Komodo

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Miami Beach's China Grill was the place to see and be seen. Paparazzi swarmed the restaurant for snaps of the city's heavy hitters like Sly Stallone and other former Star Island residents. Fast-forward to today, and China Grill honcho Jeffrey Chodorow partnered with David Grutman, the mind behind the insanity at clubs like LIV and Story, to turn the once-dormant ground floor of a Brickell office building into a thumping Asian-fusion oasis. At Komodo, you can find truffled beef tartare, miso chilean sea bass, and king crab lo mein. Yet the high is the restaurant's Peking duck — the apple of Grutman's eye and the first thing you see as you approach the crimson-and-black restaurant. The kitchen took out ads in the city's Chinese newspaper to find its duck masters, and today a trio undertakes the perpetual, painstaking process that gives these birds their crisp skin and succulent flesh. If you ever become a famous DJ, the owners might even invite you into the kitchen to create your own dessert (like they did with EDM wunderkind Kygo).