17 reasons to visit Time Out Market Miami right now

Time Out Market Miami is home to namesake concepts from three of the best chefs in the city: Giorgio Rapicavoli, Norman Van Aken and Jeremy Ford. Chopped champion Rapicavoli brings nearly every single one of his signatures to this new outpost, from his truffle carbonara and his queso frito with a gooey guava dipping sauce to the adult-friendly dirt-cup dessert layered with salted caramel. Van Aken doubles down with two concepts: Peace Pie and a namesake kitchen serving a newly designed Carribean inspired menu. Practicing under his name, Ford puts his spin on Korean classics like fried chicken, bibimbap and kimchi.

“We basically get one season all year, but that doesn’t matter,” says Sebastian Fernandez, the chef and owner (with his wife, Leslie Ames) of the harvest-driven Peruvian concept 33 Kitchen. “Produce keeps changing, so you shouldn’t have the same ingredients all the time.” While Fernandez’s ceviche may seem by the book, assembled with corvina seasoned with rocoto and other peppers, it’s more nuanced in its flavor profile and use of spices, some of which he grows himself. Fernandez puts his personal touch on everything he makes. “I garnished the tiradito with flowers from my garden,” notes the Chile native. “This is my version of tiradito, not the traditional Nikkei dish.”

Salt & Brine encourages you to do more than just squeeze lime juice on your oysters. To guide you in a new way to slurp, the raw bar offers a number of ways to dress them up, from Russian caviar with a yuzu crème fraîche or kimchi crab with miso ponzu to cucumber with wasabi tobiko. “Everything we do is a little bit different, including our mignonette sauce, which we make with a kimchi base and plum wine,” says chef and co-owner Christian Plotczyk (with his wife, Domenica). The eatery’s lobster roll doesn’t follow the rules of a typical Maine-style sandwich either. “If a banh mi, a lobster roll and a Cuban frita got into a car crash, that’s our lobster roll,” explains Plotczyk. Sticklers for straightforward surf should turn their gaze toward Salt & Brine’s seafood tower, a specialty item with a soaring array of East Coast and West Coast oysters, shrimp and caviar, plus two varieties of crab.

Over the years, Michael Beltran’s Coconut Grove restaurant, Ariete, has gone from meat-centric to Cuban to locally focused to a convergence of all three. The best of every one of his evolutions has found its way to Time Out Market Miami with Leña, where elevated Latin classics and wood-fired meats rule the tightly edited selection of small plates. “We’re taking it way back to Ariete’s OG menu,” says Beltran. Regulars may recognize the beet salad, a Day One starter, as well as the pastrami short rib, a perennial favorite that takes nine days to brine and nine hours to cook. Not everything on Leña’s menu is as exacting: Beltran and his sous chef, Giovanni Fesser (a.k.a. Pastelito Papi), get casual with scrumptious grab-and-go items such as the Cubano pastelito, an oversized pastry filled with layers of ham, Swiss cheese and roasted pork. In other words, it’s like a Hot Pocket but a zillion times better.

Imagine if Miami's best bartenders worked together under one roof—a one-stop shop offering a highlight reel of the city's top tipples. That fantasy is a reality at Time Out Market Bar, located in the heart of Time Out Market Miami. Our editors collaborated with the likes of Generator Hostel, Broken Shaker and Sweet Liberty to curate a menu of delicious drinks to pair with Time Out Market fare. Cool off with a frosty glass of Frozé or a fernet-spiked Piña Colada, or sip in style with the Five-O Five-O, a refreshing blend of gin, blueberry-infused vermouth and bitters (all priced at $11). Rounding out the menu are wines by the glass and bottle plus a lineup of beer (with selections from local favorites Wynwood Brewing, Tank Brewing and Biscayne Bay Brewing). Beers go for $5 each, and you get snag a glass of wine for as little as $6. 

If you know anything about the mostly Cuban city of Hialeah, Florida, you can attest to the rarity of finding a true Jewish deli there. Before shuttering last year, Stephen’s Deli was that oasis, dishing out classic Reubens, coleslaw and matzo-ball soup, among other specialities, for more than six decades. While Kush Hospitality’s Matt Kuscher toils away at plans to renovate and reopen the iconic spot in 2019, Stephen’s Delicatessen is settling in at Time Out Market Miami with the help of Henderson “Junior” Biggers, an Alabama native who’s been hand-slicing corned-beef pastrami at the counter since 1958. “The restaurant opened in 1954,” says Biggers. “I’ve pretty much been there from the beginning.” And it shows.

Love Life Cafe’s Veronica Menin and chef Diego Tosoni didn’t grow up eating U.S. fast food, but these late adopters have still found a way to make guilty pleasures healthy and delicious. “We created a fettuccine version of the mac and cheese for one of our prix fixe vegan dinners, and people freaked out,” says Menin. Love Life’s burger, which earned the restaurant a top prize at Seed Food & Wine in 2017, also gets consistently high marks from customers. “The burger was a test entry for the festival, and we didn’t think we’d win,” she admits. “We were up against Nobu and other big restaurants.” Menin and Tosoni brainstorm new dishes together, then the latter develops the recipes. “We make everything, from our cheeses to our sauces, in-house,” he says. Love Life’s famous burger, a guac-and-bean–stuffed superfood arepa and other good-for-you takes on comfort food grace the café’s tempting Time Out Market menu.

“I eat ice cream every day,” admits Suzy Batlle, owner of Azúcar Ice Cream Company on Calle Ocho and now Azúcar, providing a sugar rush to our market. You’d think that nearly a decade in the business and an additional location in Dallas would give Batlle a brain freeze, but the former banker can’t shake her sweet devotion to Azúcar’s homemade, Cuban-inspired treats. “I just love the Willy Cherrino—it’s so good,” she says of the bourbon-soaked flavor named for singer Willy Chirino. But that’s not the only boozy creation on the menu: The Time Out Market spot boasts a special rum-spiked flan made with Havana Club.

There are few restaurants in Miami that serve gator bites, and even fewer that make the South Florida specialty as mouthwatering as Kush’s in Wynwood or LoKal’s in Coconut Grove—both of which happen to belong to Matt Kuscher. Overnight, he’s made the 305 crazy for these irresistibly crispy nuggets—just the thing you want to pair with a craft beer—and then just as quickly won us over with his no-nonsense burgers, made only with grass-fed Florida ground beef. Kuscher’s deference to homegrown and locally sourced ingredients is what has helped to establish him as a major player on the mainland, and he’s about to do it all over again in South Beach with Kush. We’re practically salivating already.

After closing his Little Bread Cuban Sandwich Co. and Bread + Butter restaurants in 2015, Alberto Cabrera kept hearing the same thing: “People would tell me ‘Oh man, I miss your medianoche croquetas,’ ” he says. “I figured it’d be nice to bring them back.” The classic ham fritters, which he makes his own with a blend of béchamel and sweet pickles, rise again at The Local Cuban. The Miami-born chef has drawn from his parents’ Havana upbringing, plus his own trips to Cuba, to craft a menu that’s rooted in tradition but also recalls dishes served at his prior gastropubs. (Think arroz imperial reimagined as duck rice or fried chicken served over a plantain waffle.) As for the quintessential Cubano, purists can breathe a sigh of relief: He’s not messing with the original recipe.

The elegant chirashizushi is one of chef Shuji Hiyakawa’s most treasured childhood reminiscences. “When I was a kid, my mom made [the Wabi-Sabi bowl] for us on special occasions,” he says, referring to the restaurant’s namesake creation, which joins crab, tuna, salmon and tobiko. “It’s a very nostalgic dish for me. When you eat them all together, that’s my memory of Japan.” Despite featuring only a few house-made teas and bowls, Wabi Sabi by Shuji’s menu is surprisingly varied. “When you take the base, the toppings and the sauce, you can combine them to make 16 different options,” he says. Which means you can’t go wrong, but we’ll order whatever dish gives us the biggest serving of Tamaki Gold sticky rice.

Phuc Yea, MiMo’s Viet-Cajun restaurant with the clever name, spins off as the similarly tongue-in-cheek Pho Mo, with chef Cesar Zapata and partners Ani Meinhold and Giovanny Gutierrez at the helm. Pho Mo skews more traditional in its offerings: Standards like pho and buns are topped with Hanoi lemongrass chicken, “salt-and-peppa” crispy tofu and other proteins. But Zapata paid extra attention to the signature pho: “It took me a year to develop the pho broth to where I wanted it to be,” he says. “There are many steps, and it takes a lot of patience. The broth cooks at a very low steep for hours.” Building the cold-conquering liquid is a long process that involves a dozen spices, the charring and peeling of aromatics, and other steps—all done from scratch. Meinhold adds, “Pho is about balancing the sweet, the savory and the sour.” And Zapata nails it.

Miami-based Per'La Specialty Roasters have been charged with keeping Market visitors caffeinated, and owners Chris Nolte and Paul Massard deliver with three espresso blends that can be found at kitchens throughout the Market. For sipping, head to Bachour and order the Espresso Fino, with notes of dark chocolate and raspberry (a perfect match for the kitchen's decadent pastries). At Love Life Cafe, guests can savor the Espresso Vivo, a lighter roast with bright citrus notes. For a caffeine kick, Espresso Lucha at the Local Cuban is a craft-style spin on classic Cuban coffee.

Good luck finding a single strip of bacon in this city that isn’t cured by Miami Smokers. Launched in 2012 by James Bowers and Andres Barrientos, the USDA-certified distributors of all things pork have expanded to Time Out Market Miami. The duo doles out assorted charcuterie, domestic cheeses and meaty snacks, such as a buttery BBQ rillette with smoked pork butt that’s whipped and emulsified in bacon fat. For us, they went whole hog: Barrientos and Bowers are adding sammies on crusty Sullivan Street Bakery bread and have worked with Chicago’s ’Nduja Artisans, the sausage royalty of the Midwest, to craft three special salamis. “They’re so good,” gushes Bowers, who doesn’t shy away from sampling his own supply­. Who can blame him?

Part all-star showcase and part test lab, Time Out Market’s Demo Kitchen gives chefs the space to preview new menus, experiment with different flavors and interact with diners. Currently on the docket? La Gringa Tostaderia, where chef Miguel Angelo Gomez Navarro (a.k.a. Fish) presents the humble tortilla in delightful, unexpected ways—check out the seafood-packed campechana, with octopus, shrimp and charred veggies.

To say Antonio Bachour’s desserts are works of art is an understatement: The veteran pastry chef lingers over every mousse and gelée much in the same way that a painter meditates on every brushstroke. He has even gone so far as to patent a custom mold for his signature tulip-shaped creation. (At Bachour, that dish is a coconut dacquoise filled with a light coconut mousse and strawberry-lime compote—a delicious Instagram darling.) While known for his intricacy, the chef assures us that complexity for complexity’s sake isn’t the mark of a desirable dessert. “A good pastry isn’t too sweet. It’s one where you take one bite and want to have another,” says Bachour, who has stacked his menu with a craveable mix of sweet  treats and savory croissants.

No matter how many duck carnitas tacos we consume at Coyo Taco in Wynwood (and at Brickell, Lisbon and other recently added outposts), the restaurant still inspires countless no-regrets margarita-fueled headaches. And while something tells us that its new Time Out Market location will be no less boozy—for one thing, it sits steps away from three bars—the street-food spot offers a satisfying dish that its other locations do not. “On the weekends, we’ll serve menudo,” notes chef Scott Linquist. Luckily for our cabezas, menudo is a spicy Mexican tripe soup known to remedy the deadliest of hangovers. In our digs, it’ll be prescribed alongside other specials and one-off dishes, such as mole pozole and rotisserie lamb.