an option, but we like to eat at the counter so we can listen to bossa nova and the owner tell the origin story of the chimi sandwich. They happily pull out stools for us loiterers.

Lakay Food Spot was already making some of Miami’s best crispy akra, griot, and fried goat when they were in a food truck. But their hefty platters of Haitian dishes are a notch more enjoyable now that they’ve got their own space in North Miami. There are a few tables inside, but you want to be sitting in the back patio. It’s got string lights, shade from a tree, and enough room for a DJ, who occasionally plays in the backyard on weekends.

We loved Double Luck back when it was a Sunday popup at Tâm Tâm. Now that the restaurant has found a new home in the former Schnitzel Haus spot, we love it even more. Equipped with bright red lanterns, this playlist, and a mesmerizing tableside flambé, the restaurant is meticulously designed for a fun dinner out. It’s hard to resist the urge to order the entire menu, but portions are large. Prioritize the crispy, glossy orange chicken and the Hunan steamed fish that are both prepared tableside.

Obsession—you’ll feel it after a night at To Be Determined. You’ll pine over raw scallops with prickly strawberry aguachile and pray to taste their creamy flan again. But like their name suggests, that’s TBD. Dishes change weekly, chasing what’s available and fresh. The candlelit dining room and menu is small, but the flavors aren’t. Always count on a meat dish, a carb, a couple of vegetables, and fresh local seafood.

From the team behind big-name spots Zahav and Laser Wolf, Aviv arrived in South Beach with big expectations—and pulled it off. The Israeli restaurant (located in the 1 Hotel) is a trusty spot for snappy merguez and creamy hummus, and a welcome addition to a neighborhood full of display window empanadas and $40 mojitos. Aviv could even lure a South Beach lifer to the touristy hotel with its exceptional Moroccan cigars. Come here and order the tasting menu for $75 per person.

Any good izakaya should have outstanding karaage and yakitori. So does Dojo Izakaya in Coral Gables. You should order both those things, but there’s also a more exciting tonkatsu pork chop, Denver steak, and other rotating Japanese dishes that deviate a centimeter from what you’d expect. That includes delicate raw scallops with corn in ponzu, or okonomiyaki with pickled guanciale.