The Best Places to Eat and Drink in Brickell Key & around

NAOE is a five-seat omakase counter on Brickell Key that predates the city's current sushi gold rush. The menu is set each day, substitutions are not entertained, and the allergy policy is a polite no, so this is a three-hour meal you surrender to rather than negotiate. Expect a quiet room, a chef working inches away, and a bill that makes sense only if someone else is paying. It holds a Forbes Five Star and AAA Five Diamonds.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
3. Miami New Times 2023 · Best Restaurant When Someone Else Is Paying · Best of Miami New Times

A tableside "chocotherapy" ritual, where chocolate is poured over your hands mid-meal, tells you exactly what kind of tasting menu this is. Chef Juan Manuel Barrientos runs a multisensory Colombian experience in a sleek stone-and-wood room with an open kitchen and backlit bar. The parade of small bites leans theatrical, and the crowd is fully on board. It holds a Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Miami New Times Top 100 Restaurants
3. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Eater Miami’s 15 Essential Cocktail Bars
3. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 2024 · Best Restaurant (Brickell) · Best of Miami New Times
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in Miami
3. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

1. Miami New Times Best New Restaurants
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

The DJ booth is on the ground floor, the kitchen is upstairs, and somehow it all holds together. Kaori is an upscale Asian fusion restaurant and bar in Brickell where the menu is as considered as the two-story concrete-and-wood room around it. The Michelin Guide has it listed, and the crowd dresses accordingly. Dishes lean toward the rich end, with A5 beef and local fish in electric curry sharing the menu with a few genuinely clever small plates.

1. Miami New Times 2023 · Best Restaurant (Brickell) · Best of Miami New Times
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The terrace hangs over the mouth of the Miami River where it meets Biscayne Bay, which sets the tone for everything else. This is the bar inside Zuma, the Japanese cocktail and sake operation anchored inside the Epic Hotel, done up in granite, rice paper paneling, and Indonesian wood by a Tokyo designer. The crowd arrives dressed for a scene, which is more or less the point. Sake flights and Japanese-inflected cocktails are the move.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Miami New Times 2023 · Best Hotel Restaurant · Best of Miami New Times

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

This is a big, bright, counter-and-table Mediterranean cafe in Brickell where breakfast and lunch have stopped pretending to be separate meals. Jerusalem bagel plates, harissa chips, and a rice bowl share a menu with malawach churros, and limonana, the mint lemonade, goes with all of it. It's casual enough for shorts, and it's busy in the way that suggests half of Brickell has already decided what they're ordering.

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in Miami
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

1. Miami New Times Top 100 Restaurants
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

1. Eater Miami’s 13 Best Breakfast Restaurants

The lounge bar inside the Mandarin Oriental sits beneath a triple-height lobby ceiling with water views and a front-row look at the bridge tying Brickell Key to the mainland. The clientele arrives with generous expense accounts and matching expectations, and the room meets them precisely there. Everything is exactly so, which is another way of saying the drinks are polished and the energy is not.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

Seia is a contemporary Italian restaurant on the 54th floor of a Brickell skyscraper, where floor-to-ceiling windows frame the skyline, Biscayne Bay, and the Atlantic beyond. The menu leans on handmade pastas and seafood, with an Italian wine list and cocktails to match. Expect a dressed-up room of date nights, anniversaries, and people whose phones come out before the bread does. Eater lists it among the best restaurants in Brickell.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

The name suggests a taco-and-enchilada situation, and then the menu shows up with tenderloin cooked in bone marrow and enchiladas stuffed with Maine lobster. This is a Brickell Key restaurant that treats Mexican food as a reason to order the steak, including a 33-ounce Wagyu tomahawk built for a table of negotiators. The tequila and mezcal list is long, and the margaritas lean on it. Dress like the check will be large.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Restaurant (Brickell) · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times Best New Restaurants

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

The DJ booth alone is larger than some British bars, which tells you something about the scale Blackbird Ordinary is operating at. This is a sprawling American bar, pool table competing with the DJ for the room's soul, and the unspoken rule is that you do not dance. Out back, a terrace with its own bar and an open-air cinema keeps things properly Miami. Office workers and locals find common ground here without trying too hard.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Clubstaurant · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times Best New Restaurants
2. Miami New Times 2023 · Best Spanish Restaurant · Best of Miami New Times
3. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Basque Restaurant · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times Top 100 Restaurants

1. Miami New Times 2024 · Best Asian Fusion Restaurant · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2023 · Best Waterfront Restaurant · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2023 · Best Late-Night Dining · Best of Miami New Times