It makes sense that Tâm Tâm started out as a sexy pop-up supper club, because dinner here is still a social event worth circling on your calendar. But you’re not coming to this Vietnamese restaurant in Downtown just to post a forehead selfie in one of the curvy mirrors on the wall. You’re here to eat some of the most delicious food in Miami. Many of Tâm Tâm’s best dishes—like the sticky fish sauce caramel wings and the tamarind glazed pork ribs—are gloriously messy. Maybe don’t wear white.

This narrow Italian restaurant on the edge of Buena Vista has one of those menus that's like a perfect album, with not a single song you’d dare skip. The only rules we’ll gently suggest are: plan to make a reservation a couple weeks out, order the shockingly amazing chopped salad, and definitely get the tagliolini nero if you see it on the menu. You can also try to come super early and snag walk-in bar seating, which is our favorite seat in the house anyway.

Everything on the menu at Ariete is fantastic, but if you're coming here to celebrate (or just want dinner to feel like a special occasion in and of itself) get the canard a la presse—AKA the duck press. They wheel this medieval-looking machine to the table and use it to compress various parts of the duck into a deep, rich sauce. They then use that sauce to smother the absolute best duck you’ll ever taste in your life. Not a duck fan? Then go with the equally impressive monkfish wellington.

Even though the menu changes occasionally, we always know what to expect at Macchialina: Italian dishes (mostly pasta) that feel like a final draft, edited to near perfection without so much as one superfluous fragment of parmesan on the plate. The service is excellent, the drinks are great, and the restaurant's indoor and outdoor seating is exactly where you want to spend a Saturday night eating Miami’s best pasta.

Located in Sweetwater, the heart of the Nica expat community, Madroño is so chic that you’ll think it was plucked from the Design District and dropped into a strip mall next to a Sedano’s. Madroño’s menu features a lot of Nicaraguan classics done better than anywhere else in Miami. The tajadas are crunchy and never greasy, you can taste each individual grain of rice in the gallo pinto, and every element of their nacatamal is flawless.

Since Miami always marches to the beat of its own tiki tiki music, it’s fitting that the city's best Indian restaurant is also uniquely Miami. And Ghee is serving food that could only exist in the 305. Take, for instance, the bhel puri chaat, a seamless mashup of bhel puri and ceviche. The turmeric marinated fish uses a local catch, the bhatura has avocado in its dough, and so many of Ghee's best dishes source ingredients from Ghee's own farm in Homestead.

Even if you only eat in Miami sparingly, chances are you’ve come across one of our many Peruvian restaurants—and probably fallen in love with the food they make. But Maty’s takes those familiar dishes and reinvents them in ways that feel like watching your favorite band perform live and falling in love with their songs all over again. Are you a fan of lomo saltado? Well, you might never be able to look at it the same way again after trying Maty’s oxtail saltado.

Zitz Sum shocks us out of routine—and not just because their chili oil is perfectly calibrated. The food here is unlike anything else in the city. Dishes are influenced by Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Laotian, and other Asian cultures. You’ll find DIY Korean-style hand rolls that come with steak tartare, short grain rice, and Japanese egg salad. The brisket sheng jian bao made us forget everything we learned in kindergarten about sharing.

Walrus Rodeo takes ideas that have very little to do with each other and makes them work gloriously. There are dishes like carrot tartare, which surpasses all tuna or steak versions we've ever tried, and mustard green lasagna (our favorite lasagna in the city). The interior is a bright country western meets Italian disco aesthetic. But behind all the goofy contradictions is a restaurant that’s just delicious and fun.

Edan Bistro doesn’t make the best first impression. The walls are mostly bare, and there’s a weird deli case near the kitchen that’s perpetually empty. But the food at this casual Basque spot in North Miami exceeds the type of fine dining restaurants that want you to walk in the front door dressed like you're trying to crash the fanciest wedding in Coral Gables. Edan reminds us of the best restaurants in San Sebastian, where chefs greet you with coffee and send you off with wine.