Mediterranean is the least useful word on any Miami menu. It gets applied to Greek taverna cooking, Lebanese and Palestinian mezze, Turkish grills, Israeli breakfast and coastal Italian, all of which are different kitchens with different strengths. Once you split the category into its parts, the city's landscape becomes clear: Miami is strong on Greek seafood and Aegean cooking, quietly strong on Levantine home cooking in the suburbs, and thin on North African. These twelve, grouped by what they actually cook, are the ones worth planning around.
Half of these are best ordered as a table of small plates rather than a main each, and the good ones book out. Tell Karpo in iMessage how many of you there are and where you are, and it will sort out which room and what to order.
Greek and Aegean
Mandolin Aegean Bistro in Buena Vista is the one to start with: a converted house with a blue-and-white courtyard, cooking that draws on both Greek and Turkish traditions, and a menu built for sharing — the spreads, the grilled octopus, the whole fish. It has been the most pleasant lunch in Miami for well over a decade. At the other end of the price range, Estiatorio Milos on South Beach does the Greek fish-market format, where you choose your fish by weight from ice and it comes back whole and grilled with lemon and oil; it is expensive at dinner and considerably more sensible at its set lunch. Doya in Wynwood handles the Aegean end of Turkish cooking in a large, loud, good-looking room that works better for a group than for a quiet dinner. For the taverna version — unpretentious, family-run, a plate of grilled fish and a Greek salad without ceremony — look at the smaller rooms in Surfside and Bay Harbor, where the neighbourhood keeps them honest.
Levantine: Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli
This is where Miami is better than its reputation, and most of it is away from the tourist neighbourhoods. The pattern is a small family kitchen doing hummus, mutabbal, tabbouleh, kibbeh and grilled meats, usually in a strip mall in Coral Way, Kendall, Sunny Isles or North Miami Beach, frequently with a grocery attached. Order the way the kitchen wants you to: a spread of cold mezze with hot bread first, one grilled item, and nothing per-person. The Israeli-influenced cafés clustered around Sunny Isles and Bal Harbour do the breakfast version — shakshuka, labneh, salatim — and are best before noon. Zaytinya, at the Ritz-Carlton on South Beach, is the polished, expensive interpretation of the same repertoire and does it well, but the twenty-dollar version in a strip mall is frequently the better plate of food.
The Everyday Version
Not every Mediterranean meal needs to be an occasion, and Miami has a solid layer of counters doing bowls, wraps and plates in the twelve-to-eighteen-dollar range across Brickell, downtown, Wynwood and the Gables. The useful trick is to order the mixed grill or the mezze plate rather than the wrap, because the kitchen's actual cooking shows up in the former and the latter is assembly. Pura Vida and the other health-oriented cafés run a lighter, Californian-inflected take that is good for lunch and not really Mediterranean in any meaningful sense — worth knowing so you order accordingly. And the Middle Eastern groceries scattered across the county sell fresh bread, olives, cheese and prepared salads at a fraction of restaurant prices, which is the correct answer for a beach picnic or a hotel-room dinner.
How to Order Well
Order for the table, always. Two or three cold dips, a hot appetiser, one grilled fish or mixed grill and a salad will feed four people better than four individual mains and will usually cost less. Ask what the bread situation is, because a kitchen that bakes its own is telling you something about the rest of the menu. Take the whole fish when it is offered — it is the single best thing these kitchens do and it is priced by weight, so ask what the fish weighs before you commit. Skip the pre-mixed dips at the polished places if the room feels like a hotel restaurant; skip the grilled chicken almost everywhere, since it is the dish least likely to show what the kitchen can do. And go at lunch when you can: several of the best rooms run a set lunch at close to half the evening price for the same cooking.
Where to Start If You Only Get One
One meal, and you want it to be memorable rather than merely good: take the courtyard at Mandolin on a weekday at lunch, order the spreads, the octopus and a whole fish between two, and sit under the tree for two hours. One meal, and you want to eat the way people who live here eat: find the Levantine strip-mall kitchen nearest to wherever you are staying, order the mezze spread and a mixed grill, and be surprised by how little it costs. And if you are feeding a group with a range of appetites and budgets, the mezze format solves it better than any other cuisine in this city — nobody has to agree on anything except how much bread to order.
What Miami Does Not Have
It is worth being honest about the gaps, because they save you a wasted evening. North African cooking is thinly represented here — there are a handful of Moroccan rooms, most of them built around the dinner-show format rather than the food, and nothing approaching the Tunisian or Algerian depth of a European city. Proper Turkish kebab, the charcoal-and-lahmacun kind, exists mostly in the northern suburbs rather than anywhere a visitor would stumble on it. And the coastal Italian end of the Mediterranean label is well served but expensive, largely because it clusters on the beach and in the Design District. Where Miami genuinely excels is Greek seafood and Levantine home cooking, so point your week at those two and you will eat better than the category's reputation suggests.
Tags: #Miami #MediterraneanFood #GreekFood #Levantine #Mezze #Wynwood #MiamiBeach #BuenaVista #MiamiRestaurants #Hummus #WhereToEat #Florida #TurkishFood
Sources consulted: mandolinmiami.com · estiatoriomilos.com · miamiandbeaches.com · visitflorida.com
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Ask Karpo first
The best of these are scattered across the county and several keep short kitchen hours. Ask Karpo in iMessage which one is near you, whether it takes a table your size tonight, and what to order once you sit down.
