When new restaurants open, we check them out. This means that we subject our stomachs and social lives to the good, the bad, and more often than not, the perfectly fine. And every once in a while, a new spot makes us feel like Pitbull at a white suit sale. When that happens, we add it here, to The Hit List.
The Hit List is where you’ll find all of the best new restaurants in Miami. As long as it opened within the past few months and we’re still talking about it, it’s on this guide. The latest addition might be a tasting menu spot with a dedicated caviar attendant. Or it might be a ventanita where a few dollars will get something that’ll rattle around in your brain like a loose penny in a dryer.
Keep tabs on the Hit List and you will always know just which new restaurants you should be eating at right now.
THE SPOTS
QP Tapas was one of the best new restaurants of 2022—even though it was technically just a pop-up. After a brief break it has popped up once again in Coconut Grove—and it’s still one of the best restaurants in Miami. QP’s new space is a little more date-night-appropriate, and has a lovely patio for when the sun stops being so mean. But the big draw is still the menu, an exciting, creative blend of Spanish tapas and izakaya dishes. The massive okonomiyaki, gorgeous paellas, and uni risotto are still (thank god) on the menu. But now there’s also a phenomenal cocktail menu developed by Kaiju, one of our favorite bars in Miami. If you missed QP the first time around, your new priority in life is to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Too often, food this sophisticated is served in places that make you feel like a fidgety child at the opera. But at Beauty and The Butcher, you can sit at the bar in your office clothes and order a delicate ricotta gnudi surrounded by fancy foam without worrying if the staff is having an internal debate about kicking you out. Or, you can dress up and impress a date with a $150 tasting menu. That’s what we like about this Gables restaurant. It serves fancy food but doesn’t feel like a restaurant for people with art collections. And a meal here is highly memorable whether you’re there for Happy Hour or planning to propose (maybe wait until after dinner—just in case).
Far Out Pizza is a slice shop in the epicenter of Calle Ocho that makes pizza we thoroughly enjoy—but the best things here aren’t actually pizza. That honor goes to Far Out’s sandwiches, a handful of thick options that range from a saucy eggplant parm to the delicious (and lawyer-approved) riff on a Publix sub they call the “public sub.” Far Out also happens to be next door to (and run by the same team as) Union Beer Store, one of our favorite bars in Miami. So you can spend a Saturday night carrying pepperoni pizza and Italian subs back and forth between the two like a hardworking ant.
Kendall has two very important things: a large suburban sprawl and the ingenuity to make the best of it. And Apocalypse BBQ makes the most out of its slightly ridiculous location in the middle of Killian Greens golf course. There, next to a dozen parked golf carts, it churns out incredible burgers, juicy wings, and smoked cafecito-rubbed ribs. Try to get here early. There’s often a wait (sometimes they’ll just give away free beer when the line gets long) and they run out of things towards the end of the day. But you can throw a dart at the menu while blindfolded and still land on something good. You may not be able to do the same thing with a map of Kendall, but it’s not desolate either.
Pez is doing the most convincing Mexico City impression in Miami right now. It’s not a perfect impression (a single taco costs $7), but this Downtown spot has both the aesthetic—white tile walls, blue plates, bright red tables—and the food dialed in. The menu is really solid Baja-style Mexican seafood, like an excellent tuna quesataco, tostadas, and a delicious tostilocos you should definitely order. Plus, not everything is as pricey as those tacos (which are good, by the way). The house margarita is $10 all day long.
Bringing a classic restaurant back from the dead can sometimes feel a bit Pet Sematary-ish. But the team from Gramps brought out the defibrillators for 79th Street’s Schnitzel Haus, and pulled it off beautifully. This place achieves nostalgia without feeling like an ‘80s-themed house party—yes the walls are mirrored and the colors are primary, but the details are subtle enough to get noticed slowly throughout dinner. That dinner is delicious too. There are big plates of multiple sausages, a fascinating herring cake that’s exactly what it sounds like, and the titular schnitzel is the best we’ve had in Miami. Stick around for drinks and glass-block-window-appreciating in the backyard.
After existing in pop-up limbo for the last six months, Tam Tam’s arrival feels even more glorious. There is no restaurant in this city like it—and not just because Miami lacks Vietnamese options. It just has a very rare combination of exciting food, contagious fun-having, and design details sure to imminently overtake your algorithm. The worn wood paneling left over from the previous occupant makes Tam Tam feel lived-in like a favorite pair of jeans, and one bathroom is a disco karaoke hallucination. The overall feeling of Tam Tam speaks to this place’s roots as a supper club, when it was just friends getting together for drinks and one-of-a-kind Vietnamese dishes.
Maty’s is a restaurant from the team behind Itamae, a Nikkei spot that’s made us want to consult a lawyer about the possibility of being adopted by a restaurant. But the Peruvian dishes at Maty’s aren’t strictly Nikkei. They are adapted from the chef’s family recipes—the same family whose photos line the simple white walls of the spacious Midtown restaurant. The big protein dishes are where Maty’s really goes all out. The one non-negotiable plate from that section of the menu is the whole roasted dorade, an unbelievably tender fish served butterflied so it looks like it’s been flattened by a steamroller. The cocktails are great too, so keep Maty’s on your shortlist for a fun dinner with friends.
