< Previous5051 Fulk. It includes a massive pale-pink rooftop pool club with plenty of retro- looking cabanas. And at The Ritz-Carlton in Miami Beach, the Bagatelle restaurant has recently reopened with a new interior by respected French designer Sam Baron and a bar that wraps around a large, leafy olive tree. While Miami can sometimes overwhelm with its more-is-more spectacle, a recent entrant into the scene runs delightfully in the opposite direction. In the largely residential Coconut Grove, Mr C hotel — from the group behind the famed Cipriani restaurants and designed by Martin Brudnizki and local architecture firm Arquitectonica — combines old-fashioned nautical themes with a kind of lacquered elegance that’s always relevant for Miami. “Yes, we have that American culture of consumption,” Ortiz says. “But we’re also resourceful . That’s sometimes obscured by the glam, but it makes Miami special. And it’s 81 degrees in January.” DAN RUBINSTEIN DINING’S NEW ERA People go out to eat in Miami these days expecting to be dazzled, but it wasn’t always this way. When I moved to Miami about two decades ago, the city was in a food funk. At that time, culinary pilgrims came here for authentic Cuban dishes like a classic ropa vieja (a mélange of Facing page, from top: The Rickenbacker Causeway, the bathrooms at Sexy Fish This page: steamed sea bass, chili and soy at Sexy Fish THE NEW CULINARY LANDSCAPE RELFECTS A WIDE RANGE OF INFLUENCES AND ISN’T AFRAID TO BEND THE RULES PHO T OGR APHS: MUZ AMMILSOORMA/UNSPLA SH, KRIS T AMBURELL O S TUDIO S , BEN C ARPENTER steak and vegetables that translates to ‘old clothes’ for its resemblance to a pile of rags) at Versailles restaurant, off Calle Ocho. Then, about a decade ago, there was a wave of quality restaurants imported from somewhere else — more exciting, but not terribly Miami-specific in feel or fare. But now the city has an electric, largely homegrown restaurant culture that is keeping stride with its boundary- pushing art and design scenes. Like Miami itself, the new culinary landscape reflects a wide range of influences, isn’t afraid to bend the rules, and never takes itself too seriously. The latest chapter in the city’s food story stars first-time restaurateurs who are stirring up daring flavours and concepts inside small-scale restaurants. Take chef Valerie Chang, who, until recently, operated Itamae as a tiny stall in the MIA Market food hall alongside her father, Fernando, and brother Nando, serving the Japanese-inflected Peruvian cuisine Nikkei. In December 2020, the family opened Itamae as a 40-seat restaurant in the tony Design District. Itamae currently tops many of the nation’s best-of lists. With no flashy marketing or over-the-top design, it is quietly cool, letting the boldness shine through in every seafood dish that emerges from its open kitchen, like the uni with Peruvian ají amarillo pepper and bronze fennel. Along with the Changs, a class of new chefs is spurning the corporate call, starting small while dreaming big , and organically 525354 morphing into sophisticated operations. Young guns Luciana Giangrandi and Alex Meyer started out with a taco cart before opening their standout 24-seat restaurant Boia De in the artsy Buena Vista neighbourhood. The duo describe their food as Italian, with air quotes. Their innovations are subtle yet memorable, tweaking traditional Italian recipes to surprise the diner with dishes like lamb ribs served with a classic fra diavolo sauce alongside spicy yogurt and pickled cucumbers. Following a similar trajectory, 30-something- year-old Matteson Koche, the owner of El Bagel, began by delivering hand-rolled bagels by car in Wynwood. After upgrading to a food truck in 2018, he opened a full-on bagel eria in spring 2020 to meet demand in MiMo (Miami Modern district), northeast of the Design District. The promise of a chewy sesame with cream cheese and guava marmalade makes the always-long line bearable. The success of these small-scale restaurateurs has attracted heavy attention from well-known culinary names. Today it’s not uncommon to see chef Akino West of Rosie’s, a modest weekend pop-up serving Southern cuisine in the gritty Allapattah neighbourhood, team up for a brunch collaboration with glitzy Italian eatery Osteria Morini Miami Beach, part of the Altamarea Group, which includes restaurants like New York City’s Marea. And while other big -name imports continue to set up shop in Miami — Carbone, Red Rooster, and Cote Korean Steakhouse have all opened outposts within the last two years — they’ve done so this time with an eye on Miami design, flavour, and feel. Classic Cuban dishes are still easy to find and worth seeking out, but they’re no longer the only truly local game in town. There’s a bright, diverse culinary landscape to chose from. Now is a delicious time to be in Miami. NILA DO SIMON AFTER SUNDOWN As the rest of the planet shuttered in the wake of Covid-19, Miami kept on dancing. Soon, others wanted in on this parallel universe void of restrictions. Record-breaking numbers of visitors and prospective residents descended upon this tropical promised land, bringing a newfound appreciation for its Art Deco architecture and design- forward downtown as well as a seemingly insatiable appetite for its more hedonistic offerings. The influx has invigorated and elevated Miami’s nightlife scene, which encompasses both glossy newcomers and rejuvenated late-night legends. In the 1990s, it was all about South Beach. By the late 2000s, Mid-Beach ruled. Amid the decades-long tug-of-war between the two for Miami nightlife supremacy , an unlikely new player has recently arrived on the scene: the Wynwood Arts District, a colourful and edgy neighbourhood best known for its Instagram-worthy, eye-catching street art. A standout among the late-night fun is Dante’s HiFi, an intimate vinyl listening space. The micro bar, which fits a maximum of 50, has a private-party atmosphere, where people listen to DJ Rich Medina pull from his 8,500-strong record collection. Odds of securing a table are much higher at the 10,000-square-foot hotel-inspired Freehold Miami. The Brooklyn export has a 24-hour entertainment concept that spreads the revelry over three bumping bars, a massive courtyard, a café, and a performance space. If it’s past midnight on a Saturday, La Otra, a high-energy discoteca that’s a purveyor of Latin pop, is sure to be packed. Restaurant-club hybrids that promise fine dining early in the evening and all-out throwdowns until the wee hours are the city’s newest after-dark trend. While the metamorphosis from restaurant to dance hall isn’t a novel concept, it’s one that has found fresh footing, especially among Miamians who claim traditional clubbing is passé (it’s not) or feel they’ve aged out. The apex of these split-personality venues — and the hottest table in the 305 — is downtown’s Sexy Fish. When the original opened in London in 2015, it single-handedly made dressing up for dinner cool again. Marine-themed and seafood-centric, the Miami outpost dazzles by design, with over-the-top aquatic- imbued glass mosaics and sculptures by Damien Hirst and Frank Gehry. As the hours pass and the theatrical mocktails kick in, DJs turn up the volume, mermaid dancers emerge, costumed performers shake it, and the crowd joins in. The net effect is one big, fabulous party under the sea. Over in South Beach, St Tropez mainstay Bagatelle brings the joie de vivre to town with lavish dinners of French-inflected cuisine punctuated by wild moments filled with popping bubbles corks, sparklers, and tabletop dancing. More subdued is the scene at MILA, a rooftop MediterrAsian restaurant that attracts Miami’s most fashionable for evenings of epic people-watching and house music. Miami may be America’s trendiest city when it comes to nightlife, but some Magic City institutions never go out of style. One of the city’s oldest bars, Mac’s Club Deuce, a dive-y, neon-trimmed joint in the heart of South Beach, is irresistibly lo-fi and pulls in mostly locals seeking to escape tourists . Twist, celebrating 30 years in 2023, is another Miami institution. Mega nightclubs LIV and E11EVEN continue to duke it out for bragging rights as the city’s premier hot spot . LIV, a 22,000-square-foot state-of-the-art dance club at the Fontaine bleau in Mid-Beach, welcomes global talent like Cardi B and Drake regularly. E11EVEN is an ‘ultra club’. It currently reigns as the highest-grossing club per square foot on the planet . As the locals tell it, you haven’t lived large, Miami style, until you’ve emerged from one of them as the sun is rising on another perfect South Florida morning. PAUL RUBIO PHO T OGR APHS: TEAMLAB , C OUR TE S Y OF P A CE G ALLER Y AND U AMA AZ AM/UNSPLA SH Previous page: teamLab, Flowers and People, Cannot be Controlled but Live Together – Transcending Boundaries, A Whole Year per Hour (2017). Sound: Hideaki Takahashi. Installation view of Every Wall is a Door, Superblue Miami (2021) Facing page: The Tropics Hotel in the South Beach Art-Deco and Nightlife District555657575757575775757757775 Crete’s tourism landscape is changing, thanks to a new wave of hoteliers championing its more secret southern regions WORDS BY SONIA SULTAN 5859 “Did you know you can ski in Crete in the winter?” acclaims Spyros Kouris, his gaze steadfastly fixed on the lofty mountain range which characterises the Cretan landscape. A desire to showcase the lesser- known parts of Crete through a modern lens is at the core of hospitality offerings being developed by new-age local hoteliers like Kouris. Along with his co-owner, Kouris hand-picked the off-the-beaten-path coastal town of Ierapetra in the southern Lasithi region for their new property, the Numo Ierapetra Hotel. “We chose it as the location for the first Numo because it has a special kind of energy that’s hard to describe in words – you just need to visit the location to appreciate it”, enthuses Spyros. Paving the way for a renaissance of the southern side of the island, proud Cretans like himself want visitors to forgo the popular areas in place of the more authentically rugged south. The contemporary Numo resort has all the makings of a modern Mediterranean island escape – an earthy colour palette complementing its surroundings, a swimming pool flanked by ancient olive trees, and a boho-tinged beach where cocktails flow to the sounds of a DJ. However, it is the passion to form strong bonds within the surrounding local community and encourage curious travellers to explore this unfrequented territory that differentiates Numo as a new genus of resort. During the day, life in Ierapetra moves at a languid pace, “Siga, siga”, as the Greeks say: slowly, slowly, juxtaposed with vibrant evenings. As PHO T OGR APHS: E GOR MIZNICK AND NICK K ONT O S T A VLAKIS F OR GL OBE & TR O TTER This page: the beach at Ammos overlooks the Cretan Sea Facing page: Ammos is a famly-friendly boutique hotel Previous pages: Royal Senses and The Palace of Knossos near the north coast of Crete the sun melts into the Aegean Sea, bustling tavernas come alive with traditional sounds of the lyra, accompanied by clinking glasses – an apt reflection of Cretan culture. Despite countless historical invasions reflected in the Byzantine buildings, Venetian boathouses and Ottoman mosques which dominate the island, Cretans have intertwined these vastly different cultures to form their own identity, one they are fiercely protective of – they are proudly Cretan, not Greek. As Kouris explains, “Thousands of years of civilisation filtered through different cultures from people that lived on the island create a very colourful backdrop. Cretans are hospitable by nature, and this adds another layer of warmth to the island and everything that it has to offer”. This famed hospitality which forms the bedrock of Cretan society can be traced back to Zeus, the father of gods and ancient patron of hospitality, who is believed to be born in the Diktaean Cave of south-eastern Crete. The further north you travel in Crete, the more developed it becomes. Cities like Chania with its Venetian harbour and Heraklion near Knossos Palace have long catered to tourists and steadily gained popularity over the years. Near Chania, travellers will find the funky retro boutique hotel that is Ammos. Opened in the Nineties, with a major 2006 refurbishment, the pioneering hotel is a refreshing and modern take on a traditional Cretan hotel, with its colour-blocked rooms and works from Greek artists scattered throughout.Next >