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Best Key Lime Pie

Shorty's Bar-B-Q

Anais Alexandre
Once was a time when picking a good key lime pie was simple. A half-dozen well-known ingredients and a straightforward preparation added up to a consistent product that would always deliver that sweet-tart bite. You don't meddle with a good thing once it's perfected. But this is South Florida. People meddle. So you never know just what to expect from a particular establishment. Some places produce a sort of lime-flavor cheesecakelike confection, while others prepare a bright green yet bland sliver of custardy pie. Let's not even get into the variety of crusts and overdone whipped cream or meringue toppings. Ideally you want a pie that's a pale green and tart as a Granny Smith apple but with an underlying creamy sweetness that takes the edge off. It's a good finish to a meal of sweet, smoky barbecue ribs. Shorty's, a south-county throwback to the Fifties, delivers both of these well. Belly up to the long wooden benches and eat yourself silly. But save room for the bakery-delivered pie, $2.79 worth of simple delight. Open Sunday through Thursday 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday till 11:00 p.m.

Best Place To Dine With Dan Marino

Football Sandwich Shops

Just north of the bustle and hustle of Little Haiti and just south of the suburban meadow of Miami Shores squats a 28-year-old shrine to past greatness. Various shades of pink and the words "Home of the Zonker" transform what once was a gas station into a place where mere salami, ham, Provolone cheese, and a generous layer of mayonnaise become divine inspiration for less than four dollars. Take your zonker and a beer to one of the outside tables, or lean against the guardrail overlooking the Little River as it flows past the parking lot. But sit inside if you want the real deal. The walls are plastered with posters and memorabilia from Old Hollywood and every major sport in the Western Hemisphere (except soccer -- like that counts). There's a virile young Ronnie Reagan as gunslinger, Jackie Gleason as pool shark, Marilyn Monroe as pneumatic nitwit, the Babe and Joe DiMaggio as baseball icons. Even the Hialeah racetrack has a spot on the wall. But it's Dan Marino who will take your breath away. Really. An artist lovingly drew just the head and naked shoulders of Number 13 rising from a sea of blue, as if he were the Greek god Poseidon. Lightning sparks distantly in an ominous black sky as dolphins leap over Marino's prodigious shoulders and into the water. Eat it up.

Best Croissant

Le Moulin du Grove

Owner and chef Philippe Torchut is French and he bakes every morning with that joie du vivre and that je ne sais quoi. What we do know is that these croissants are fluffy in the middle and a little crisp around the edges. What more does one need to know? His staff also serves a proper café au lait (and a variety of sandwiches and entrées, si'l vous plaît).

Best Restaurant For The Hearing Impaired

Tantra

Perhaps it's the music, spun by DJs who damaged their own hearing so long ago they have ear-practice pads rather than ear drums. Possibly it's the ever-playing Kama Sutra movie, inspiring both moans of delight and screams of "No, not again!" Maybe it's the fashionable crowd, whose very clothing is loud, or the ever-present buzz that follows celebrity diners Jim Carrey or Will Smith like tinnitus. But the requirements for getting past the big boys holding the ropes at Tantra no longer stop at having a reservation. Now you have to be able to lip-read and speak in American Sign Language as well. And it's no use throwing a tantrum -- the only person likely to hear well enough to pay attention is, well, you.

Best Café Cubano

La Carreta restaurants

Photo by Phillip Pessar via Flickr Creative Commons
This mini-empire of restaurants and cafeterías would have been cerrado a long time ago if the most basic ingredient to any Cuban, let alone Miamian, repast missed the mark. One could say La Carreta's success is founded on a thimbleful of thick, dark, sweetly bitter coffee. The restaurants are able to consistently produce cafecito that is neither too sweet nor too watery. If you don't cheat on the amount of grounds used for each brew, your customers will happily return. "The secret is to use the best quality coffee and buy the whole bean," explains Felix Jimenez, manager of the chain's flagship Calle Ocho locale. La Carreta buys from different suppliers, primarily Pilon, and grinds the beans fresh each day. Jimenez adds: "The other secret is to use a ceramic cup. This is what gives it the special taste. If you use a paper cup, it won't taste the same." Hmm, there's a certain coffee chain from Seattle that might want to know this.

Best Expensive Italian Restaurant

Il Tulipano

We usually don't rely on anybody's good taste but our own, so the fact that this high-end Italian destination has attracted notice over its decadeslong life span from reviewers ranging from Wine Spectator to Fodor's doesn't impress us all that much. But the fare here, along with the sophisticated stylings from the service staff, speaks for itself: stuffed pastas topped with Béchamel sauce; lamb chops glistening with juice; snapper so fresh it, well, snaps. We also should note that given the rising prices in our South Beach establishments, suddenly this menu doesn't read all that rich. Just richly delicious, and reliable, to boot.

Best Falafel

Oriental Bakery & Grocery

Located just a few blocks west of where downtown Miami begins to get graceful and tree-lined, this little shop has been satisfying Miami's pita, falafel, and baba ghannouj cravings since 1954. Okashah Monem and his sons have stocked the shelves and refrigerators with all manner of Middle Eastern goods, plus music and videotapes and an odd assortment of trinkets. The shop also features a bakery and deli offering a falafel and pita sandwich for $2.50, as well as plates of kibbeh, tabbouleh, shish kebab, and baba ghannouj, for $3 to $5. A small collection of plastic outdoor tables and chairs is crammed into the deli area, perfect for a quiet lunch spent contemplating the comforting piles of nuts, cheeses, and breads. Or spend the time eavesdropping on the teasing exchanges between the Monems and their many regular customers. The Oriental Bakery & Grocery is open daily from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Best Sushi

BlueSea

South Beach has been sushi central for almost a decade now, and in the past few years the ranks of stellar traditionalists such as Maiko, Sushi Rock, and Sushi Hana have been swelled by star-power newcomers like Bambù and Bond St. Lounge -- not to mention Nemo's super Shoji Sushi outpost taking off with a bang. Whew! But currently the best Miami sushi, with proven seaside freshness and solid creativity, can be found at BlueSea. This tiny (eighteen seats -- all at one marble, diner-style countertop) eatery has somehow escaped terminal trendiness despite its location in the lobby of the hyperhyped Delano Hotel. Instead of a star chef, BlueSea has a layered sashimi arrangement of hamachi and avocado with rich blackstrap rum and lime dipping sauce; a sesame-flavored tuna tataki tower with spicy daikon radish chips; a crisp salmon skin-garnished plate of green tea noodles topped with a quail egg and spicy mayo; imported Russian caviar; and an assortment of the usual sushi fare. All come with a very non-Japanese assortment of mix-and-match dipping sauces. Don't dig standard soy stuff? Try inventive Indonesian asam manis, rich Thai peanut, incendiary Korean kim chee, or citrusy ponzu. And though BlueSea doesn't take reservations, waiting in the Philippe Starck-designed space, with its cocktail bar and comfy couches, is no great hardship.

Best Place To Buy Yerba Maté

Buenos Aires Bakery

Strolling along Collins Avenue you can single out Argentines from other Latin Americans by the telltale gourd in hand filled with a stuff called yerba maté. This is not just a drink. According to those from the pampas, yerba maté is a gentle diuretic that possesses incredible powers: It stimulates mental alertness, aids in weight loss, cleanses the colon, energizes the body, accelerates the healing process, relieves stress, calms allergies, fortifies the immune system, and increases longevity (we dare any Chinese herb to beat that!). But drinking it also is a cultural and social affair dictated by rules of consumption. The Guarani Indians of South America were the first to begin sipping yerba maté (commonly known as maté), a practice that was picked up by the gauchos, who would share a maté around the campfire to enhance their communal bonds. (In traditional maté ritual, the cup often is shared among close friends and family using the same straw, or bombilla.) The characters in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land became "water brothers" and "water sisters" when they drank from the same maté gourd. Now you too can join the family. Buenos Aires Bakery offers the largest variety of maté brands: Taragui, Rosamonte, La Merced, Canarias, Nobleza Guacha, Union, and our personal favorite, Cruz de Malta.

Best Thai Restaurant

Siam Bayshore

First, an apology. We know the place looks as if it has been attacked by sea breezes and salt water for the past couple of decades. We know it's not much to look at. We know if you're not in the know you'd drive right on by. That's because of what you don't know: the genteel atmosphere. The unobtrusive service. And the creamiest, richest peanut sauce in the industry. We like ours over the "swimming angels" -- chicken, shrimp, steamed broccoli, and tomatoes. But we also can't resist items like the honey beef, the squid with mushrooms, or the duck curry with pineapple, cashews, and peas. As an added bonus, Siam Bayshore also features a sushi bar, which hardly is an afterthought given the quality of the raw goods -- and it's certainly less fattening than the Thai fare. But when it comes to the blue ribbon, to be honest we're just not all that concerned about the ol' scale, unless it's the one we use to weigh quality. In this case that's off the scale.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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