The Tides South Beach is giving locals a reason to brave the early afternoon weekend crowds on Ocean Drive. The Art Deco hotel's outdoor restaurant is serving up a brunch menu on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. featuring several dishes inspired by southern comfort food to help you recover from the previous night's bar binge. Each plate is priced at $19.
Chef Desi Jones flexes her southern charm with sweet potato waffles and a scoop of caramel ice cream topped with roasted pecans and peaches. If you're looking for a carb overload to soak up the alcohol still oozing from your pores, this is the way to do it.
But the fried chicken slider platter is damn good home cooking too. Three lightly battered chicken cutlets are tucked inside fresh baked buttermilk biscuits softer than a cotton ball falling off a green stalk in Fayetteville, Ga. Paired with a watermelon ginger slaw and a small cup of honey to drizzle over the biscuits, this dish is packed with southern hospitality.
For a heartier meal, go with the soft shell crab eggs benedict. This Big Easy breakfast mainstay features a whole crab, lightly floured, fried in butter on both sides over a medium heat. Jones' gives the recipe a little kick by slowly cooking stewed tomatoes in tomato juice and white wine. She tops the sauce over the crab before adding the spinach, poached egg, and the hollandaise sauce. The result is an orgy of tangy flavors exploding in your mouth. However, the side of hash browns was disappointingly bland.
And avoid the steak and eggs. Consisting of sliced churrasco tips, two scrambled eggs and asparagus spears, this plate was pretty basic. The meat had no flavor, yet the chimichurri bearnaise sauce for dipping was too overpowering to compensate.
But with its view of the beach promenade under a breezy canopy, the Tides brunch experience is enough to motivate locals to skip the Lincoln Road foot traffic for Ocean Drive. And for an extra $10, you get bottomless glasses of Bloody Mary's. Definitely not a bad way to start or end the weekend.
The Tides South Beach is located at 1220 Ocean Dr., Miami Beach, 33139
