Sunny’s—not some awful clubstaurant situation—is the big, fun restaurant Miami deserves. This former steakhouse pop-up now has 220 seats spread across two dining rooms, a patio, a pair of bars, a terrace, and an outdoor lounge. But this isn’t just a place to go and hope someone notices how hot you look. The food, martinis, and supercharged hospitality on display are special enough to be the main attraction.

It makes sense that Tâm Tâm started out as a sexy pop-up supper club, because dinner here is still a social event worth circling on your calendar. But you’re not coming to this Vietnamese restaurant in Downtown just to post a forehead selfie in one of the curvy mirrors on the wall. You’re here to eat some of the most delicious food in Miami. Many of Tâm Tâm’s best dishes—like the sticky fish sauce caramel wings and the tamarind glazed pork ribs—are gloriously messy. Maybe don’t wear white.

You’ve met the ingredients listed on Recoveco's menu before—things like chicken, grouper, shrimp, and celery. But this seasonal South Miami restaurant puts them underneath a microscope, tuning every detail of the dish to surprising, painstaking perfection. Grouper eats more like a ribeye, and its sherry sabayon and wedges of white sweet potato briefly turn us nonverbal. Chicken is so crunchy it could start a fire by rubbing its pieces together.

Walrus Rodeo takes ideas that have very little to do with each other and makes them work gloriously. There are dishes like carrot tartare, which surpasses all tuna or steak versions we've ever tried, and mustard green lasagna (our favorite lasagna in the city). The interior is a bright country western meets Italian disco aesthetic. But behind all the goofy contradictions is a restaurant that’s just delicious and fun.

Everything on the menu at Ariete is fantastic, but if you're coming here to celebrate (or just want dinner to feel like a special occasion in and of itself) get the canard a la presse—AKA the duck press. They wheel this medieval-looking machine to the table and use it to compress various parts of the duck into a deep, rich sauce. They then use that sauce to smother the absolute best duck you’ll ever taste in your life. Not a duck fan? Then go with the equally impressive monkfish wellington.

This narrow Italian restaurant on the edge of Buena Vista has one of those menus that's like a perfect album, with not a single song you’d dare skip. The only rules we’ll gently suggest are: plan to make a reservation a couple weeks out, order the shockingly amazing chopped salad, and definitely get the tagliolini nero if you see it on the menu. You can also try to come super early and snag walk-in bar seating, which is our favorite seat in the house anyway.

You're coming to this Italian aperitivo bar for helium-soft pizzas, zippy crudos, and the best Negroni in the world. But fun comes first at ViceVersa. Every seat in the narrow room gets you a view of wide smiles, and first dates going unexpectedly well. The entire place thrums with a combination of carefree energy and alcohol that’ll tee you up to be the version of yourself who usually only emerges after two cocktails in another country.

Gramps Getaway is a place that’ll make you feel nostalgic about the old Miami, even if you weren’t around for it. Here, under the massive palapa that used to house Whiskey Joe’s, you’ll find a ‘70s rock playlist, sneakily potent frozen drinks, and creaky wooden floorboards spackled with decades of beach sand. But what really sets Gramps Getaway apart from every other waterfront foe in Miami is the outstanding food.

Even though the menu changes occasionally, we always know what to expect at Macchialina: Italian dishes (mostly pasta) that feel like a final draft, edited to near perfection without so much as one superfluous fragment of parmesan on the plate. The service is excellent, the drinks are great, and the restaurant's indoor and outdoor seating is exactly where you want to spend a Saturday night eating Miami’s best pasta.

Zitz Sum shocks us out of routine—and not just because their chili oil is perfectly calibrated. The food here is unlike anything else in the city. Dishes are influenced by Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Laotian, and other Asian cultures. You’ll find DIY Korean-style hand rolls that come with steak tartare, short grain rice, and Japanese egg salad. The brisket sheng jian bao made us forget everything we learned in kindergarten about sharing.

Located in Sweetwater, the heart of the Nica expat community, Madroño is so chic that you’ll think it was plucked from the Design District and dropped into a strip mall next to a Sedano’s. Madroño’s menu features a lot of Nicaraguan classics done better than anywhere else in Miami. The tajadas are crunchy and never greasy, you can taste each individual grain of rice in the gallo pinto, and every element of their nacatamal is flawless.

To call this reading nook of a restaurant in North Miami the best Ecuadorian spot in the city is a grave understatement, considering we only have about five of them. Cotoa’s renditions of classics—like seco de pollo reimagined as plantain tortellini—are instant classics themselves. Even more notable is their brilliant use of less common ingredients. They whip palo santo into butter and deserve a donation from the cacao industry, given all the ways they’ve made it delicious.

Double Luck, with its sexy red glow and catchy Cantopop, might seem like the kind of place that’s only fun for those who possess at least one stick and poke tattoo. But, as it turns out, flaming Hennessey orange chicken, intimate booths, and fiery mapo tofu gets everyone jazzed up. By the end of this very fun dinner, the white tablecloth should be splattered with chili oil from the Hunan steamed fish and sweet and sour sauce from the essential crab rangoons.

While blowtorch-intensive sushi omakases have scattered across Miami, Naoe has hidden inside its little cave in Brickell Key, where it’s remained insulated from trends and fiercely committed to unphotogenic milt for over 15 years. Miami’s longest-running Japanese omakase is still its best. It’s also not for everyone. You’re more likely to encounter the fermented intestines of a sea cucumber spread across Japanese mountain yam than fatty tuna.

Inside Barra Callao, Hector Lavoe hits blast from the TV, everyone is on their second or third Pilsen, and the chef whips up intricate plates of pulpo al olivo and ceviche while singing along. There’s so much happening in this tiny seafood spot, but food is the focal point. The 12-seat counter makes it easy to point to the beautiful plate of choros a la chalaca from across the room and tell the chef you want that next.

Edan Bistro doesn’t make the best first impression. The walls are mostly bare, and there’s a weird deli case near the kitchen that’s perpetually empty. But the food at this casual Basque spot in North Miami exceeds the type of fine dining restaurants that want you to walk in the front door dressed like you're trying to crash the fanciest wedding in Coral Gables. Edan reminds us of the best restaurants in San Sebastian, where chefs greet you with coffee and send you off with wine.

You need two very important things to eat at this Cuban restaurant in Hialeah. First, cash—they don’t accept cards. Second, bring a monstrous appetite. Portions here feed you for days. We love the pollo empanizado. The breading is so crispy it crackles like a campfire. But our favorite dish is the vaca frita, the best in all of Miami. You’ll notice a giant bottle of vinegar and peppers on your table—pour it on anything you order.

Daniel’s is a masterclass in everything a fancy steakhouse should be, and the only thing they treat better than their first-rate steaks is you. That’s why you can trust this Gables spot for big-deal special occasions. Take someone who’s hard to impress. Meat is an obvious highlight here, but so are creative appetizers like foie gras crème brûlée, an artsy basil caesar salad, and lobster mac and cheese.

Over Under has a self-deprecating sense of humor, an unbothered attitude, and likes to throw dance parties until well past most reasonable bedtimes. But it also takes its food very seriously, and this place is sneakily one of Miami’s most consistently delicious restaurants. The cheeseburger is as great as everyone says, but so are more recent additions to the menu like the catfish po’boy and blackened shrimp slathered in chili butter and served with roti.

When picking a dinner in Miami, you generally have to commit to a big night out, a small one, or something in between. But Bar Bucce effortlessly pivots between these modes of dining. You order at the register of this Italian market, seat yourself, and after a few minutes, plates of caponata and pizzas find you. Make it a quick martini and a snack. Or go join the friends you’ll inevitably run into at their table.

El Bagel is like Courage in LA or Apollo in NYC, the kind of shop that acts as a new-school bagel ambassador to a world all too eager to declare the line not worth it. Don’t listen to those people. The El Bagel empire is built on a flawless bagel. It’s fluffy and firm in the right places. The exterior has a blistered crust full of dozens of tiny bubbles. You can take home a bag of them with a tub of schmear, but these bagels shine brightest as one of the dozen or so sandwiches on the menu.

Sanguich’s Cuban sandwich has retained its title as the city's best for years now. Few things in life are as exhilarating as the crunch of that first bite, except maybe biting into their pan con lechon (or any of their other carefully assembled sandwiches). Sanguich’s original sandwich shop on Calle Ochco is great, but also overflowing with tourists during the winter. And so we prefer the newer one in Coral Gables.

If you injected a farmers market with about 700% more sex appeal, you’d get Palma. Palma used to only serve a tasting menu—and it’s still a great choice if you’re in the mood for tableside spiels about local greens—but if it’s your first time, go a la carte. The menu consists of eight dishes that act as a thrilling introduction to what Palma does so well: Seasonal ingredients bolstered by a sublime sauce, twinkling in the candlelight. In case it wasn’t clear, this is a supreme date night option.

Long Gong is the exceptional Chinese restaurant so many Miamians are convinced we don’t have. And to find it, you’ve got to drive about as west as humanly possible before the roads turn into alligators and mosquitoes. Even a casual Wednesday lunch here feels like a birthday dinner in a banquet hall. At least a dozen of your friends can fit at one of the faux marble tables. Order generously. Everything is gorgeously plated, and sometimes dishes arrive in bubbling cauldrons.

Pop your head into the kitchen at this Caribbean market. It’s located at the back, and that’s where you’ll find the chef cooking oxtail, curry goat, roti, and possibly an exciting daily special, like cow foot soup. Tell her what you want and she’ll disappear before emerging moments later with a slowly stewed meat sitting on a pile of rice and peas, or wrapped tightly in a warm roti. You can also place an order online in advance, but interaction is half the fun at B&M.