Restaurants

Before it was filled with the aroma of espresso and the spray-painted canvases of Atomik’s grinning oranges, Javier Betancourt’s White Rose Coffee (6426 SW Eighth St., Miami) was a coke-and-wine den. “When we started building out the bathrooms and pulled down the towel holders, there were stacks and stacks of cocaine baggies behind them”…

June 4 through the summer, Macchialina will offer hand-crafted Sicilian pizzas, oysters, and prosecco.

Sunday brunch at Artisan Beach House is special. Maybe it’s because the restaurant’s bright outdoor patio faces a serene, unobstructed view of the Haulover Cut, with the waves just loud enough to hear as you nosh. Or, maybe it’s the thick slices of fresh bread, toasted to just the right crunch and smeared with creamy avocado or light basil and burrata, that do the trick.

Daniel Serfer’s latest eatery, Mignonette Uptown, offers a traditional cruise dinner for less than $40.

The Crazy Toston combines fried green plantains with delicious Mexican-Venezuelan infused dishes.

There’s more than just burgers and shakes to be had at Lincoln Road’s Shake Shack today. The Miami Beach Shack is ready to debut its newly renovated space with a beats and treats party tonight starting at 6:30. To celebrate, the Shack partnered with the Salty Donut to create an exclusive concrete custard topped with a rainbow sprinkle mini doughnut.

In recent years vast swaths of Florida and South Florida’s most successful food distributors, including many that sell to the city’s best restaurants, have been bought up by national firms whose representatives refused to discuss their plans and operations following several New Times inquiries.

At Estefan Kitchen in the Design District, a trio of musicians kicks things up a notch as soon as the clock strikes 9. A young woman in barely there shorts and her father dance salsa beautifully, while next to them a gentleman in his late 80s starts doing the twist. He gets down so low that for a moment it’s unclear whether he’ll make it back up — but sure enough he does, which earns him a round of applause. Here, it’s business as usual when waiters and bartenders periodically break out in song. The real treat arrives when an elderly man stands and begins belting out opera, and, naturally, the room goes wild.

In Miami, legitimate bagel options are rare. Bagel Bar East, Bagel Cove, and Toasted are the most reliable. Head a bit farther north, and Sage Bagel (along with its array of smoked fish) is the best of the best. But all of those options didn’t seem right for 25-year-old Matteson Koche, who for a few months has run a bagel delivery service via the Instagram account El Bagel.

Years ago, Miami Beach was South Florida’s delicatessen capital. The opening of Hank & Harry’s this past February marked somewhat of a resurgence in Miami’s long deli history (along with proof of hunger for a quality pastrami sandwich).

Niven and Shivani Patel’s Ghee Indian Kitchen began welcoming its first guests earlier this month and already the much-anticipated place has become one of the city’s hardest reservations. There were no two tops available this past Saturday. I was able to sneak in on Tuesday night, where by 8 p.m. the place was packed out like the towering shelves filled with spices and preserve that line one the concrete walls.

Happy Friday, Miami. Enjoy what’s new in town, including Concrete Beach Brewery’s birthday celebration, Mexican Shabbat at the Wynwood Yard, New Times’ Out to Brunch at Soho Studios, and Pizza Zoo at Sidebar.

Today, May 18, is a holiday that pretty much everyone will want to celebrate: National No Dirty Dishes Day.

This weekend, forget Sunday brunch. On Saturday, May 20, more than 30 restaurants will unite for Miami’s biggest and tastiest brunch party of the year. There’s still time to purchase tickets that will guarantee unlimited bites and bubbly from restaurants like Glass & Vine, the Raleigh, and the Rusty Pelican at New Times’ Out to Brunch party that takes place from noon to 3 p.m. at Soho Studios in Wynwood,

Kiki on the River is one of the year’s most anticipated openings in Miami, and after kicking things off with lunch, the eatery has officially commenced dinner service. With a prime location overlooking the Miami River, Kiki boasts spectacular waterfront views in a charming garden setting. It’s particularly idyllic after the sun sets, when lanterns and string lights give the restaurant a mythical glow.

Steve Santana’s Taquiza and David Bracha’s beloved Brickell seafood spot The River Seafood & Oyster Bar will join the likes of Stanzione 87, Bianco Gelato, Myumi, a Threefold Café project, and Cake Thai in the food hall inside the Citadel, a 60,000-square-foot food hall, market, and workspace set to open some time in the winter of 2017-2018.

Dimitris Harvalis knows almost every island of his native Greece. “We used to visit a different one each holiday,” he explains. But that wasn’t the true inspiration behind his Mediterranean restaurant, Elia Gourmet. His grandmother Cornelia was.

Miami’s juice bar craze continues this week as Raw Juce unveils its third Miami-Dade storefront in less than a year. The Palm Beach-based juice and smoothie bar will open in a Coral Gables strip mall (1430 S. Dixie Hwy.) Thursday, May 18, steps from Shake Shack, Green Monkey Yoga, and Spring Chicken.

Late last month, Enriqueta’s Sandwich Shop owner José Plá quietly pushed the closing time of his humble NE Second Avenue operation from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Though this change might not mean much to the place’s huge breakfast and lunch crowd, it’s some of the most interesting news to come to Edgewater since its denizens learned just how much of the area was controlled by one Russian billionaire. It also means the ballooning populations in midtown and Edgewater can now grab an early dinner at Enriqueta’s.

Deme Lomas is a slender 35-year-old Catalonian with luminescent blue-gray eyes and slick hair. Just before the dinner rush on a recent weekday afternoon, he cuts a small heap of thymus glands into bite-size pieces and drops them into boiling water. After five minutes, when they’re about half-done, he pulls them out and plunges them into an ice-filled tub.

Miamians have a reputation for spending the day poolside with a glass of rosé and then dancing till the break of dawn. At some point, however, all of that partying takes its toll. That’s when we break out the juice.