In 2018, I tried over a hundred amazing dishes at dozens of places in my hometown of Miami. These are the 19 dishes you have to try when you come to Miami!
This was one of the cheesiest and creamiest lobster macs I’ve ever had, and one of the prettiest, with a gorgeous presentation including a whole lobster!
This Colombian treat with Nutella and shredded coconut spread between two thin wafers was a pleasant surprise and a flavorful snack everyone should try!
This warm corn pancake with white cheese and sour cream is one of my all-time favorite Venezuelan breakfast foods, and the ones at Budare Bistro are outstanding!
This cottage cheese dish that’s served in a flavorful creamy spinach sauce is a popular dish in India, for good reason. This version was absolute perfection!
These deep-fried root vegetable tots that are topped with vaca frita, garlic, and two different mayos are flavor and texture bombs! They are fantastic!
This chilled, bright salad, mixed with the salty, fatty pork belly was like if Thailand and Cuba got married right on my place. They paired so well together!
The spicy tuna, briny roe, and sweet waffle cone make for a magnificent flavor and texture combination that seriously blew my mind!
I hope you enjoyed this video of the 19 dishes you have to try in Miami in 2019! If you did, please give it a thumbs up, leave me a comment, and please subscribe to my channel!
What's up everyone?
This is David Hoffman from David's Been Here.
This year, 2018, I visited so many incredibly delicious restaurants here in my hometown
of Miami, which is starting to become a premier foodie destination here in the United States.
I've lost count of how many mind-blowing dishes I ate here, but today I want to share with
you the very best of the best and the ones that will leave your mouth watering and have
you craving for more.
Before we jump into the video, please subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell
to get updated when all the new videos drop.
Now let's dive into the 19 dishes you have to try in Miami in 2019.
First up is the monstrous Tower Burger at Amore de Miami, a French-inspired spot in
Brickell that I visited with my friend Elizabeth from Simply Miami.
This outrageous burger is downright massive, with six thick slices of bread, four large
patties, and four slices of American cheese.
That would be more than enough for an average person to handle, but nothing at Amore de
Miami is average.
The Tower Burger is not complete without the rich cheese fondue that is poured on top as
it cascades down the sides, creating a juicy, fatty, cheesy, melty, epic burger experience
you will never forget.
To find the next food on our list, head over to Kendall to a funky place called Tacos and
Tattoos.
There you'll find their outstanding elote, which is a traditional Mexican street food
that is made with corn on the cob that is spread with crema mexicana and then sprinkled
with queso cotija and Cajun seasoning.
I've had lots of elotes in my life in Latin America, but nothing quite like this one.
The Cajun spices along with the crema, queso, and corn had me in elote heaven.
It was so flavorful and perfect, I couldn't help but dip the whole thing into the crema
and demolish the entire cob, one mouth-watering bite at a time.
Up next is the Yardbird, a chicken sandwich you can find at Spring Chicken, which has
locations in Coral Gables and Miami International Airport.
But this is not your run-of-the-mill chicken sandwich.
This outstanding Colimia creation is made up of crispy chicken breasts with pickles
and Duke's mayo, served on a toasted potato bun.
The chicken was perfectly juicy and tender, and the combination of the mayo and pickles
was out of this world.
My dad and I both agreed, this chicken sandwich is truly outstanding.
It's one of the best I've ever had.
The next incredible food on this list is the Lobster Mac and Cheese at Yardbird, an amazing
southern food restaurant on South Beach.
The presentation alone is on a whole nother level.
The creamy, rich macaroni, which is made up of a decadent blend of five different cheeses,
is then topped with a whole lobster that is split in half.
The lobster was sweet and tender and cooked to perfection.
The buttery and succulent lobster meat combined with the fatty and creamy cheese is a spectacular
combination that will knock you off your feet.
Next, we have the Swoff Burger, which you can find at Clutch Burger, a modern gourmet
burger joint in downtown Coral Gables.
This burger contains a wagyu beef patty that is topped with seared pork belly, chorizo,
white cheddar, fried onion strings, arugula, tomatoes, and sweet barbecue sauce.
The fried onion strings added a nice crunch, and the contrast between the sweet and fatty
pork belly and tender wagyu beef and spicy chorizo was out of control.
That, along with the barbecue sauce, makes this one of my favorite burgers of all time.
If you're having a hankering for a non-conventional dessert or snack, look no further than Amazonica,
a shop in Upper Buena Vista that serves Colombian desserts, including the next food on this
list, the Nutella Oblea.
This snack contains Nutella that is spread between two thin, crispy wafers with shredded
coconut and crushed peanuts.
The Nutella with the coconut was an unreal flavor combination that had me hooked from
the very first bite.
For our next dish, head down to Pinecrest, where you'll find an amazing Indian restaurant
called Ayesha Pinecrest, which focuses on homemade Mumbai and Southern Indian food.
There, they serve an outstanding fish mole from the state of Kerala in India.
The fish is extremely fresh, flaky, and tender, and is served in a light but delicious sauce
that is then very spicy, but is bursting with flavor.
The sauce is so good, I wanted to drink it.
Next up is the Star Luka Pizza at Mr. O1, a hidden pizzeria in Brickell that I visited
for the first time this summer with my friend Tao Oran from the Traveling Club.
The Star Luka is a star-shaped pizza that has an intricately folded crust with ricotta
cheese stuffed inside and spicy salami, mozzarella, and San Marzano tomato sauce on top.
The salami added a terrific amount of spice that contrasted well with the fluffy mound
of ricotta in the crust, and made for a pizza that I will always remember.
Our next dish is my personal favorite dish to eat for breakfast in Venezuela, E Cachapa,
which you can find at Budada Bistro in Brickell.
E Cachapa is a corn and flour pancake that is folded over the white cheese in the middle,
sour cream on top, and sprinkled with a generous amount of shredded white cheese.
The contrast between the cold white cheese in the middle with the hot corn pancake around
it is fantastic, and the corn flavor pairs really nicely with the flavors of the cheese
and sour cream as well.
This Cachapa is a must when you come to Miami.
Up next we have the Breakfast Burger at Burger Phi, an upscale burger joint in Coral Gables
that opened in 2011.
The unique burger consists of an Angus beef patty with American cheese, grilled onions,
ketchup, maple syrup, bacon, hash browns, and an oven-easy egg on a potato bun.
This burger takes all my favorite breakfast foods and combines them with a rich, juicy
burger.
The runny egg yolk, the hint of sweetness from the maple syrup, and the fluffiness of
the hash browns was made better with the smoky saltiness of the bacon.
Without question, it's one of my best breakfast burgers I've ever had.
For the next food on this list, you'll have to travel to my neck of the woods in South
Miami at Bollywood Masala, a local Indian restaurant that serves a fantastic cheese
dish called Sage Paneer.
This dish I never tried before in India.
Paneer is a non-melting cottage cheese that is extremely popular in Indian cuisine.
And Sage Paneer adds a creamy spinach sauce that is cooked with lots of flavorful in-house
spices.
The flavors of the spinach and cream with the paneer and spices were wonderful.
And the textures of paneer were perfection.
Next up, we have a Cuban dish you have to try called Malanga Tots, which I found at
Amelia 1931 when I went there with my friend John.
Malanga is a root vegetable, also known as taro.
And the round tots made from them are deep fried and topped with a fried and shredded
skirt steak or flank steak called Vaca Frita, fried garlic, amarillo mayo, and cilantro
mayo.
It's very creamy and full of flavor.
And the Vaca Frita added some nice texture and acidity that had my taste buds going wild.
The next dish you have to try in Miami is the papaya salad with pork belly at the pop-up
Cuban restaurant called Salsada in Coral Gables.
The food at this restaurant is reimagined Cuban recipes.
And this dish, which includes papaya, green beans, peanuts, key lime juice, tamarind water,
palm sugar paste, fish sauce, and tomatoes is no different.
The hot and cold contrast of the warm, salty pork belly and the chilled, bright flavors
of the salad was unbelievable.
It was like Cuba and Thailand had married each other on a plate.
The 14th food and second pizza on my list is the rock shrimp pizza from Harry's Pizzeria
in the Design District.
In addition to the rock shrimp, this sensational pizza also contains scallions, manchego cheese,
and a hint of lemon.
It's a simple and effective flavor explosion.
The flavor profile felt very Mediterranean and after just one bite, I was lost for words.
If you love pizza and love Mediterranean food, you need to go to Harry's Pizzeria and get
their rock shrimp pizza right now.
If you've got a hankering for an out-of-this-world grilled cheese sandwich, head on over to Killer
Melts in Kendall for the French Assassin.
This monster melt is made up of two 3-ounce burger patties, maple mascarpone cheese, mozzarella,
fontina, maple glazed bacon, and an over easy egg between two buttery and golden brown pieces
of French toast.
The sweetness from the maple mascarpone and bacon along with the burger patties and runny
egg was a killer combination.
Plus, it was absolutely dripping with melted gooey cheese, which is never a bad thing,
right?
If a huge flavorful piece of meat is more your speed, I have the exact treat for you.
The 48-ounce porterhouse steak at Shula's in Miami Lakes, which I recently visited with
my dad.
The steak was fatty and perfectly cooked and even though it's cooked as part of a challenge
with an unlimited amount of time to finish it, it's actually the best steak I've ever
had in my life.
It was juicy and tender, perfectly salted, and believe it or not, I finished the whole
thing.
Over the summer, I found our next dish, the pecking duck at Tropical Chinese in Westchester.
My wife and I visited this restaurant for a huge dim sum feast and they also served
to us the pecking duck.
Pecking duck is a traditional dish from Beijing, China.
At Tropical Chinese, the pecking duck is brought to your table whole, carved, and then the
meat is wrapped up in a crepe along with cucumbers, scallions, crispy duck skin, and a delicious
red sauce.
These little wraps were so freaking good and the flavors of the duck took me straight back
to China.
The second to last dish on this list is the Yu, a gourmet hot dog that is served as sweet
dogs.
This wild and crazy hot dog creation comes with smoked bacon, sauteed onions, salsa,
sauerkraut, tomatoes, and corn chips on top.
I already had a sweet spot for this hot dog because it's named after my alma mater.
And then the flavor blew me away.
The chips gave it a nice crunch.
The sauce in the onions blended well with all the flavors and the combination of sauerkraut
and bacon was insane.
This hot dog was outstanding.
For the last but certainly not least dish on this list is the spicy tuna cone, which
I had at Kraken Labs in Upper Buena Vista, which I hit up with my travel buddy, Mike
Corey from Fearless and Far.
This dish takes the idea of a typical fish cone and flips it on its head by using a waffle
cone instead of a nori cone, which made for a completely new flavor and texture profile,
including a nice sweet spicy mix with the tuna.
The tuna melts in your mouth and has a wonderful contrast with the crunchy waffle cone.
The addition of the briny roe on top completed this incredible fish dish you have to try
as soon as possible.
And there you have it, the 19 incredible dishes you have to try when you come to Miami.
If you're coming to Miami, I highly recommend at least five days to explore correctly.
I mean, besides South Beach, there's so many other neighborhoods and there's so many different
foods.
I mean, we have Haitian food, we have Jamaican food, we have all Latin America, we have European
food, we have Asian, Chinese, Indian, I mean, it just doesn't end.
So if you love this video, guys, please give me a thumbs up, leave me a comment below,
and subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell to get updated when all the new videos
drop.
Thank you.
Peace.
Where have you been?
