Best Restaurants
in Coral Gables

Coral Gables was designed to be beautiful, and it succeeded. The Mediterranean Revival architecture, the canopied streets, the Venetian Pool and the Biltmore Hotel create a backdrop of unusual civic elegance for a South Florida city. The restaurant scene matches the ambition: this is Miami's most consistently excellent dining neighbourhood, a place where international residents and the city's business elite demand and receive restaurants of genuine calibre.

Giralda Avenue — the pedestrian dining street in the heart of Coral Gables — operates as an outdoor dining room several evenings a week, tables extending from the restaurants across the closed street in a configuration that references European pedestrian dining without self-consciously imitating it. The restaurants on and around this corridor include some of the finest Italian and French kitchens in Florida.

The neighbourhood's Michelin recognition has been growing steadily. Le Jardinier holds a star with a seasonal French menu; Fiola carries its Washington DC pedigree to a Coral Gables room that has become one of Miami's most desirable reservations. The Italian dining scene — Luca Osteria, Erba, the vine-covered Brickell establishments a short drive away — reflects the community's European character.

Coral Gables operates on its own time. Dinner here is not rushed; the expectation is that an excellent meal extends for three hours and that the wine list requires genuine engagement. This is a dining culture that rewards patience and punishes impatience.