Food | Las Travel Blogueras

Best Lunch Spots in Coconut Grove

For the ladies (and gentleman) who lunch, sifting through endless options of where they can spend their precious lunch time is a tedious task. With so many restaurants in Miami, the wide variety of lunch spots is both a blessing and a curse…meaning you can always find a great place to eat, but it does take some research to make sure you will love your choice.

Being a Grovite (aka someone who loves and lives in Coconut Grove, Florida), I get a lot of requests for which are my favorite lunch spots in our little village. Especially with the recent boom in new restaurant openings in the area, there are so many great options! While these aren’t all of the great lunch spots, I’ll share a list with you of my current favorites…as of June 2016!

Best Lunch Spots in Coconut Grove

Lokal and its sister, The Spillover: Lokal has been one of my favorite spots in the Grove for any meal for a while now. Their local, fresh ingredients combined with their tasty menu and options make for the perfect combination any time of day. I was very excited to hear that the owners were opening another restaurant, The Spillover, also in the Grove and the results did not disappoint! On top of having a fresh and tasty menu (that focuses on seafood, rather than burgers like Lokal), they also offer an amazing selection of ciders!

The Last Carrot: Looking for a lighter and healthier alternative for your lunch break? The Last Carrot is a local favorite and definitely one of the spots where everyone knows your name (eventually). My favorite is the chicken salad on a pita bread or sometimes I just stop by for one of their fruit/veggie smoothies. If you are in a rush, try calling ahead to place your order to-go during the rush lunch hour, as this place gets packed during the middle of the day.

Bookstore in the Grove: Way more than just a bookstore, the Cafe in the bookstore has a enormous selection that includes breakfast, sandwiches, smoothies, and a wide variety of bakery items that will tempt even the strictest of dieters. Since they make everything fresh, you order might take a while…so I recommend taking advantage of their online menu to place your order on their website so its ready and waiting for you at the counter when you arrive.

Ariete: One of the newer names on the list of lunch spots. Ariete just recently launched their lunch menu which makes it the perfect spot for a nice business lunch (gotta impress those clients!). Most recently, I tried their Lobster Roll…which was devine! Also, make sure you save room for dessert, as their homemade cookies are just as memorable as anything else on the menu (really…that good!).

Peacock Garden Café: A staple of Coconut Grove life, the Peacock Garden Café transports you back in time as you walk into their shaded patio. I love this place for special occasion lunches (and brunches) and always recommend it to my out-of-town guests. They have some nice lunch specials and I always get the mahi-mahi that is fresh and tasty, plus don’t miss their basil lemonade…the perfect refresher for the hottest of days!

Do you have any other Grove lunch favorites that you want to add to the list? Please let us know in the comment section below or send us a tweet to @TravelBlogueras!

Photo by: 35westdesign.com

As Miami locals we think 3p is cafecito time (actually 3:05p give that 305 is our area code!). We get cafecito at random corners on 8th street or Lincoln Road, pay $1 and call it a day. This weekend, we did something a little bit different. We had afternoon tea at the Biltmore Hotel.

Schultze and Weaver, the architects of other hotels in the Biltmore chain (as well as New York’s Grand Central Terminal and Miami’s Freedom Tower), designed the hotel to have the most modern of conveniences while fitting in a playful Mediterranean Beaux Arts style.

The Biltmore Hotel is a “luxury resort destination with an award-wining spa.” It sounds incredibly fancy. As it should. Because that’s exactly the Biltmore. As we sat down at 3:15pm to have petite fours and loose leaf tea in real China, we saw three brides and their respective bridal parties, a few photographers, and the best of Miami’s society pages – really cute eight-year olds dressed in ballerina outfits extremely excited about the fact that the harp music was indeed from Beauty and the Beast (okay, I was really excited too, but let’s keep that between us).

Sweet on the top and savory on the bottom! Too bad this is not an every day treat! Photo: 35westdesign.com

We loved the China and ritual of the afternoon tea. Dan was very skeptical at first, but eventually… he was a total pro about it!

The full tea service is $34.5 per person, and it includes a pretty generous three-tier tower of sweet and savory treats (the raspberry macarons were our favorite, followed by the flavored scones), plus three hot water refills of your own fancy hot tea pot. You can choose from white teas, black teas, and herbal teas, which is pretty hard, as all of them were pretty delicious. However, the tea service and the caring and smiling staff were actually not my favorite part of my first ever afternoon tea experience. The Biltmore Hotel was.

Spanish painted tiles are a used across the whole property, staying true to the original Beaux Arts inspiration.

The arch hallways and Arabian Nights inspired outdoor pendants are almost magical, and immediately pull you towards another time and place. Photo: 35westdesign.com

The Biltmore Hotel was designed by Schultze and Weaver and was built in 1926 by John McEntee Bowman and George Merrick as part of the Biltmore Hotel chain. When completed it became the tallest building in Florida at 315 feet holding the record until 1928 when the Dade County Courthouse was built. The Biltmore actually served as a hospital during World War II and as a VA Hospital and campus of the University of Miami medical school until 1968. In 1966, it was designated as a National Historic Landmark. The hotel was used for a setting for the movie Bad Boys, as well as TV shows such as CSI: Miami, and Miami Vice.

And, my total favorite part? Some said this hotel is actually HAUNTED, most often by the spirit of Thomas Walsh, or Thomas “Fatty” Walsh. He was a New York mobster who was killed at the Biltmore on March 4th, 1929 during a gambling dispute. Often, you hear Miami locals talk about how his ghost haunts the hotel elevator, which doors have been seen opening and closing and lights blinking on and off. The elevator usually stops and opens on the 13th floor, where Thomas Walsh was killed…oh my.

I came for the petit fours, and got spooked out! Just kidding. We really enjoyed walking around and marveling at the amazing decor and furnishings full of history and stories.

Fast-forward a few years later, and we are listening to classical music and smearing strawberry jam on buttery scones, and talking about the hotel’s amazing decor!

Now, this is a floor lamp worth blogging about…

In one of the many hallways, chairs’ arm rests and legs resemble birds and other animals with detailed wood carvings, typical of the late Gothic movement.

Dan eventually warmed up about the idea of doing afternoon tea. Outside, the views of the courtyard and perfectly manicured golf course were picture perfect.