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Even though this Miami steakhouse opened in October of 2024, it’s still getting so much buzz that it might as well have opened in 2025. Sunny’s Steakhouse has yet again won another award, and this time it is a big one. Esquire has named the Little River steakhouse one of the Best New Restaurants in America for 2025, adding another national spotlight to a list that keeps getting longer.
Esquire framed Sunny’s as a restaurant where the courtyard and dining room read as one space. They wrote that Sunny’s “is a party” with “impeccable” vibes, describing the sound of the room as “the oceanic murmur of folks enjoying themselves.”
The write-up highlighted items like octopus ceviche with grapefruit, cucumber, and peanuts, small kouign-amann ice cream sandwiches, and a hanger steak cooked until charred and served with salsa verde. Esquire added that the food is “so good that you make that face between disbelief and disgust that somehow conveys ecstasy,” and noted that dishes “simultaneously express maximalism and delicacy.”
Photo by Michael Pisarri
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A Long List of Wins
Esquire is the latest in a string of national honors for Sunny’s. Earlier this year, the restaurant was featured on Condé Nast Traveler’s 2025 Hot List, a list of new restaurants around the world. Food & Wine placed Sunny’s at number thirteen on its 15 Best U.S. Restaurants List of 2025.
The Michelin Guide added the restaurant to its roster of recommended Miami spots this spring. Sunny’s also landed in the New York Times’ 2025 Restaurant List as the only Florida restaurant selected.
Photo by Cleveland Jennings/@eatthecanvasllc
How Sunny’s Reached This Point
Sunny’s started as a pandemic project in a Little River parking lot under the name Sunny’s Someday Steakhouse. The courtyard under the banyan tree became the defining feature and carried over to the permanent location, which opened in October 2024. Thompson and Hynes preserved the outdoor setting and added a dining room featuring Murano glass fixtures, a U-shaped bar, and plastered walls that reference the building’s industrial heritage.
Executive chef Aaron Brooks joined to lead a menu that combines steakhouse plates with pasta and seafood. Highlights include the corn and blue crab agnolotti, spicy rigatoni with pork sugo, oysters with pineapple hot sauce, razor clams with mango criolla, and a range of wood-fired steaks. The bar offers a section of eccentric martinis and house cocktails.
The onslaught of attention from national publications continues to build on the momentum for the steakhouse that began with a pandemic pop-up. With the latest recognition from Esquire, Sunny’s adds another major award to a stretch that shows no sign of slowing.
Sunny’s Steakhouse. 7357 NW Miami Ct., Miami; sunnysmia.com.
