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This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Miami

I was born and raised in South Florida, which carries a lot of cachet in this city of transients, visitors from everywhere and multi-ethnic languages, flavours, sounds and cultures. This town is so much bigger than the Miami I grew up in. We ate a lot of Cuban food, which was the primary Latin- American cuisine represented in Miami at the time, as well as my mother’s Argentine/American-Jewish recipes. But today you can taste it all here. We were always known for having some of the best Cuban food and drink in the country (I believe we still reign supreme) but with the influx of so many Venezuelans, Colombians, Nicaraguans and so on, we now have so many choices, and they are just as delicious and as vibrant as the people. 

Here are just a few of my favourite Latin American places. Some I grew up enjoying, while others are more recent.

Puerto Sagua

700 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33139

One of the city’s oldest and most traditional Cuban restaurants happens to be on South Beach. For me, Puerto Sagua’s food has always been something that vuelve a la vida (brings you back to life). Everything is delicious, affordable and you never know who might be sitting at the counter sipping on a café con leche or digging into the ropa vieja (beef and tomato stew). It’s old school, and I love that it doesn’t change (aesthetically or deliciously). I always get the fish soup; they specialise in seafood, but you can’t really go wrong. Stick to the classics as they are the best. puertosagua.org; Directions

Wolf of Tacos  

locations around Miami

The only place on my list that is not a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, but this pop-up is so good I felt it was a must. The wolf, chef Eduardo Lara, is so very talented. His tacos and salsas make me and my husband and business partner, David, swoon. David is from Oaxaca in Mexico, and he is not easy to please when it comes to tacos — it’s his favourite dish. Come ready to stand in line (it moves quickly) and, if Eduardo is making it, be sure to get the gaonera, with melting cheese and thinly sliced beef filet (though anything else he’s making that day will be outstanding). He and his business partner Pablo Reyes are always there, and they give great attention to service, even though you’re outside eating on paper. Follow them to know where they will be @wolfoftacos. thewolfoftacos.com

Madroño

10780 West Flagler Street, Miami, FL 33174

Just thinking about Madroño makes my mouth water. It’s a clean and bright little family-owned Nicaraguan restaurant that is so unassuming you will be surprised at the colours and flavours that come out of the kitchen. Everything is so fresh and well prepared. I recommend ordering the repocheta, a tortilla filled with cheese and melted on the plancha, topped with my absolute favourite kind of shredded pickled-cabbage slaw, which is used on a lot of Nicaraguan dishes. I go for the meat dishes because they are so flavourful and fun, and you can’t beat the prices. Have a sangria with your meal and a flan before you leave. madronorestaurant.com; Directions

La Camaronera

1952 West Flagler Street, Miami, FL 33135

I’ve been going to this no-frills Cuban seafood restaurant since I was about five years old. It’s the type of place where you see everyone from truck drivers and families to people in suits having business meetings. It serves its own catch, including stone crab and other seafood and fish of the day, but go for the crispy shrimp with delicate Cuban spices or the minuta sandwich (a tiny, whole but totally boneless and butterflied fried snapper on Cuban bread with onions, ketchup and mayo) — it’s heaven on earth. The owners, the Garcia family, changed the decor a few years ago, adding tables and chairs to the stand-up-only bar I grew up at. But none of the recipes have changed, and the owners are the children of the original founders. It’s all in the family! lacamaronera.com; Directions

Bandeja Paisa 

9511 West Flagler Street, Miami, FL 33174

This family-owned Colombian restaurant has been around for about 15 years. The servers treat their customers like family and help you order — and there’s always a lot of food on each plate. Just wait until you receive your bandeja paisa. The platters of steaks, chicharrónes, chorizos, rice, egg, tostones, avocado . . . there’s more, and it’s all delicious.

Paisa is bustling — it’s always busy, always tasty. Be ready for bright lights from games on the television, loud music or just a lot of people, and it’s all worth it. The ajiaco (not your typical chicken soup) is always one of my favourites. Order more than you can eat and take it home to feast on over the next few days. bandejapaisa.com; Directions 

Salmon & Salmon 

2907 North-West 7th Street, Miami, FL 33125

Small, family-owned and refined, Salmon & Salmon is one of my favourite Peruvian restaurants in Miami. What I love about it is that if you ask a local Peruvian where to get great ceviche or lomo saltado (a creole Chinese-Peruvian dish with steak, fries and tons of flavour), this is the place they will always recommend. My favourites include any ceviche they serve, though the mixto (mixed ceviche with seafood and fish) and the chicha morada (purple-corn juice) are not to be missed. Nor are the sudado (poached fish in the most amazing broth with rice) or the seafood, which is served crunchy and fried — somehow greaseless but tasty. And the service is the best. instagram.com/salmonsalmonmiami; Directions

Michelle Bernstein is a James Beard award-winning chef and restaurateur from Miami. Her new restaurant, Sra. Martinez, opens this winter in Coral Gables

What are your favourite Latin-American restaurants in Miami? Tell us in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter

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MIAMI – More than a year after announcing charges, Broward prosecutors have dropped the criminal case against former Miami City Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla and attorney William Riley.

Broward State Attorney Harold Pryor, who took over the case’s prosecution, made the announcement Wednesday.

Diaz de la Portilla, 60, who served on the Miami city commission representing District 1 from 2020 until he was suspended from office shortly after his arrest on corruption charges in September 2023, was accused of secretly taking in tens of thousands of dollars from owners of a private school.

The commissioner and Riley, 49, were accused of laundering approximately $245,000 in concealed political contributions to support the construction of Centner Academy’s athletic complex on public land in Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood.

In a statement, Pryor said that after “a substantial follow-up investigation and extensive depositions of witnesses, we have concluded that there is no reasonable likelihood of conviction.”

“When the arrests were made, I promised that our prosecutors would pursue justice in this matter and that is what we have done,” he said.

In a closeout memo, prosecutors wrote, “The evidence does not demonstrate corrupt intent, unlawful benefits, or falsification of records. Witness testimony is unreliable and lawful actions have been misconstrued as criminal.”

“Substantial follow-up investigations and depositions have occurred that revealed that the foundation of this entire investigation was misguided and buttressed by unverified information,” prosecutors wrote, calling the case “purely circumstantial.”

Diaz de la Portilla, who consistently and strenuously denied any wrongdoing, tried to regain his seat in the 2023 election, but lost to challenger Miguel Gabela under the cloud of criminal charges.

Those charges are now a thing of the past.

This is a developing story. Stay with Local 10 News and Local10.com for updates.

Read the closeout memo:

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Miami

Miami is full of surprises. It certainly lives up to its image of silky beaches and palm-fringed swimming pools set in Modernist-Spanish courtyards, flamingos and cocktail umbrellas, but there’s a layered history beneath its shiny skin. A story of rapid expansion and devastating disasters, natural and economic. Of huge population influxes from around the Caribbean. Of dramatic historical events — a foiled presidential assassination attempt (Roosevelt, in 1933); violent rioting after a George Floyd-like police murder (of Arthur McDuffie, in 1979); the vast 1980s cocaine trade that sparked a vicious crime wave. 

More recently it has become a city of art. In the commercial arena, the resplendent Art Basel Miami Beach and its satellite fairs spring up each December. But beyond the hoopla of fair season there’s a wealth of permanent public art, and it is well worth ferreting out a few of the more unusual, as well as relishing the best known. 

To start with the obvious: the famous Art Deco buildings of Miami Beach. Think of these ornate, wedding-cakey structures as one single great public artwork, spread out from 6th Street at the southern end of Ocean Drive right up to 13th Street and beyond. Though most of the best Art Deco buildings have now been given a full facelift, a few delightfully tatty remnants are still around. There are tours on offer, but it’s also a thrill just to wander and discover examples such as the Essex House hotel with its fantastic pronged elevation and gloriously elaborate lobby. 

Looking at these flamboyant constructions, with their mouldings and embellishments, their turrets and flourishes and garish neon, it’s astonishing to realise that barely 40 years earlier, when Miami was incorporated as a city in 1896, it had fewer than 400 inhabitants. Yet by the mid-1940s its population had increased to more than 325,000. Tenuously sited on its stormy coast, defying floods and hurricanes, the place had mushroomed with amazing speed, and it would be easy to assume that the Art Deco style was a product of affluence. Not really. One example is the stern but grandiose Miami Beach Post Office, on Washington Avenue and 13th Street. It was built in 1937 not so much as a luxury show-off but as a job-creation scheme by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression: opulent display created in defiance of a catastrophic economic crisis. 

Inside the Post Office, architect Howard Lovewell Cheney’s dramatic circular lobby (domed skylight, central fountain and more) houses an intriguing triptych of New Deal murals by Charles Russell Hardman depicting scenes from the region’s history: Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León meeting with indigenous tribes in the territory he had dubbed “La Florida” in 1513; a later colonialist, Hernando de Soto, in battle with Native Americans in 1539; General Thomas Jesup negotiating with indigenous peoples in 1837. Although it might barely squeak past as acceptable to our eyes today, the work is full of interest. 

Another commemoration that might seem at odds with Miami’s sun-and-fun image is its remarkable Holocaust Memorial. In the 1980s, South Florida was home to as many as 25,000 Holocaust survivors. A memorial was proposed and Miami, after all, does not do understatement. The giant centrepiece of architect and sculptor Kenneth Treister’s multi-part landscaped creation is a 40-foot upraised hand reaching for the heavens as hundreds of writhing, emaciated human figures cling to its forearm. It is one of the most upsetting and moving of public sculptures, but at the same time a peaceful, contemplative place to walk and rest. 

Many of Miami’s public artworks — apparently there are more than 700 — lean more towards the city’s exuberant, light-hearted side. Most well known are those in The Bass museum’s Art Outside project, which showcases signature works from its permanent and temporary collections. If you have a mind to track down less-publicised pieces, one of the most enjoyable is situated downtown outside the Stephen P Clark Government Center: “Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels” by husband-and-wife team Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Imagine a monumental plate of half-eaten fruit, the pieces carelessly strewn around as if by a naughty child: it’s a vivid, irreverent work in painted concrete and resin that celebrates the carefree mood of this highly diverse city. 

Another, quite literally playful piece in one of Miami’s public open spaces — this time in Bayfront Park — is Isamu Noguchi’s smooth white marble “Slide Mantra”. Elegant, cool, sophisticated, like all the work by its renowned Japanese-American creator, the artwork is also a real spiral slide for kids of all ages: a perfect match of form and function, exemplary as a public artefact. 

A local installation with a ludic twist also celebrates Miami’s relationship with the sea: “Obstinate Lighthouse” in South Pointe Park, at the entrance to the Port of Miami. Created by German artist Tobias Rehberger and installed in 2011, this apparently wonky pile-up of 19 brightly tinted sections, like children’s building bricks, is topped with rotating lights. In contrast to the lighthouse’s traditional function as a warning, it aims, according to the artist, to welcome in visitors and “references the lively spirit of Miami Beach”. 

All of these works are in some way specific to their sites, chiming with some aspect of the spirit of place. Miami, though, is also host to unexpected incomers. In The Wolfsonian museum, a stained-glass series by Irish maker Henry (Harry) Clarke, the “Geneva Window”, arrived with a rich back-story. Commissioned in 1926, it was intended as a gift from the new Irish Free State to the League of Nations in Geneva. Intensely coloured, its busy narrative celebrates 15 of Ireland’s writers, from James Joyce and WB Yeats to a poem by Patrick Pearse written the night before he was executed by the British for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising. It’s considered a masterpiece of Celtic Revival decorative art, a fascinating symbolic and storytelling work packed with wit, humanity and allusive detail. 

Sadly, though, the new Irish state had not shaken off the mindset of the past. Clarke’s inclusion of banned writers such as Liam O’Flaherty (not to mention the scanty clothing of his pretty companion, as well as the tight breeches of some characters that emphasised their “virility”) fell foul of the censors of the day. Sex, nudity, alcohol — even Protestants: a step too far. The vibrant Window never made it to Geneva, and it was finally bought from Clarke’s family in the 1980s by Mitchell Wolfson Jr, who gave it a permanent home in the Miami museum he founded. It seems somehow appropriate that the deep-seated traditions depicted (and rejected) by the Geneva Window should end up in this most febrile of American cities.

Jan Dalley is an FT contributing editor

What’s your favourite piece of public art in Miami? Tell us in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter

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