BEST RESTAURANT IN COCONUT GROVE 2002 | Paulo Luigi's | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Miami | Miami New Times
Navigation
Support Us
Search

BEST RESTAURANT IN COCONUT GROVE

Paulo Luigi's

A Grove favorite for years, Paulo Luigi's is a testament to the importance of consistent quality. Serving up outstanding Italian cuisine in hearty portions, the restaurant delivers the best traditional dishes, such as a decadent chicken marsala, while spicing up more modern fare with selections like a mozzarella-drenched shrimp Parmesan. Recent changes to Paulo Luigi's bar area are welcome. Once a legendary sports bar, it has been upgraded to a cozy lounge that will attract nightcrawlers eager for a down-tempo shift from the overbearing Beach scene, as well as diners who want to linger after a satisfying meal.

BEST SMOOTHIE

Gables Juice Bar

Fernando Lopez is an artist. He writes screenplays and sculpts, and he believes someday he'll make it as a filmmaker. But seven years ago his wife Belkis talked him into opening a juice shop, and that has provided a living for the couple and their three young children. Fernando's artistic sensibilities and Belkis's culinary talents have also made their little restaurant a popular stop for the work-week crowd that appreciates lunchtime specials such as turkey peccadillo and veggie lasagna. The storefront café gives off a time-capsuled Seventies vibe, thanks in part to Fernando's colorful artwork on the walls and the aroma of steaming vegetables and tamari. But also featured on the menu are luscious smoothies and vegetable-juice combos to cure every ill, from arthritis and acne to indigestion and impotence. And if you don't know what ails you or just what you need, Fernando is not shy about making an instant diagnosis. Open for breakfast and lunch, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.

BEST HEALTH FOOD STORE

Whole Foods Market

What's the most vital thing needed in a health-food store? Great cookies! Whole Foods' cookies are fashionably huge but also full of the natural ingredients natural women and men crave, like butter. Chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin are fab, but the chewy sugar cookies are especially addictive. Incidentally, the store's other stock is superior too: a mammoth selection of crisp fruits and veggies, including local and hard-to-find produce like frisee, plus organic seeds and herb plants, sparkling fresh fish, top-brand poultry, and meats both usual and unusual (buffalo burgers). There is kid-friendly health food such as Fran's fun frozen line of fish and chicken nibbles shaped like starfish and dinosaurs, and a selection of esoteric wines and beers that would do an upscale specialty liquor store proud. Also available: a huge choice of vitamins and natural cosmetics at very fair prices, as well as a prepared-foods department featuring dishes that not only look drop-dead gorgeous but taste great. Even the tofu! But really, it's the cookies that count.

BEST RESTAURANT IN SOUTH BEACH

Nobu

Shore Club Hotel

billwisserphoto.com
Pan-seared scallops
In terms of franchising, chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa is hardly the Hard Rock Café, but a dozen restaurants worldwide is at least a mini-empire -- and that loss of control when the head honcho isn't in the kitchen most often means the loss of high standards. But both the food and the service at South Beach's Nobu are absolutely extraordinary. Unlike New York's more formal Nobu, this spot, though located in the glam Shore Club, is intended as a more casual hangout. It's possible to just walk in and get a table, especially early in the evening. And though prices are higher than those at the average sushi bar, it's possible to put together a terrific family-style meal of three to five shared items without breaking the bank (or necessitating robbing one). Signature black cod with miso is a must. Though many other eateries now do this savory dish of miso/mirin-marinated sablefish, Matsuhisa did it first and still does it best. Also highly recommended are delicate Arctic char with crisp leaves of near greaseless deep-fried spinach; the generous sashimi salad, silky tuna on mesclun dressed with a subtly sweet/salty ginger-soy vinaigrette; and especially a treat for those who won't eat raw fish, Nobu's "New Style Sashimi," thinly sliced fish or beef partially cooked by a brief pouring of hot olive oil. While psychologically the delicate slices seem seared, they retain the moistness and tender texture of raw fish or beef.

BEST BREAD

Renaissance Baking Company

Man does not live by bread alone. But if he did, he'd do it here. Rosemary bread. Onion rye. San Francisco sourdough. Sesame semolina. Raisin pecan. And more. Baked fresh every day and laid out in heaping piles on a metal rack for your perusing and consuming pleasure. Get thee to this bakery. Life is short.

BEST RESTAURANT IN CORAL GABLES

Norman's

Surprise! (Not.) It's him, for the umpteenth time. In fact this year we considered permanently renaming this award "Best Restaurant in Coral Gables Except for Norman's," to be fair to some of the Gables' other eateries, several of which could top Best lists in any town where Norman Van Aken wasn't cooking. Naturally if Van Aken were a normal chef, such a drastic step wouldn't be necessary. After a decade or so of garnering America's major culinary awards, he'd either be diluting his talent by franchising Norman's nationally or coasting on his many past greatest-hit creations like a culinary golden-oldies radio station. But Van Aken is still cooking day in and day out at the same address. His signature dishes like citrus-spiked creamy conch chowder with saffron and toasted coconut (updated in recent years with a hip foam "cloud") taste as terrific as ever. And imaginative new dishes -- "Seared Raw Tuna Trio with Three Cool Fillings" (braised oxtails, chilled crab salad, and shiitake mushrooms); seared foie gras on Venezuelan corn cake with cachaca-laced exotic fruit chutney; a sly and scrumptious take on surf and turf featuring rare tuna and beef mignons with three sauces (Bordelaise, Bernaise, and aigrelette); warm guava tarte Tatin; and an assortment of new tropical ice creams made with rare imported fruits from the Amazon -- indicate that Van Aken shows no sign whatsoever of burning out and giving the Gables' other chefs a shot at this award for many years to come.

BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT

Imlee

Steve++Satterwhite
A+tiny+space%2C+but+enough+room+for+a+chutney+chowdown
Imlee is a most welcome addition to a somewhat inconsistent local Indian-restaurant scene. In fact this pleasant newcomer (less than two years old) definitely raises the standard for all Indian restaurants in South Florida. Lovers of the subcontinent's magnificent cuisine (even if, like most of us Miamians, they're limited in the breadth of their connoisseurship) can now partake of some of the best Indian food to be found anywhere. Of particular note is Imlee's nuanced and sometimes innovative treatment of vegetables, legumes, and paneer (a tofulike cheese staple). The classics -- chicken tikka masala, chicken makhani, lamb vindaloo, shrimp Madras curry, among many others -- are acutely spiced and exquisite. The service can be a little slow sometimes, and the appetizers and breads aren't always perfect, but those are small complaints beside the general state of euphoria induced by a meal at Imlee.

BEST TV DINNER

Big Pink

To most people "comfort food" means something that's reassuring because it's what we ate when we were kids. Oddly, though, most restaurants' idea of comfort food is meat loaf. How many modern moms made meat loaf? TV dinners are more like it. Why were these especially comforting? For one thing they were served in conveniently compartmentalized trays that kept sauces and juices and flavors separated. For another they became associated with an indulgent adolescent pleasure: zoning out in front of the tube. The problem with the TV dinners of yore, of course, was the actual food they contained. But Big Pink's TV dinners, a different special each day, present no problems in that regard. The food does sound like the old standards (turkey, pot roast, eggplant parmesan, fried chicken) but one bite and you know it's the real thing, not some processed gunk from an assembly line. The mashed potatoes are real. The vegetables are fresh, not frozen. The macaroni and cheese features firm pasta and cheese with real character. The crisp chicken is creatively coated with panko. Desserts include items such as red velvet cake and key lime pie instead of those tiny old Styrofoam brownies. And thanks to Big Pink's delivery service, this updated version of the TV dinner from your past can be placed right in your lap -- just as dear old Mom did lo those many years ago.

BEST BAR FOOD

Scully's Tavern

There are plenty of things to like about this down-home place aside from the food. The décor is appealing. Lots of old polished wood and other casually classy touches that project warmth, an antidote to the velvet-rope pretensions of South Beach. The weekend live rock music is much more interesting than what's usually found in nightclubs, and so is the clientele. But co-owners Cass and Chris are happy to admit it's the bar food that has kept the clientele coming back since 1989. Formerly chef at a fancy-schmancy French eatery in the Gables, Chris has turned his talents to country comforts like smoked barbecue (both pork and fish), homemade dips from artichokes or smoked mahi-mahi, and tangy vinegar-sauced fried green tomatoes fresh from the nearby farms of the Redland. There's also some far healthier fare than you'll find in most bars -- snazzy salads of mixed greens and hearts of palm with gorgonzola cheese, for instance -- as well as more substantial dishes, including bargain-priced weekly specials like Wednesday's $9.95 roast beef dinner.

BEST DRIVE-THRU CRAB

Capt. Crab's Take-Away

It's what Long John Silver's pretends to be but never has been: good seafood on the fly. Capt. Crab's has the fish sandwiches (fried and grilled), the shrimp, conch, clam chowder, and so on. But especially notable in this little shack of a fast-food restaurant are the crabs. A moist and delectable crab sandwich goes for $6; a bucket of heavenly garlic crabs ranges from the one-pounder at $8.50 to the jumbo tub (four pounds) for $29. Pair it with a cold beer, sold by the bottle at the drive-though window, and a two-dollar key lime pie and you're good to go. The drive-thru is open 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our terms of use, our cookies policy, and our privacy policy The Miami New Times may earn a portion of sales from products & services purchased through links on our site from our affiliate partners. ©2024 Miami New Times, LLC. All rights reserved.
Do Not Sell or Share My Information
Powered By Foundation