Whether it’s been a month or six since your last trip to Miami, you’d barely recognize The Magic City. Historic downtown is taking on a modern day revival with classic cocktail rooftop bars, craft coffee cafés and gilded boutique hotels, while the Wynwood Arts District and Brickell have expanded their pedestrian-friendly streets to include pop-up music venues and California-inspired vegan cafes. From your morning cold brew to your nightcap, here’s how Miami keeps up with an ever evolving world.
1. Downtown Mornings
Starting the day downtown used to mean strolling out of Club Space in time for brunch Sunday. With the population doubling over the past decade, this historic side of the city is finally undergoing a much-needed facelift with cafes setting up shop on side streets near notorious late-night venues. Just around the corner from 24-hour nightclub E11even, you can get your caffeine fix at All Day, with nitrogen-infused Brooklyn blend and Florida eggs served four ways: caste iron-fried, soft scrambled, poached or baked with pecorino and citrus on sourdough. The Scandinavian-meets-midcentury modern Miami cafe is the work of Panther Coffee’s Camila Ramos and The Corner owner Chris MacLeod, so it’s no surprise the cafe not only looks sleek in its minimalist design (think loft-style spaces, dark wood banquets and branches hanging overhead), but it also nails both the coffee and the cuisine. From the street, the one pop of color standing out against the stark white interior is a neon green sign glowing with words spelling out 10 different types of coffee options, from double shot to hot drip. Espresso is brewed in the custom-crafted La Marzocco Strada machine—the largest in the world—from small-batch beans expertly sourced from roasters like Birmingham’s Revelator and Miami’s Per’la. The menu, meanwhile, is the work of Charles Lutka, who pulls from his previous stints at Michelin-starred Marea in NYC and Miami’s late-night Korean barbecue joint Gigi to craft locally inspired brunch fare with a haute twist. Expect decadent dishes like French toast with tres leches batter and pecan butter and lamb merguez tartine served with za’atar on olive toast. Anything you order will also pair perfectly with one of the 10 caffeine fixes, from the double shot espresso with sweet Florida milk to the nitrogen gas-infused “royal tea.”
2. Wynwood Expansions
The arts district has seen its fair share of pop-ups from galleries to drive-thru cinemas, but the Wynwood Yard is combining all of these concepts with a multipurpose space perfect for a food truck-served lunch during the day, as well as live music and yoga in the evenings. What started as a 10-month pop-up has become more permanent with a bar, a garden by Little River Cooperative and cuisine ranging from omakase sushi food truck Myumi to healthy bowl test kitchen Della. Order one of Della’s popular vegan bowls filled with quinoa, black coconut rice, tangy ginger tempeh and Maduro-style ripe plantain and dig in at one of the picnic tables placed out front. Wi-Fi is free, so this spot easily doubles as a co-working space, but if you would rather work in the comfort of an air-conditioned coffee shop, drive over to nearby Panther Coffee, a locally based roaster with brew just as good as their people watching in the typically packed cafe. Order a cold brew and one of Cindy Lou’s Cookies’ Morning Glory Muffins before setting off on a street art and shopping tour of the neighborhood.
The highlight is the living street art gallery Wynwood Walls, which started in 2009 on six buildings spanning the 25th-26th Street complex. It has now expanded to over 80,000 square feet of walls painted by more than 50 street art and graffiti artists from around the globe, including French artist Invader (behind video game-inspired space invader mosaics) and South Africa’s Faith47. Start at the beginning, exploring the street art, before weaving in and out of the galleries lining Northwest Second Avenue. Here, you’ll also find a number of boutiques like Melbourne-based skin care line Aesop and vintage-inspired glasses showroom Warby Parker. In addition to some of the larger labels, Wynwood also houses independent boutiques like Plant the Future, with its living art installations and hand-blown glass terrariums, and Mexican concept and design shop Malaquita, featuring everything from rainbow-colored sacred string artwork to hand-painted cowboy boots.
3. Plant-based Gourmet
Photo courtesy of DIRT
Miami is home to a slew of restaurants branded by big name chefs like Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, but the city is turning over a new leaf with the trend veering toward plant-based cuisine. The celeb chef behind California-based Matthew Kenney Cuisine brought his concept down south and gave it a Florida spin, opening up the seasonally focused Plant Food + Wine in Wynwood’s new Sacred Space. Take a seat on the patio next to the reflecting pool in this oasis-style spot and get ready to dig in to a list of dishes that taste almost too good to be purely plant-based. Start with the flora artisanal cheese plate of white truffle, smoked cheddar and mixed pepper cashew and macadamia-crafted cheese before moving on to one of the mains like the banana leaf tamale with cacao mole and shiitake mushroom or the coconut ceviche tacos with sunflower chorizo.
For a meal just as beautifully presented but delivered in a quick service setting, head to wellness bar DIRT in SoFi and order from the paleo, vegan or gluten-sensitive menus filled with clean dishes like the kimchee-spiced Seoul Bowl or the Santorini salad with housemade harissa-spiked hummus (both pictured above). This is a spot that caters to all dietary requirements, so if your friend wants an option topped with organic, grass-fed meat, they’re in luck. One of the top picks: the dirty sandwich with homemade chicken apple sausage served on locally baked Zak the Baker bread.
4. Beach Bootcamp
