Restaurants

Le Pain Quotidien, the Belgian bakery chain that offers fresh, organic breads, is set to open its first Florida location in Coconut Grove this Friday, November 17.

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.

Chain restaurants get a bad rap because many serve cheap meals made with overly processed ingredients. It might be hard to believe, but quite a few chain restaurants, specializing in all kinds of interesting gastronomical niches, are more than decent. It just so happens lots of them aren’t in Miami. Here are a dozen of them that we’re dying to see in South Florida.

Stephen’s Restaurant, the oldest operating deli in Miami-Dade, has closed for renovation. The Hialeah eatery is now under the ownership of Matt Kuscher of Kush Hospitality, which is known for popular concepts such as Kush, Lokal, Vicky’s, and the Spillover.

After months of delay, Crazy Poke is now open. The fast-casual restaurant, located in Wynwood, joins similar concepts, including Ono, Baja Bao, PokéBao, and Poké 305, which opened this year.

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…

Planta, a Toronto restaurant that offers plant-based meals and burgers, is set to open its first U.S. location in South Beach. The restaurant is expected to debut in early 2018 in partnership with David Grutman, the Miami hospitality entrepreneur best known for LIV at the Fontainebleau, OTL in the Design District, and Komodo in Brickell.

According to a recent study by Yelp, here are Miami’s five favorite pumpkin spice eats and drinks.

The Craftsman, a New York City bar, lounge, and sandwich spot, has set up a temporary location inside the former Brother Jimmy’s BBQ space in Mary Brickell Village.

Feeling a bit of wanderlust but can’t afford a ticket to Italy or don’t have the vacation days for a week in Japan?  Take in the flavors of your favorite country during brunch. Try an Asian dim sum brunch or an beefy Argentine-inspired meal.These five Miami restaurants offer up the best in International brunches and no passport is required.

The Miami Book Fair will take place this Sunday, November 12, through next Sunday, November 19. This year’s festival will present more than 500 authors, 30 of whom will promote food-related books.

Grab a selfie stick and a portable phone charger, because the Museum of Ice Cream will open Wednesday, December 13, in the Faena District (3400 Collins Ave., Miami Beach). Expect crowds and long lines, because the museum is expected to draw thousands of people to taste, smell, touch, and photograph a collection of ice-cream paraphernalia.

Gregory Bennati believes life should be sweet, which is why the former real-estate agent and Italian native recently opened Miami Beach’s first and only specialty açaí shop, Berri Bar.

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.

Funky, graffiti-style caricatures of pizza, beer, and cigarettes are painted in red, orange, and yellow across the walls of a half-wooden, half-tented structure on the southeast corner of Jungle Plaza in the Design District. Inside, a team of cooks smears cheese and drizzles honey onto disks of dough laid out…

At the Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science, Doggystyle churns out gourmet, made-from-scratch sausages topped with everything from papitas and caramelized onions to black bean mango salsa and guacamole.

If you’re a fan of Miami’s taco scene, you can’t miss New Times’ Tacolandia. The event will take over Wynwood’s Soho Studios Saturday, November 18, from 3 to 6 p.m., when more than 30 of Miami’s favorite taco spots will offer unlimited eats.

About a block from Lincoln Road, Rosetta Bakery attracts a steady stream of customers via Italian breads, pastries, and small plates. Now the Collins Avenue concept, which opened in November 2015, is set to expand with cafés in Brickell, Aventura, and North Beach.

Another Seed Food & Wine Week is in the books, and thousands of omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans flocked to various Miami venues to eat their weight in plant-based food over the weekend.

1-800-Lucky, an Asian-themed marketplace set to open this month, will offer six food vendors from around the country, a karaoke bar, and a small theater in a 10,000 square-foot space — all disguised as a record shop and convenience store.

As locals savor cooler temperatures, Honeybee Doughnuts in South Miami recently debuted the city’s first hot chocolate bar.

About a year and a half ago, the Russian-based Japanese chain Tanuki opened its first U.S. location on Alton Road. This past October, the South Beach spot debuted an Asian-inspired brunch. The 3,500-square-foot restaurant, which serves more than 80 items during lunch and dinner, offers a small but mighty brunch menu that’s available from noon to 4 p.m. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.