Miami's dazzling white beaches and seductive semitropical climate have been attracting large numbers of visitors and settlers from diverse cultures since its birth as a city just over 100 years ago. A decidedly Latin beat sets the rhythm for the collection of cities, neighborhoods, and islands known as the Greater Miami area. Latin American settlers happily found themselves in a familiar climate with familiar ingredients, and dishes such as black beans and rice, arroz con polio (chicken with saffron rice), and garbanzo bean soup became the foods of Greater Miami.
New York transplants brought with them Jewish delicatessens that serve lox and bagels and traditional Kosher fare. Soul food can be found in homey barbecue joints that turn out racks of smoky pork ribs served with corn on the cob and collard greens. The region's early farmers contributed a blend of soul food and Southern country cooking that offers up dishes as popular as grits, hush puppies, and deep-frys that today have made their way onto the menus of city restaurants; Bahamians added steamed pudding and conch (pronounced "konk") salad.
In South Beach, fashion shoots take advantage of light and location while residents and visitors crowd busy outdoor cafes. Restaurants serve grilled fish, tropical fruit salads, and sorbets of every hue. International cafes showcase ethnic specialties from around the world, and hot spots serve Asian-inspired dishes with a local flair.
In other parts of the city, home cooks scour the markets for familiar seafood and local specialties, such as conch for fritters and chowder and, in season, clawless Florida spiny lobster. Locally grown produce, including wild sour oranges, pineapples, coconuts, bananas, sugar cane, mangoes, guavas, papayas, and avocados, contributes to the cuisine.
South of Miami, the Florida Keys float like pearls, with Key West the last on the string. The Keys are a fishing enthusiast's paradise, where tarpon leap out of the water and the delicate yellow-tail snapper is on everyone's list of favorites. Jimmy Buffett's song "Margaritaville" sets the tone for this laid-back area of Old Florida, the perfect place to savor the sunset along with the sweet-tart splendor of Key lime pie.
A Culinary History of Miami
Fish in the summer, Yankees in the winter
by Caroline Stuart The
Old-timers often declare that Miami and the Keys are not really a part of Florida anymore, but an extension of the Northeast and "the islands." Greater Miami encompasses a number of towns beneath its giant umbrella, but be it in Miami Beach, Coconut Grove, or Sweetwater, the flavor has gone global. You can find lox and bagels, Southern-fried chicken, Japanese sushi, Jamaican curried goat, and Cuban sandwiches within easy driving distance of one another. Grocery shopping, too, is international: an Asian market selling lemon grass may sit next door to a Latin bodega boasting an extensive selection of tropical tubers—and both may be just down the street from a supermarket selling sour oranges for authentic Cuban marinades.
The culinary history of South Florida is one of immigration and adaptation. Even the area's Native Americans, the Seminoles, immigrated from other parts of North America. They may have been the ones who first slit open the base of the cabbage palm tree to harvest hearts of palm (the delicacy known to locals as "swamp cabbage"), which is frequently found on South Florida menus.
Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon reached Florida's shores in 1513, searching in vain for the legendary Fountain of Youth. He arrived on Easter Sunday, "Pascua Florida" (Feast of Flowers), and named the land La Florida in honor of the holiday. Other European explorers also trudged through Florida's swamps searching for gold, jewels, and natives for slave markets. But all early attempts to establish settlements failed.
The United States acquired Florida in 1821 and granted it statehood in 1845. From other states, a few hardy souls braved the mosquitoes and hostile natives to farm under the bright blue skies. These early farmers and their modern-day descendants are known as "Crackers," perhaps from the cracking sound of their cattle whips, perhaps from the cracking of corn to make grits.
Timucua people inhabited the hanks of the St. John's River during the sixteenth century. Occasionally chiefs and nobles would gather to discuss important issues, and during these meetings, the men would share an infusion of dried casina leaves. Only those who were able to consume the noxious liquid without becoming ill were deemed resiliant enough to defend the tribe.
Grits, made from dried, hulled corn that has been finely ground and cooked into a gruel, is eaten as a breakfast food or as a side dish with meat and fish. Grits and cornmeal remain staples of Southern cooking on Florida menus to this day. Cracker cooking is simple rustic food that can be as quirky as the characters who claim it. It incorporates Southern country cooking and soul food and includes oddities such as alligator, which is often served breaded and deep-fried, not unlike chicken nuggets.
Florida's isolation, alligators, and Indians made it a destination for escaping African slaves in the nineteenth century, who brought with them their native foodways to create what is known today as "soul food." Okra, black-eyed peas, fried chicken, and collard greens, as well as chitterlings, or "chitlins" (the small intestine of a hog) and cooter (soft-shelled freshwater turtle) are just a few of the "soul foods" that have become an integral part of the Florida menu.
Southern food, soul food, and Cracker cooking are today the culinary cousins that keep the old foodways alive.
The early settlers of the Keys—known as Conchs (pronounced "konks")—were Tories and seafarers from the Bahamas and New England. Their two foodways blended into one of the early fusion dishes that is now part of every Florida cook's repertoire: conch chowder. Conch is a mollusk that must be pounded to tenderness before being transformed into fritters, marinated salads or the ubiquitous creamy chowder made of conch stewed with tomatoes and hot spices. From the Keys also came the state dessert: Key lime pie. This creamy pie dates back to pre-refrigeration days in the 1850s, when canned condensed milk was introduced to the Keys. Florida was still mostly a wilderness when Northern Standard Oil magnate Henry Flagler extended his Florida East Coast Railroad to Miami in 1896. His trains carried carpetbaggers and speculators, the infirm seeking warm-weather cures and homesteaders. Flagler built lavish resort hotels to cater to wealthy Northerners.
This whimsical print from the late nineteenth century depicts a very real environmental hazard in the Everglades.
The pace of development accelerated in the 1920s, when a land boom made the area irresistible to Northerners lusting for fast money and seaside living. The boom inevitably went bust, but the lavish Mediterranean-style buildings it fostered left an enduring mark.
Miami kept its character as a resort town through the post-World War II era. Transplanted New Yorkers brought with them a taste for Jewish delicatessen items, such as corned beef sandwiches and lox and bagels, as well as an appreciation for the fine Florida seafood.
The arrival of Cuban exiles that began in 1959 sparked the transformation of Miami into a city of global flavors, and immigrants from all over Latin America joined Miami's great melting pot of flavors. Little Havana on Cade Ocho is the center of Cuban culture, but throughout the Greater Miami area, the population is nearly sixty percent Hispanic. You'll hear Spanish spoken as much as English on the streets, and it is easy to find and enjoy Cuban sandwiches (bread stuffed with pork, ham, salami, cheese and pickles that is usually pressed), moros y cristianos (black beans and rice), picadillo (ground meat, olives and capers), to-stones (fried plantains), and empanadas (fried turnovers filled with meat, fish, poultry or fruit). Little Haiti is where to find "Caribbean-style" chicken and plantains.
Here and there, especially in the laid-back Keys, word-of-mouth keeps track of the best barbecue joints and fish fry shacks, and old-timers may still be heard to say, "We live on fish in the summer and Yankees in the winter."
Time and again over the decades, Miami has been remade by waves of newcomers arriving