Cafecito to Midnight: Eating Your Way Through Miami

Miami is not an American city that happens to have Latin food; it is a Latin and Caribbean city that happens to be in America. Cuban, Haitian, Colombian, Venezuelan, Peruvian and Nicaraguan kitchens set the terms here, and the result is a food culture with its own clock — coffee in tiny cups all day, dinner late, and a beach town's appetite for anything fried. Follow it from morning to midnight.

Key facts

• The ritual: colada, a shared thimble-cup Cuban coffee, taken standing at a walk-up ventanita window
• Seasonal star: Florida stone crab claws, traditionally available from mid-October into spring — check current dates
• Cheapest great meal: a Cuban sandwich or a frita for the price of a cocktail garnish on South Beach
• Where to eat: Little Havana, Little Haiti, Allapattah and Hialeah before South Beach

Morning — cafecito and pastelitos

Start at a ventanita. A cafecito is espresso whipped with sugar into a foam; a cortadito adds milk; a colada comes with a stack of small cups because it is meant to be shared. Beside it, a guava-and-cheese pastelito and a ham croqueta. This is breakfast for most of the city and it costs a few dollars.

Midday — the Cuban sandwich

Roast pork, ham, Swiss, pickles and mustard, pressed until the bread cracks. The media noche, its softer, sweeter-bread cousin, is the late-night version. In Little Havana, Versailles has served this canon to politicians, exiles and tourists for decades and remains a genuine institution rather than a museum piece.

Afternoon — the frita, and the fruit shake

The frita cubana is Miami's own burger: a spiced beef patty crowned with shoestring potatoes, and El Rey de las Fritas is the name most associated with it. To drink, a batido — a milkshake made with tropical fruit, ideally mamey, which tastes like sweet potato crossed with apricot and has no equivalent anywhere else.

Evening — the Caribbean and the Pacific

Little Haiti brings griot, fried marinated pork with pikliz, the fierce cabbage relish. The city's large Peruvian community means excellent ceviche and lomo saltado; the Venezuelan and Colombian arrival of the last two decades put arepas and empanadas on every other corner. This is where Miami is most itself.

The splurge — stone crab

In season, Florida stone crab claws are the great local luxury: served chilled with mustard sauce, the claws harvested and the crab returned to the water. Joe's Stone Crab on South Beach opened in 1913 and has served stone crab since the 1920s, does not take reservations, and is worth the wait once in your life.

Midnight — Calle Ocho

End in Little Havana, where Ball & Chain has been a Calle Ocho music room on and off since the 1930s, and the cocktail bars nearby take the Cuban cantinero tradition seriously. Then one last cafecito, because nobody here treats caffeine as a morning-only substance.

Tip: Learn the ventanita etiquette — order a colada for the group, pour into the little cups, hand them round. It is the closest thing Miami has to a national handshake, and it costs about two dollars.