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Eating In Miami Beach – The Good And The Really Good!

Chirashi at Makoto lunch in Miami Beach

This past week we had the chance to hop down to Miami Beach for a couple days. I was meeting up with my business partners for the first time since starting Semantic Mastery about 11 months ago – we figured it was high time we met in person.

Now, I won’t go into details about that part of the trip here; I’ll just say that it was a good time and meeting in person allowed us to take care of planning that probably would have taken weeks or more remotely.

What this quick post is intended for is to highlight the places that we were able to eat at while in Miami Beach. We had some outstanding meals – nothing we had was just “OK”.

A thank you is in order to our friend Sarah for her recommendation of the website Eater (http://miami.eater.com/). This site has a subdomain for each city with some outstanding recommendations and a quick overview of their top picks. Every place we’ve been to in various cities that was chosen from this site has been a winner.

Here’s a quick run down of our favorite places we got to try:

1. 27 – this place is attached to an outdoor lounge (which we went back to the follow night) that is run by the same owners. We showed up on a Thursday night, were seated immediately and had a very informative waitress that gave a good run down of the menu and various highlights. The only down side here was that the tap was down. And by tap, I mean every local beer that was connected to their tap system…We ended up order a good variety of food that was flavorful, presented well, and delicious. Just to throw it out there, our table had the octopus, two catch of the day (red snapper), and a burger (enormous!). Two thumbs up!

Beers and chips at Taquiza in Miami Beach
Chips and beers at Taquiza

2. Roasters and Toasters – Jewish deli on one of the main roads into Miami Beach. If you’re looking for a big lunch this is a good place to go. Huge, meat packed, sandwiches, large salads, and friendly service. I would agree that service might be a tad slow, but for the price and what you’re ultimately getting I still love this place. Come with an appetite.

3. Taquiza – So good. Go here. This cool little “upscale” street taco looking place is on the main drag (Collins St) into South Beach and has seating for maybe 20 or so people in a first come, first serve area. You order at the counter and grab it yourself when it’s done. Several good beers on tap and lots of good taco choices (pollo, barbacoa, etc). Tacos were served fast, even though we ordered 15 at once and the chips were freshly made tortillas that had been quickly fried and served with a nice chunky and fresh salsa. Great for a quick meal and relatively low cost compared to other options in the area. I think the word that describes this place is “fresh”.

Chirashi at Makoto lunch in Miami Beach
Chirashi at Makoto

4. Makoto – In Jeney’s words, “This is the best sushi I have ever had in my entire life”. Strong statement coming from her! We stopped by here for lunch before hopping on flights back north and we had an excellent experience. Quick service with a helpful waiter who helped us figure out what we should be doing – seriously, this place is apparently quite famous locally and somewhere that chefs like to go and eat it – so he gave us the run down on the menu and made us quite happy eaters. Best parts of this meal? Sushi, obviously, and the many types of delicious rice – seriously, the rice (from sushi to chirashi) was insanely good. What’s that? Why yes, the presentation wasn’t half bad either (no joke, click on the picture to the left and check out that chirashi!).

We also were able to go out on our last night in town and sample some of the local beers, but to be honest we didn’t find any that we came home raving about. To be fair, we didn’t feel strongly about the ones we did try, but nothing really took ahold and made us want to share with friends back home.

If you’re into some sweeter and stronger type beers, you should check out Abbey Brewing Company – they offer a sizable tasting flight with a good range of flavors. Again, not necessarily my style but worth checking out.

If you find yourself in Miami Beach, do yourself a favor and get out and try some of the food – you won’t be disappointed!