The tuna pastelitos from Gilbert’s Bakery shouldn’t be as good as they are. The recipe alone sounds like the kind of outlandish concoction to spring out of one of IBM Chef Watson’s algorithms. The menesier de tuna ($1.25) folds a slightly flaky, crumbly crust like that of pie dough around shredded albacore tuna prepared in the style of ropa vieja. Once the pastries are out the oven and cooled, a quick slick of sugar syrup gives them a chrome-like shine.

It came as somewhat of a surprise when Arjun Waney, the restauranteur behind Zuma and Coya, announced he would open a Miami outpost of his London-based southern French inspired La Petite Maison. The opulent space opened last month with the feeling of an art gallery in the Marais, a seaside beach shack near Nice, and a here and there a touch of extravagance culled from the grand dining rooms of Paris or Monaco.

The menu at Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill is packed with traditional vegetable rolls that can be difficult to find amid Miami Beach’s cacophony of sushi spots. One is loaded with threads of loamy enoki mushrooms. Another wraps rice and seaweed paper around crunchy matchsticks of burdock root that…

Gilbert Amsellem lets out an uncomfortable laugh as he recalls how much meat he’s thrown out while testing recipes for his nearly two-dozen-item-strong charcuterie case that boasts fat-studded Rosette de Lyon, dried chorizo, and beef prosciutto. “Our salami takes nine hours to smoke, but if it would come out wrong, it would go straight in the garbage…”

It’s been more than two years since Taquiza’s Steve Santana got his lava rock grinder going, turning corn into the dough called masa at his South Beach taco spot while ushering in a new wave of places dishing out better versions of tortilla-wrapped meat and vegetables than the city has ever seen.

It turns out longtime Miami caterer and restaurateur Ken Lyon is running the bar at the Wynwood Yard. It’s the one that requires you pay a corkage fee for your bottle of nigori sake before you sit down for Ryo Kato’s omakase at Myumi. The Yard’s founder, Della Heiman, turned to Lyon, who helped revitalize Lincoln Road when he opened the gourmet market Lyon Frères et Compagnie in 1992, to get her food truck up and running in the summer of 2015.

After hours of drinking, your stomach is a gurgling mess. You need something to eat, and fast. So you stumble north on Collins Avenue and turn on 20th Street toward the beach. A small sign that reads “K Ramen. Burger. Beer” lures you into the Townhouse Hotel. After stepping through the narrow front door, you’re guided down a black staircase and into a room with the frenetic lights and sounds of a Japanese pachinko parlor.

For years, procuring a proper Korean bibimbap meant shlepping 45 minutes north to Lauderhill’s Gabose, where the blistering-hot stone bowls come filled with sizzling rice topped with sweet-soy-braised beef, pickles, and raw egg yolk. But in late January, Mijin Lee opened Fuchai Chinese & Korean Kitchen…

Sometime around 10 p.m., the fedora-wearing trumpet player inside the Coral Gables restaurant Son Cubano decides he’s had enough of slow-paced melodies and jumps into some driving salsa. Soon a dozen guayabera- and pantsuit-clad diners are on their feet and shaking their hips. It doesn’t take long before there’s a…

During lunch, dozens of cops, executives, and working stiffs line up outside the squat peach Pack Supermarket in Little Haiti. They’re bathed in the overwhelming scent of frying chicken as Kreyol talk radio blares from a nearby barbershop. On Sunday mornings, crowds of churchgoers mingle with bouncers from downtown clubs…

For decades, Kendall has been filled with mostly humble mom-and-pop spots wedged into an ever-expanding sprawl of chain restaurants. Gated communities and strip malls orbit around Dadeland Mall. But relief is here, and it’s a porchetta sandwich. The hub is a glossy spear of roast pork belly wrapped around a…

North Miami Beach’s 36-seat Mazzi Cucina has the veneer of a hidden gem. It sits in a strip mall near the former location of Yakko-San that today houses favorites such as the Vietnamese spot PhoMi2Go, Filipino restaurant Lutong Pinoy, and Lettuce & Tomato, which is run by a former Epicure…

It’s last call for the 2017 South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Today, it’s back to reality after spending five days eating and drinking.  And, while most of us are slightly hungover and hoarse from shouting, “rose all day”, it’s time to look back at the winners and losers of the festival.

When the South Beach Wine & Food Festival’s Chicken Coupe first nested at the W South Beach five years ago, the bulk of the event fell under the purview of the Dutch’s Andrew Carmellini. In recent years, the festival has taken over that role while upping the price of a ticket to the all-you-can handle fried chicken-and-champagne orgy from $250 a head to $325 this year.

If cocktails are a religion, tiki is some hybrid of Santería and gold-wrapped, incense-burning Catholicism. While classic cocktails like the daiquiri — a humble shake of lime juice, dark rum, and simple syrup — rely on only a handful of ingredients to balance out the alcohol’s burn, in tiki, no less than a half-dozen powerfully flavored ingredients, ranging from spice-infused syrups to tropical fruit juices, cloak enough rum to pickle someone’s liver three times over.

Barclay Graebner, who opened Wynwood’s Morgans Restaurant in 2010 with Jamaican movie producer Richie Effs, is opening two restaurants after she fell quiet following the closure of Georgia’s Union in the former Joe Allen space in 2012.

It was December, when Richard Hales’ Southern spot, Bird & Bone, had just opened inside the Confidante Miami Beach, that he realized he was out of place. He was standing behind a weathered wood-framed bar turning out smoky Aperol spritzes and bites of auburn fried chicken when a group of drunken, scantily clad vacationers cozied up to him. They had just learned he was the chef.

For many people, pork is central to barbecue. In North Carolina and throughout the South, whole hogs are slow-roasted, pulled apart, and doused in spicy vinegar sauce. It’s often made the centerpiece of the plate, woven into baked beans, or employed to make collard greens. Yet none of it will…

Bowls of tripe stew and plates of cow-head tacos were just what Scott Linquist and his crew of hung-over cooks needed. About a half-dozen of them were visiting Jalisco, the Pacific Mexican state believed to be the birthplace of mariachi music, on a culinary research expedition. One night, a local…