The secret recipe that made Miami Spice a 25-year tradition

Dining aficionados, rejoice: Miami Spice returns next week, August 1 through September 30. This year, diners can choose from over 300 restaurants: $40 brunch and lunch menus, and dinners at $50 to $65. Plus, there’s a new premium tier, Miami Spice Reserve, starting at $95.

It is also a major milestone for the program. The Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) created the program in 2002 to encourage locals to dine again after September 11, 2001. Now, 25 editions later, the emergency measure has outlasted a recession and a pandemic and seems to keep getting stronger with each passing year.

The $29.99 summer that started it all

Miami Spice launched in August 2002, in the months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Tourism had cratered, planes were empty, and the GMCVB needed to give people a reason to book a table during the city’s slowest weeks. The bureau partnered with American Express on an August promotion. Participating restaurants would serve a three-course prix fixe lunch for $19.99 and a three-course prix fixe dinner for $29.99.

The idea came from restaurateur Steven Haas, a Soyka partner and Delano and Forge alum who was the first from the restaurant industry to chair the GMCVB board. “Think of him as the architect of Miami Spice, and the organization the engineers,” then-GMCVB chief operating officer Rolando Aedo told New Times in 2023. “I had to do something to help our restaurants recover, so I literally created Miami Spice,” Haas told FIU News in 2021. Today Haas runs China Grill, the Jeffrey Chodorow favorite that reopened at Bal Harbour Shops in June after more than a decade away.

The launch was bumpier than the anniversary press materials let on. In July 2002, former New Times critic Jen Karetnick reported that while promotional flyers promised “more than 75 of Miami’s best restaurants,” the program’s own website listed what she called “a meager 16 participating restaurants” at press time. By opening day, the list had grown to roughly 50, including the Capital Grille, which is still on the lineup today. The bureau’s aim went beyond filling seats. “Our hope was that these deals would demystify these places and create more regular patrons out of locals,” Aedo said in that same New Times interview.

From 50 restaurants to 387 (and counting)

Miami Spice can now be found in every neighborhood in the city, from Aventura to South Miami and from Brickell to Wynwood. Last year the GMCVB had a record 387 restaurants participate, and more than 300 are confirmed for the 25th season, from Michelin-recognized restaurants like Stubborn Seed, Ariete, Cote, and Le Jardinier to first-timers like Tâm Tâm, the popular downtown Vietnamese restaurant with a Michelin Bib Gourmand. A handful have grown with the program, according to the GMCVB’s legacy list; places like A Fish Called Avalon are in their 21st year participating in Miami Spice, while Novecento Brickell is on season 24.

“What began as an economic development initiative to support our restaurant community during the quieter summer months has grown into a beloved tradition that reflects the remarkable evolution of the destination,” says David Whitaker, president and CEO of the GMCVB.

“This is the time to put our best foot forward”

For restaurateurs, the math hasn’t changed since 2002. August and September are still famously brutal for business, and Spice fills seats. What has changed is how operators use it.

Few have used it longer than Mareva 1939, the Spanish restaurant at the National Hotel with a two-decade Spice run. Food and beverage director Alejandro Delgado, who has worked with the program for eight years himself, treats the promotion as a creative exercise. “It’s the time to innovate,” Delgado says. “We forget about the cost. What can we do to put out a good dish, something memorable enough that you gain a new guest?” This year that means a tuna fideuà, the Valencian cousin of paella made with thin noodles instead of rice, which he says few Spanish restaurants attempt because it’s so hard to execute in service.

“We have guests from Fort Lauderdale who had never been to the beach, and now they come down to South Beach,” he says. “They discovered the restaurant through Miami Spice.” Delgado also credits Miami’s churn of new residents, transplants who arrive already knowing New York’s restaurant week and find the city has its own version waiting.

In Sunny Isles Beach, Rose Cafe & Restaurant is in its third Spice. Founder Alexandra Milton opened the spot as an all-day café in 2020 and relaunched it as a full restaurant last fall. At the far northern edge of the city’s map, the promotion solves a specific problem for them. “The hardest thing for us, and for any restaurant during the summer, is getting people through the door,” says Milton. Some diners need a bigger reason to make the drive, and Spice is that reason. The menu leans on the restaurant’s Italian signatures like branzino with tagliolini, eggplant Parmigiana, gamberoni al curry, and tiramisu, plus a fan-favorite gelato.

Guests can dine for a reasonable price again

Mo Alkassar, the 2023 James Beard Award semifinalist who co-founded Ghee Indian Kitchen with chef Niven Patel and first learned the program working for Michael Schwartz at Michael’s Genuine, is entering CHŌ Asian Bistro, his four-month-old Miami Beach spot, in its first Spice.

“Now more than ever, I just think cost of living and the prices of everything went way out of whack,” Alkassar says. “If there’s anything I could support, it’s a program that is budget-friendly, that allows guests to dine for a reasonable price again.”

“I know my margins will shrink a little bit, but I’m going to gain new guests,” he says. “I’m going to showcase my restaurant to guests that maybe otherwise would not have come, and they will be my guests in the future, because I’m going to win them over.”

Alkassar’s watched restaurants fill Miami Spice menus with cheaper items. However, he goes the other way, pulling straight from the regular menu. He features mango coconut and wasabi cabbage salads, scallop crudo, kung pao chicken, pad see ew, shrimp nasi goreng, and a chocolate and coconut pani puri dessert with hazelnut praline and dark chocolate milk. He has a theory on the staying power, too. “When programs overstretch, people don’t have that drive,” he says. “The 60 days is the perfect amount of time to ignite that sense of urgency.”

The 25th season brings a new premium tier

The prices have climbed this year, with the city costs and inflation, though not as steeply as the sticker suggests. Adjusted for inflation, that $29.99 dinner from 2002 works out to roughly $55 today, so the standard menus have mostly kept pace. The number that would have been unthinkable in 2002 is the new one – a Spice tier that starts at $95.

That tier, called Miami Spice Reserve, was built for restaurants whose everyday price points never fit the standard prix-fixe model. At L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, South Florida’s only two-Michelin-starred restaurant, that means a three-course lunch for $95 on Fridays and Saturdays and a four-course dinner for $155, with dishes like foie gras royale and lobster and corn agnolotti from chef James Friedberg. The tier also covers signature experiences such as SORA’s bluefin tuna cutting ceremony and omakase dinners at Uchi Miami and Uchiko Miami Beach, plus optional pairings of Louis Pommery California sparkling wine and Château La Gordonne rosé at select restaurants.

The anniversary also brings three limited-edition collaborations, including Tank Brewing Co.’s “Miami Spice Lager,” a “Signature Xtra Heat” hot sauce from Florida-based Tabañero, and Voodoo Doughnut’s “Holla at Chamoy,” a doughnut made with mango chamoy filling and a sweet-and-spicy chamoy and habanero coating, available at the Wynwood shop through September 30. Uber Eats joins as an anniversary sponsor with in-app deals at select participating restaurants throughout the program, and Camillus House returns as the charitable partner, with QR codes on participating menus for diner donations, and the GMCVB matching the first $25,000 given.

Twenty-five seasons in, Delgado puts the milestone in restaurant terms. “It’s not a secret that restaurants in Miami don’t always last that many years,” he says. “So when a program like this is successful for so long, it’s an honor. I don’t think Miami Spice will ever get old.”

Miami Spice Restaurant Months. Participating restaurants throughout Greater Miami and Miami Beach; miamispice.com. August 1 through September 30. For the full list of participating Miami Spice 2026 restaurants, click here.