I am always hungry. And if that weren’t a problem, I am always hungry for something new. If you like to order ‘the usual’, I am your biggest nightmare when it comes to picking a restaurant.

Miami is known as the big Latin melting pot. All the Hispanic countries are represented here and let’s not forget the Oriental influences as well. So it should come as no surprise that the city is filled with limitless choices of restaurants, food trucks and dives of all known cuisines.

While going to the trendy restaurant that opened the previous weekend was a luxury I rarely indulged in, I pinpointed the little places that had authentic flavors and prices that didn’t hurt my student wallet.

These are some of my favorite restaurants in Miami that locals raved about.

Versailles Café

www.versaillesrestaurant.com
3555 SW 8th Street
Miami FL, 33145
305-444-0240

 

Versailles Café was the very first place I visited when I moved to Miami. After arriving from the airport from a 5 am flight my uncle said “Welcome! Do you want to go unpack?”

“Coffee”, I grumbled. “I need coffee.”

The restaurant has been opened for more than 50 years, a true landmark of Little Havana located right on Calle Ocho. Even though they serve some of the best Cuban dishes, I always opted for the café right next door. A cafecito sweetened with brown sugar was always too much of a temptation for me to resist.

But truly, the coffee is just a lovely side to the true guilty pleasure. The guava and cream cheese pastries. 

From: TechFoodLife.com

In my country, Puerto Rico, we call them pastelillitos de guayaba, and wondering if Cuba did it better, I ordered them, almost in a challenging manner. I won’t (nay, will never) say it is better, but the flaky light pastry crumbling easy to find the middle of fruity guava layered over the creaminess of the cheese… I definitely felt like I was home.

Pachamamma

www.pachamammarestaurant.com
321 Johnson Street
Hollywood FL, 33019
954-926-1020 

It means Mother Earth and it is the name of the goddess in Incan mythology who oversees harvesting and life on earth. Now, it is also a restaurant in Hollywood Beach that serves the greatest Peruvian food I’ve ever tried.

It’s the kind of place you discover while taking a stroll down the Hollywood Boardwalk near Fort Lauderdale. The place is small but cosy and decorated with wooden artefacts of Incan and Peruvian culture.

The menu has many selections of grilled meats with onions like the popular Lomo Salteado con Cebollas – Sautéed Beef slices with Onions, but for the longest time, I had wanted to try one of Peru’s delicacies, Ají de Gallina – Shredded Chicken in Yellow Sauce. 

From: PerennialPastTimes.com

The yellow sauce is made of yellow pepper paste and milk. To the creamy sauce, they add walnuts, shredded chicken, slices of boiled egg and thick slices of potato. Served over white rice, it is comfort food at its best.

Sawaddee Thai & Sushi
6968 Bay Drive
Miami Beach FL, 33141

You will check your GPS twice when you arrive, wondering, hoping you typed the wrong address. But I promise, it’s worth it.

Sawaddee is literally a whole in the wall on the corner of Bay Drive and 71^st Street, just a couple of blocks from Miami Beach. No more than ten people can sit in to have a meal. Sometimes it’s packed and other times it’s completely empty. Most of its clientele comes in for a few minutes, grab their take out and head out the door. 

I am new to the Thai cuisine, but I am a sucker for curries. The dish that kept me going back was their beef green curry. The sauce was creamy and a bit sweet from the coconut milk and they add whole basil leaves that perfume the dish. The dish is very filling with big pieces of eggplant, green bell pepper and zucchini. It is served with steamed white rice that absorbs the curry sauce perfectly, taking you to what can only be known as a curry comma. It’s much more pleasant than it sounds.

Monserrate
www.mimonserratte.com
 9545 NW 41 Street
 Miami FL, 33178
305-436-0803305-436-0803

Tucked away in a mini mall in Doral, it is easy to miss this fantastic Colombian restaurant. Since 1974, they have been serving authentic Colombian dishes from various regions of the country. All the dishes are plentiful and packed with flavor. But you will probably not be able to resist when everybody suggests you should try their empanadas and by all means, do not resist. 

MiMonserratte.com

If you are new to Colombian cuisine, this is the perfect crunchy introduction. Served as appetizers, these empanadas are made of yellow cornmeal dough and filled with potatoes, pork or beef and tons of fresh vegetables like red bell pepper, white onions, tomatoes and garlic. The tiny pockets are deep fried until golden and crispy and taken immediately to your table. They come with lime wedges to squeeze over the empanadas, to brighten up the flavor, and with two homemade piques (hot sauce). The red one, made mostly of tomatoes, garlic and peppers, is for the cautious ones. The green one, made with tons of cilantro, green chiles and onions, is for the brave ones.

SuViche
www.suviche.com
49 SW 11th Street
Miami FL, 33130
305-960-7097 

The place in trendy Brickell is small yet modern, with orange lamps and steel chairs. And the fusion of Japanese and Peruvian cuisine is just as modern and delicious.

TripAdvisor.com

While the Peruvian dishes are gorgeously prepared, I have only tried the sushi menu so far. And I can’t complain. While they serve more well-known rolls like the California Roll and Spicy Tuna, they specialize in custom creations. 

Tropical Roll at the back, Jalapeno Roll on the right corner

The Tropical Roll, one of the fancy ones, is made of crispy shrimp with cucumber and avocado, topped with thin slices of mango and finished with eel sauce and flakes of coconut. Yet my favorite for its simplicity is the Jalapeno Roll. Starting with the traditional flavors of white fish and avocado, they tweak it to the Latin side with fresh cilantro and topped with a thin slice of raw jalapeno and a dollop of torched spicy mayo. It is a fiery explosion for your taste buds.

Do you know of any other great places to eat in Miami?

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Wynwood in the Dark

One of the reasons I’ve always wanted to move to a city is to enjoy the art scene and its constant change that only thrives in a bustling metropolis. Like many people who visit Miami only for its beaches and night life, I thought I would have no such luck in this new home of mine. 

Turns out, I had gotten it more wrong than I could have imagined.

It was a late Saturday night and my plans consisted of eating take out and binge watching FRIENDS for the millionth time. I was told there was something called an Art Walk at this trendy neighbourhood called Wynwood, only fifteen minutes away from where I lived, where every second Saturday of the month people show up to enjoy the latest exhibitions accompanied by free wine. I had heard of the name Wynwood many times and with it came great recommendations for anyone who had a bohemian soul. So with a not so sincere apology to my chicken tacos, I grabbed my denim jacket and headed out.

The short drive took me through the dark desolated part of the neighbourhood, small houses and storage buildings. For a moment I thought I took a wrong turn but the residue of spray paint on the sidewalks signalled I was close. With every passing street, the concrete walls of one story buildings became canvases for street artists. No building from here on out was untouched by a paint brush, the vibrant colors creating murals with urban motifs. 

One more block, and the avenue was swarmed with visitors and locals who walked around, selecting at a whim the next gallery they would visit. Others just enjoyed the murals, each one different to the next, as if it was an open air museum. The scene was like unadvertised big party that the high heeled wearing and expensive cocktail drinking crowd of South Beach wasn’t invited.

Completely taken by surprise by this burgeoning artistic neighbourhood only a few minutes from my apartment, all I could do was wander in amazement. The enormous murals were the front decoration of small restaurants, boutiques and pubs. Yet these murals were the fruit of the art bud that started everything eight years ago: The Wynwood Walls. Right next to Wynwood Kitchen & Bar, one of the first restaurants to be part of the development, Wynwood Walls are the collaboration of international street artists and the inspiration of many other locals who have left their signature on the nearby walls, slowly expanding the neighborhood.

The place was like nothing I had ever seen yet it felt strangely familiar in all its novelty. Like a home I had been searching without realizing or like the anchor necessary to finally feel I had moved from my country to Miami, and that was all right. It felt like the sparks of art inside my head had managed to escape and explode all around me into something welcoming. Just for me and I no longer had to live inside my head.

My introduction to Wynwood was intense and memorable but having met in the dark and for such short hours made everything feel surreal, like an magical circus passing by and come daylight, it would all be gone. 

I needed to come back, in the harsh light of day, without the buzzing crowd and the drinks, to see it without the allure of night and love it for what it really was.

In the Mind of Dalí: Surrealism in Florida

I fell in love with Salvador Dalí the way one would fall in love with the basket case from high school. Anytime you see them, or any reference to them, you can’t help but think “What a weirdo” and dismiss it. But with every exposure, and a pinch more of maturity each day, you see something you didn’t see before, and curiosity sparks. You find the method to what seemed pure madness, and after time you realize, “I get it. I totally get it.”

I began accepting my crush for Dalí when I visited his museum in Montmatre in Paris. Surrounded by the various sculptures of his melting clock, a series of drawings illustrating stories of the Bible and his immortal muse, Gala, something finally clicked. 

So when I was told one of the biggest Dalí collections was in St. Petersburg, only a few hours away from Miami, two words were immediately uttered. Road trip.

The journey began with the sunrise and coffee to go. It was long and straight –oh so straight- shot across the peninsula, a dull road momentarily livened by the sight of gators in the canals skirting the Everglades. But later, rather than sooner, we were cruising down Boulevard Dalí by the bay, and to the left we were greeted by this enormous metal square building with a glass dome emanating from the top of it, spilling over the front.

The Dalí Museum, the home of more than 96 of his pieces, couldn’t have represented him better with such an exterior. The unconventional glass bubble called the “enigma” erupts out of the confinements of the conventional rectangular building is the combination of the ration with the fantastical. I was already beyond intrigued.

The entrance forces you to pass straight through the gift shop, as opposed to leaving it as a small treat to the very end, and towards Café Gala that serves the best Spanish treats along with piping hot coffee. To the right, next to a helical staircase, a man leads you to the elevator which takes you to the third floor, where gallery begins.

“What happened with the second floor?” I joked. But he just smiled and wished us a lovely visit.

The third floor, the lovely view from inside the "enigma" and the end of  the staircase.

Passing the mysterious second floor, I arrived at the third floor, the glass bubble revealing a blue sky and the top of the spiral staircase which now looked like a double helix, possibly symbolizing the DNA molecule and Dali’s obsession with it. 

Aside from my interest in this man, I was eager to visit this museum because many years ago, it wasn’t one of the biggest collection of a surrealist artist but the devoted interest of a couple. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse began collecting paintings of Dalí, who later became their friend. As the years passed, the collection grew and could no longer keep it in their house. Many museums were interested, like MOMA , but they wanted to dismantle the collection and take a few pieces. No one wanted such a large collection of one artist. The Morses thought that wasn’t good enough. And so, St. Petersburg became the home of Surrealism.

The tours gather to the right every 30 minutes, in front of a painting called Daddy Longlegs of the Evening- Hope! The first one the Morses bought. 

 

Daddy Longlegs of the Evening- Hope! by Salvador Dali

The painting is striking and melting objects predominate- a war plane and a soft cello being played by the gelatinous looking self portrait of Dalí, seen various times in his other pieces. There is also a child with wings covering his eyes from the horrors unfolding, like the rotting horse shooting out of a cannon and the plane oozing to the ground. 

The guide explained this is the first piece Dalí painted in the United States in 1943, after the artist and his wife moved seeking refuge from World War II.

And this piece, so full of war elements and history, is only the introduction.

The visitors were tickled by the slow exposure to his smaller paintings and drawings but the awe becomes tangible when they stop completely, for minutes on end, to stare at his grand masterpieces that go all the way up to the ceilings. 

The first one to be seen is Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln. 

Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln

The self-explanatory title immediately captured the interest of the group because the first and only thing you see in the painting is a naked woman, Gala, facing away towards a sunset. She is surrounded by cubes of different colors that don’t form a particular figure. But if you stand back twenty meters, as the title suggests, turn around and see the painting through a mirror a mirror, you see a large portrait of Abraham Lincoln. 

The trick is so clever, I didn’t mind standing there smiling, facing away from the painting you are admiring, looking quite ridiculous to all the newcomers who have no idea what is going on. Like I knew a secret they didn’t. At least for a few minutes.

But after you have admired it from afar, you get close again and see all kinds of things you hadn’t notice before. Like the Mediterranean sunset Gala is admiring, which is really an image of Christ ascending, as if seen from above. And at the bottom left corner, there is Gala again facing away, next to a tiny portrait of Lincoln.  It is only when prying, little by little understanding all he has hidden in one painting, all the themes running through it, that you begin to grasp the brilliance behind what appeared to be random madness.

By now, I was submerged in the symbolism and the feelings each painting pulled out of me. I was always feel loneliness when I see any surrealist work. The lack of human interaction, the vast empty sceneries, makes me feel incredibly alone. But with Dalí, I always sense of acceptance for this solitude, like the sceneries are not a plane of sadness but the ample rooms of his mind that carry all the trinkets of his imagination. His scared, abstract place that only he can visit and whomever he invites in. He invites me to have such a place for myself.

If I had to pick which painting I stared at the longest, for pure fascination or deepening confusion, it would have to be The Hallucinogenic Toreador. 

 

The Hallucinogenic Toreador

The central figure is Venus de Milo, the image constantly repeated larger and larger across the canvas. The green in her skirt becomes the Toreador’s tie and around her stomach and bosom, the bullfighter’s chin and lips are formed. The shadows of the next Venus contour his face and her red skirt is really his cape hung over his shoulder. Other elements swarm the canvas, like an army of flies, Gala’s presence and even the bull. Initially, the grand piece seems scattered and senseless, but the way  his mind covers what you may see from afar and just a few feet away from it, the question left as to what the relation between Venus and the bullfighter is a love story or a tragedy, has stayed with me.

When people refuse to understand Dalí, I find it near impossible to come up with an argument that will end their confusion. I don’t think anybody ended up loving him because of a well thought out list of reasons to endure viewing his creations. At some point, without really looking for it or even being aware of it, that small intrigue for his melting clocks or his long legged elephants, will simply click into an understanding that can’t be shared, only felt. And you will be hooked with knowing more of how his mind worked and how you could have so easily dismissed as weird something so rich and complex.

My relationship with Dalí was never love at first sight. But it will be a love that will last a lifetime.

I couldn't resist the gift shop [or the coffee].