Hidden from the glittering chandeliers of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach’s lobby, almost $2 million worth of high-grade beef slowly decomposes each year. Find it by escaping the hotel’s foyer through a camouflaged door and descending a short staircase into a hallway with piping and wires running overhead. Snaking through the…

Alessandro Buono has always loved the delicate sweets of his native Sicily but was never quite an adept baker. Nevertheless, the now heavily tattooed and pierced 22-year-old and his family late last year opened Sciuri Pasticceria e Rosticceria Siciliana just off South Beach’s Fifth Street.

Dennis Garcia glances at a wall inside an Alton Road storefront covered with more than 40 iPads. When an order rings in, the 20-year-old with a polished swoop of black hair pulls a handful of noodles from a waist-high refrigerator and drops them into a sputtering fryer. Working in a…

Over the past two years, the mobile apps that put almost any dish a couch-bound eater could want within a moderate wait has also put Miami restaurants in a pickle.

Wind chill values in the Miami metro area will be in the upper 30s on both Thursday and Friday morning, according to the National Weather Service. Luckily, we have churros and hot chocolate. One might liken them to the delights found in hot doughnuts and apple cider further up the…

“I did everything I thought I did right at the other two restaurants,” Danny Serfer says. Nevertheless, the North Miami Beach location of his and partner Ryan Roman’s Mignonette shuttered earlier this month, leaving about 20 employees without jobs just before the holidays and leaving the restaurateurs, who’ve enjoyed runaway success since Serfer opened Blue Collar on Biscayne Boulevard in 2012, scratching their heads in confusion.

Unless you’re picky, religious, or allergic to everything, there is no better way to dine than at the chef’s discretion. And in Miami, restaurants have slowly begun to offer such options to diners who are increasingly willing to turn themselves over to the whims of the city’s ever-growing stable of talented cooks.

Following a split with Phuket “Cake” Thongsodchaveondee, restaurateurs Javier Ramirez and Leo Monterrey debated what to do with their space on NW 29th Street in Wynwood. They considered keeping a Thai kitchen but eventually settled on classic renditions of Cantonese fare in an area where Richard Hales’ Blackbrick Chinese has long been the lone option.

Beginning at midnight tonight and continuing through midnight Friday, people can log on to the Give Miami Day website to donate to any number of local charities.

At Washington Avenue’s Stubborn Seed, homemade buttermilk glosses the bottom of a dish. Raw, dense slices of Hawaiian kajiki, also known as blue marlin, are added along with jalapeño paste culled from fermented and dried peppers. There’s also a purée of Japanese seaweed and ginger perfumed with tarragon. Sour apple…

New York City-based Thor Equities has begun construction on Wynwood Walk, which will bring a restaurant, a rooftop venue, and thousands of square feet of retail space to the southwest corner of NW 29th Street and NW Second Avenue. Once completed, the project, along with Thor’s mixed-use condo, Wynwood Plant, will add more than 100,000 square feet of retail to the north end of the neighborhood. No word yet on the restaurant concept.

There are many ways to eat raw beef, but Ethiopians do it best. At Awash Ethiopian Restaurant (19934 NW Second Ave., Miami Gardens; 305-770-5100; awashmiami.com), the national treasure called kitfo ($12.99) arrives on a gleaming metal platter heaped with finely diced raw beef and seasoned with clarified butter perfumed with…

There’s a bit of shame that comes with a daily Diet Coke. Yet something has been amiss lately. On bills it seems the price of a simple glass of sugar dissolved in fizzy water has become increasingly expensive.

Jeremy Ford is back in the kitchen, and this time, it’s not a game. In September, the Florida-born winner of Bravo’s 13th season of Top Chef opened his 65-seat Stubborn Seed (101 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; 786-322-5211; stubbornseed.com) on prime real estate in South Beach. The tasting menu shows the…

Mike Mayta begins by searing a heap of chicken livers in schmaltz. Then come cognac, garlic, onion, paprika, and cayenne. The result is something like Jewish deli chopped liver. Next, the 30-year-old chef adds a dash of ginger and celery salt, confit garlic, and shallots, which make the concoction more…

Sachi Statz was born into Miami ventanita royalty. In 2004, her mother and uncle opened Tinta y Café on SW Eighth Street just as Brickell began accelerating toward breakneck development. It was a funky little coffee shop filled with artwork, old books, and some of the neighborhood’s best cortaditos.