A ton of perks come with being the official "gateway to the Americas." Afro-Cuban bands and Brazilian bikinis aside, we are blessed with access to restaurants serving awesome food from exotic locales beyond the home of processed cheese. One such place is the Bahamian Pot, a trip to the Caribbean that doesn't require a passport — just your hungry belly. The menu is overflowing with island favorites like conch chowder, oxtail, plantains, stewed fish, and Johnny Cake; and as an ode to good ol' American eatin', the menu is also home to soul-food staples like fried chicken, pork chop sandwiches, and an awesome lemon cake. The chefs at the Bahamian Pot have perfected the art of just-right spice; never ever bland, yet nothing that will knock your taste buds from your tongue. And since nothing at the Pot is over $15, no matter what you order your wallet will still be as full as your tummy. The entire menu is sublime, but a must-try is the guava duff, a boiled fruit-filled ball of dough, also known as the perfect marriage between Miami and the Caribbean.

Uva makes its croissants on-site and uses real butter. The result is flaky and airy, best enjoyed with a cafe au lait, while seated in the shade of the outdoor restaurant. Varieties abound: plain ($1.88), chocolate ($2.68), and ham and cheese, spinach and cheese, or almond (also $2.68). If you're not feeling French, they also have guava pastries and apple turnovers ($2.15).

Everyone in this neighborhood knows the Jamaican-born Cliff, who has been cooking up a storm in his ramshackle roadside restaurant since 1986. It's difficult to find anybody around here, in fact, who hasn't sat down at one of the stools lined along a counter and dug into curried shrimp, stew peas, pork chops, cow feet, or other West Indian specialties that Cliff's crew does just right. Lunch specials include any of the aforementioned, with pigeon rice, steamed cabbage, fried plantains, and fruit punch or lemonade — for a downright neighborly sum of $5.50. The same price brings a breakfast of yam, banana dumpling, and callaloo, but we haven't even mentioned the really lip-smacking stuff found at Cliff's: curried goat with a devilish ginger-masala kick, and barbecued and/or jerked chicken and pork ribs that get slow-cooked in a black barbecue smoker outside. Ask for the hotter barbecue sauce, which is perked with piquant Scotch bonnet chilies, and request a Red Stripe Beer to chug along. You are set. Cliff's roots, rocks, and reggaes on weekend nights, when giant speakers gush island music until 3:00 a.m

It's all about the pastrami. In Miami, the word "deli" is used to refer to almost any eatery that has any kind of food behind glass counters. But New Yorkers know that "deli" doesn't merely mean a place. Deli is also a food group. And the assumed word preceding it is "Jewish." When you eat deli, you're talking pastrami, corned beef, brisket, all-beef franks with sauerkraut, odorous housemade sour and half-sour pickles, "salads" (like potato and macaroni, not mesclun; cole slaw is as green as it gets with deli), and a belly-busting assortment of the tasty carbs that nineteenth-century Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe brought to America: potato pancakes, knishes, kasha, crusty caraway-seeded rye bread, and so on. The almost-two-year-old kosher deli Sam's has all these items, and the meats are especially terrific. Corned beef and brisket are both homemade. And while the pastrami isn't (because it requires a special smoker), it's prepared according to the deli's own recipe, resulting in a product that, like good Cuban food, is beautifully spiced but not at all spicy. Both corned beef and pastrami come either lean or regular — the latter meaning properly fatty (the extra flavor is well worth the cholesterol, though pricey: $21.95 per pound versus $17.95 for regular meat). What Sam's hasn't got is smoked fish. But since Arnie & Richie's, just a block away, has fabulous nova, pickled herring, and so on, the absence is not annoying. After one of Sam's mega-size sandwiches ($11.99 for pastrami or corned beef, $.99 more for lean; $12.99 for brisket), diners could use the walk.

I. sage-tone walls
gray slate floors
a single yellow tulip in a glass vase

II. big-eye tuna with sparkling orange roe
white fish in ume-plum sauce
painting pan-Asian influences
upon white plates

calligraphy on scroll

III. o satoimo roll,
softly fried, golden-brown soybean skin
enveloping
whipped taro and blue crab —
be still, little blossom!

IV. 58 chairs
24 small plates
four nightly specials
between $6 and $14

Yes, there are plenty of swank and sleek sushi joints on the beach, with low lighting and creative hand rolls. But sometimes all you want is sushi, and lots of it. California rolls have become the comfort food of the 21st Century, and at Tokyo Bowl — a small restaurant with big flavor — you can get waaaay comfortable in a roomy booth and order all the rolls you want. For $14. That price also includes soup and salad and a small dessert. All of the staples are here: octopus, eel, tuna, tempura. Service is efficient, competent, and friendly. Ambiance is laid-back, with soft jazz and a wooden Buddha or two smiling down on your tekka roll. If you can't wait around, there's takeout and a drive-through window. And a word about the dessert: Try the fried cheesecake roll. We were skeptical, but the oozing, creamy brown-sugar-cheese mixture was almost orgasmic. In a comforting way.

Actually this is the best place to pick a peck of all sorts of specialties from Mother Russia, which is why immigrants from the Old World flock to this deli/grocery from several counties away. They come for the herring, halvah, kasha, caviar, candies, kefir, smoked fish, sundry sausages, Georgian wines, and Baltika beer. And they are also drawn here for various home-style lunches, which are heated up and served at a smattering of tables in the front of the market (there is additional seating outside). These are big, hearty foods such as stuffed cabbage, stuffed peppers, pork steak in brown sauce, fish croquettes, blintzes, a divine beef stroganoff, and the drool-inducing duet of Russian dumplings — vareniki and pelmeni. Pass the sour cream, loosen the borscht belt, and save some appetite (ha!) for pan-fried, puck-shaped, sweetened cottage cheese cakes called sirniki. Many items are under $10, which makes this Little Kiev's biggest bargain.

There are two types of health food stores in this world: Giant chains with lots and lots and lots of goods, and small, privately owned places with much less stuff. So why choose the latter? For the personal touch. For the laser-beam focus on truly nutritional foods, not hamburgers and Häagen-Dazs masquerading as such. For integrity, goddammit. Apple-a-Day Natural Food Market has been serving the South Beach community for fifteen years. Their soups, salads, smoothies, and vegetable juices can go mano a mano with those of the big guys, and nobody can top the signature marinated tofu sandwich with hummus and vegetables — $6.95 with a cup of soup. But it takes more than an apple a day to keep the doctor away — the aisles of vitamin and supplement products here comprise the most extensive selection in town. So raise a glass of soy milk to the little health food store that could.

Ten Incredibly Interesting (and of Course Pristinely Fresh and Delicious) Presentations of Raw Fish in Various Guises That Su-Shin Izakaya Serves but the Wimpy Sushi Joint That You Make a Habit of Going to Does Not:1. Maguro Yamakake: Tuna atop sliced mountain potato ($10)2. Roscoe Roll: Eel, cream cheese, and asparagus, wrapped in rice and seaweed and fried ($6.50)3. Blue Island: Crab, avocado, lettuce, and masago splashed with tosazu vinegar and rolled in cucumber ($6.50)4. Kurage Su: Marinated jelly fish and cabbage ($6)5. Karashi Conch: Raw and spicy ($6)6. Uzukuri: A selection of raw, thinly sliced fish with ponzu or cilantro vinaigrette ($10-$18)7. Tako Butsa: Thick cuts of octopus sashimi ($9)8. Myoto Roll: Japanese mint and pickled plum ($3.50)9. Teppo Roll: With a cooked Japnese squash called kampyo ($3)10. China Dog: Hand roll with raw spicy beef, daikon sprouts, and sesame seeds ($3.50 — and yes, we know this doesn't have raw fish in it, but we like the name)Amazingly the nonsushi Japanese menu here is even more intriguing.

This is the prettiest food market at which to shop — like an old-time general store, but bigger and with better lighting. Serene classical music and dazzling produce grab attention as you first enter, but the island in the center of the store is where the finest array of prepared foods is displayed and dispersed to grateful patrons. The extensive collection includes quiches, meat loaves, pulled pork barbecue, stuffed cabbage, carrot soufflé, sushi (rolled before your eyes), salads, and sandwiches (reubens to Cubans to Mediterranean-style panini piled up as if auditioning for some food shop in Milan). But what puts the Fresh Market into a league of its own is the stunning lineup of peerless roasted meats: glazed crown ribs of pork roast; plump rolls of herbed turkey breast; chipotle barbecue baby-back ribs so succulent that Shorty's is shaking in its cowboy boots; and five types of darkly bronzed rotisserie chicken — our faves being honey bourbon and whiskey sage. This is by no means an inexpensive shop, but many of the prepared foods are less extravagantly priced than you might think — chickens are $3.69 per pound, the aforementioned roasts $4.99 to $8.99 per pound. If all this isn't enough to put some pep in your step, grab a cup of some freshly roasted coffee at the complimentary dispenser up front.