What's the food culture in Miami?

Miami's food identity runs through Little Havana on SW 8th Street, where the morning starts at a ventanita coffee window. Versailles, the 55-year-old Cuban restaurant at 3555 SW 8th St, still serves café con leche for $3.50 and croquetas de jamón by the dozen. The cafecito from any ventanita on 8th Street hits thick and sweet, almost syrupy, in a thimble-sized cup you knock back in two swallows. Down the block, Los Pinareños Fruteria sells mamey milkshakes and fresh sugarcane juice from a stand that smells like wet tropical grass and melting ice. For a proper Cuban sandwich, skip South Beach entirely. Enriqueta's Sandwich Shop on NE 29th Street in Wynwood presses theirs on a plancha until the bread shatters into flaky shards, the filling warm and salty with pickle brine cutting through the pork fat. That sandwich with a cortadito runs under $15.

Little Haiti, centered around NE 2nd Avenue between 54th and 82nd streets, is where Miami's food gets less photogenic and more interesting. Chef Creole on NE 54th serves griot, twice-fried pork, with pikliz, a cabbage-and-scotch-bonnet relish that burns clean and bright. A plate of griot runs $12-15, the pork crisp-shelled with a soft, almost steamed interior. Worth noting, Miami's Latin food spans at least 15 countries of origin, and neighborhoods from Doral to Kendall to Hialeah sort themselves accordingly. A few miles south in downtown, CVI.CHE 105 on Biscayne Boulevard serves Peruvian-style ceviche with leche de tigre so acidic it makes your lips tingle, $18-24 a plate. Coral Gables has a quieter Colombian and Venezuelan presence, with arepas at Doggi's Arepa Bar on Coral Way stuffed with shredded beef or black beans and queso fresco for $8-10, served on paper plates at plastic tables.

Stone crab season runs mid-October through mid-May, and Joe's Stone Crab on Washington Avenue in South Beach has served them since 1913. The wait for a table at Joe's on a Friday in February might reach 2 hours. A medium claw order currently runs around $70-80, the meat dense, cold, sweet, slightly fibrous. If you want stone crab without the scene, Garcia's Seafood Grille on the Miami River sells them by the pound at market price, and you eat on a dock where pelicans sit 3 feet away and the water smells like diesel and salt. For everyday fish, Casablanca Seafood Bar on NW North River Drive grills whole yellowtail snapper for around $28, the flesh flaky and mild, served with tostones and a vinegary mojo sauce.

Miami eats late by mainland US standards. Dinner reservations before 8pm are easy to get, which tells you something. The city fills restaurants between 8:30 and 10pm, closer to a Latin American rhythm than a New York one. Lunch tends to fall around 1-2pm, and weekend brunch in Wynwood and the Design District stretches past 3pm at spots like Zak the Baker on NW 26th Street. Late-night eating runs past 2am. After midnight, Versailles still has a line at the ventanita. La Carreta on Calle Ocho serves full plates past 3am. Taco stands on Coral Way and food trucks along NW 7th Avenue fill the 1-3am gap on weekends. The tourist-trap risk is highest along Ocean Drive in South Beach, where $22 pasta and indifferent Cuban sandwiches trade on the view. Two blocks west on Washington or Collins, the same meal costs 30-40% less and tastes better.