Crackers Casual Dining

For down-home cooking at a family-owned spot, head to the quaint Miami Springs. Like the town in which it's located, Crackers Casual Dining is otherworldly. It's a cozy, comfortable place that feels far from the traffic-snarled Dolphin Expressway and even farther from the jockeying of South Beach. And to Jeff and Jo Mitnick, it's home, where two of their three daughters are on the floor waiting tables nightly. The pair opened the place two years ago after more than two decades of bartending and waiting tables. Jeff unabashedly proclaims he earned his kitchen chops by watching Food Network for hours, and it seems to have worked. His bacon jam, a sticky-salty amalgam that includes coffee, brown sugar, maple syrup, and apple-cider vinegar, has become a cult favorite on a menu that features everything from fried catfish to shrimp 'n' grits.