There is a lot of great food in Miami Beach! This is a very international area where you can find all kinds of different food. Of course, Cuban food is a must! But outside of that pretty much anything you want, you can find. Miami Beach and South beach in particular gets a reputation for being an expensive destination. You can spend a lot of money on mediocre food here for sure. Also, you can find great, authentic food for cheap if you know where to look.
A general rule for food in South Beach- Ocean drive is the main street near the beach and it where a lot of the Art Deco buildings are located. It is lined with restaurants and bars with outdoor seating. It is tempting to sit and eat, drink and people watch here but we would advise against it. You will find okay food catering to tourists who will most likely never be there again. A lot of the restaurants are serving very similar menus, nothing unique about each place. If you eat here, the food won’t be bad but it also won’t be great and you will pay way more than you would like. We ate on Ocean Drive our first lunch in the area before we really got our bearings. We shared one dish and drank just water and ended up spending approx. $50.
This area is also big for nightlife. A lot of these restaurants and bars have live music at night. The Art Deco buildings are all lit up at night which is also fun to see. We walked along to see the lights and ended up stopping into one bar to see some of the live music and get a drink. We are not big on going out, the party scene is not really our thing, but we thought while in South Beach we should enjoy some of the nightlife. We looked over the menu and quickly did some math on drink prices. Draft beer was $16 and so was a small cocktail. Most of these places serve giant cocktails in a large fishbowl type of glass. They charge $38-40 for one of these. If you are both going to get a drink you spend almost as much on two draft beers or two small cocktails so we opted for one giant cocktail to share. We got a mojito and again the drink was not bad but it was just your standard premixed mojito, nothing special about it so in our minds not worth $40. One last note is that there are a lot of street vendors walking around trying to see various goods as you are in the restaurants. A polite “No thank you” will get them to move on but don’t be surprised if you are haggled a few times. So if you feel like you must spend some time on Ocean Drive we would recommend doing one night for a drink or two at one of the restaurants/bars during some live music, nothing more.
Now that all that is out of the way, time to talk about the great food we do recommend. Walking even one street away from Ocean Drive and the beach you can find some really wonderful food and much more affordable prices.
La Ventana Traditional Colombian Food- We loved this place, we walked by and it smelled awesome! There is outdoor and indoor seating available. We tried what we could call a sampler platter, listed on the menu as “Picada for two people”. It offered traditional Colombian sausage, blood sausage, pork chicharron, grilled chicken, plantains, potatoes, and came with three traditional salsas to try. Everything was amazing! We were super excited to try the blood sausage since it is something we hadn’t had before and you can’t readily find in the U.S. It was our favorite thing on our platter of food. The restaurant also offered multiple other dishes and tapas options so if you wanted to try one or two of the things from this large sampler platter you could order just those things as tapas.
Las Olas Café- This is a Cuban cafeteria/café serving food all day long as well as espresso and freshly squeezed juices. There is a window you can just walk up to on the sidewalk and order coffee, juice, and food to go or you can go in and sit down. The place is quite small with only a few tables and was crowded each time we went. For lunch and dinner, there are multiple traditional Cuban foods you can choose from. These are already prepared and kept warm on hot plates and visible behind the counter so you can choose what looks good. They also have empanadas and other Cuban pastries. We went here twice for breakfast and once for lunch, needless to say, we loved it! It is your typical small, neighborhood place that you can tell locals keep coming back to. We had breakfast sandwiches the first time we went for breakfast and they were huge! We both only ate half and saved the other halves for the next day since we had a microwave in our Air BnB. The next time we had breakfast there we ordered one breakfast combo (since we had seen how much food this was the previous time we were there). This comes with a coffee or an orange juice, two eggs however you want them cooked, french fries or home fries, a choice of bacon, sausage or ham as well as Cuban toast on the side for about $7. We enjoyed both breakfast options that we tried and really enjoyed the espresso as well! We had americanos for our espresso each time we were there. They had all your standard espresso drinks as options as well. The last time we ate here we ordered a Cuban sandwich to go and ate it on the beach. This was by far the best Cuban sandwich we have ever had! We got one to share because again the portions are large. That was definitely enough food for lunch but it was so good we could have easily both finished our own. We would highly recommend this place. Great food, great atmosphere, and affordable prices.
My Ceviche and SoBe hostel bar- My Ceviche is a small, hole in the wall kind of place with a small counter you walk up to and order from. There are a few tables outside on the sidewalk. If those are taken the SoBe hostel is right next door which you can eat at as long as you order a drink from their bar. My Ceviche offers ceviche, tacos, and poke bowls. We devoured our ceviche without stopping to take a picture, sorry! But it was awesome! We also had ahi tuna tacos which we did stop and take a picture of before eating. The food was really good, fresh, and affordable. You could also easily take this to go and enjoy your food on the beach.
Gelato Go- For a good dessert, Gelato Go is a great option. We stopped here after our dinner at My Ceviche on our way back towards Ocean Drive to see the Art Deco buildings lite up. You can try three flavors if you order a large (you will get one scoop of each). They have fresh fruit flavors and more creamy and chocolate options.
Babylon- Babylon is a Turkish restaurant with great food and also a very nice outdoor patio area. The patio is light up with string lights at night, not the best for getting great photos but it makes for a nice atmosphere for dinner. We would recommend the stuffed cabbage appetizer for sure! We also shared a Turkish meatball dish which was really good.
Taquiza- This taco shop is a bit further north than the places we have listed so far. It is near 14th street, an easy walk along the beach if you are staying further south as we did. It is a block off the beach and has both indoor and outdoor seating. They offer a variety of tacos. The tacos are priced individually so you can order as many as you want and whatever kinds you want. They had chicken, shrimp, veggies, crickets, carne asado beef, beef tongue, barbacoa, pastor, and carnitas. We’ve had a lot of pastor in our travels to Mexico, and this pastor was the best we have found in the U.S.
Puerto Sagua- This is another Cuban diner serving food and espresso all day. There are tables you can sit at or there is a large counter area you can sit at. We had breakfast and coffee here one morning. Their breakfast is your traditional diner breakfast, they have several breakfast combos including eggs, hashbrowns or home fries, breakfast meats, Cuban toast, and a coffee included. Their café con leche is amazing! They bring you a cup nearly full of steamed milk and a small metal craft of espresso. You then pour the espresso into your milk so you could use less if you don’t like your coffee very strong or if you aren’t a big espresso drinker.
Lucali’s- As foodies, we were surprised we hadn’t heard of Lucali’s before our friends filled us in, thanks @thepassportpair for the tip! The original is in Brooklyn and people stand in line for hours waiting to try the pizza. You can watch this YouTube video to see why: pizza in its purest form. There is a restaurant in Miami Beach and so of course we had to try this pizza. The menu is straight forward, just pizza, calzone, and a few side dish options. You can add basil and garlic to your pizza free of charge. You can also add pepperoni, Portobello mushrooms, red bell peppers, onions, and hot peppers each for an additional charge. The crust is thin and crispy, the sauce is delicious and the toppings add just enough flavor without overpowering something else. Keeping it simple pays off for sure! We added garlic, basil, and Portobello mushrooms to ours. It was a pretty big pizza and we ate it all while we were there! You can also get a good look at the pizza oven and see them rolling out the dough and making the pizzas while you eat. It is really impressive to watch. Well worth the short Uber trip away from the beach (the South Beach Trolley also goes right there!). The best pizza we have ever had hands down! We will be working this spring and summer to perfect our own pizza dough making skills at home in our pizza oven!
One last tip for eating in Miami Beach is that most of the restaurants include an 18% gratuity in the bill. They typically don’t tell you this when they bring you the bill. So if you aren’t paying attention you could end up giving a double tip.
For the best cocktails in Miami check out our blog post- The Broken Shaker – Best Cocktails in Miami Beach
Did we miss anything? Leave a comment if you have other great foodie destinations in Miami Beach!