Naomi’s Garden in Miami Serves Up Traditional Haitian Cuisine

By: The Local Palate

Copy to clipboard

Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood has been on edge. During the summer of 2025, the Miami Police Department signed an agreement to collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Human traffickers had started to smuggle Haitians from South Florida across the Canadian border. People were in hiding. “Our community is facing a lot of uncertainty,” says Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. “We know Trump is going to come for us.”

Still, on a sunny Monday morning this past November, there was life to attend to, breakfast to eat, and a day of work ahead—especially inside Naomi’s Garden. A worker there scooped Haitian menu favorites, like mayi kole and hot dog-laced espageti into takeout containers as regulars appeared on the sidewalk outside. Visible behind a picture window, waiting in line were workers in landscaping T-shirts, a fire department inspector, and a man in a gray suit, crisp white shirt, and tie. Later, during the lunch rush, someone called out, “I love you, Mami,” to a woman named Melissane, who has worked at the restaurant for 41 years.

Little Haiti neighborhood Naomis Garden restaurant — Image courtesy of M.B. Koeth

When I arrived at Naomi’s, employees Clair, Jacqueline, and Wislaine attended to 40-quart pots. The women, who preferred to only give their first names, chopped cabbage and carrots and lifted aluminum foil from hotel pans to check on braises bubbling in a double-decker oven. They have cooked at Naomi’s for 26, 20, and five years, respectively, and they all landed at the restaurant within a year of emigrating from Haiti to America.

A brand-new worker, Imani, walked into the kitchen for her first day. She wore a smart floral dress and cork sandals. The women found her a pair of nonslip shoes. Clair brought out giant bowls of boiled eggplant, chayote, and green papaya. Imani didn’t need instructions on how to prepare legume, one of Naomi’s most labor-intensive dishes. She picked up a masher and proceeded to purée the vegetables by hand, splashing bits onto her apron.

Naomi’s sits at the corner of NW 71st Street in Miami, and its steam table holds some of the city’s finest Haitian food: sos pwa, poisson gros sel, stewed oxtail, épinard, diri kole, and blé chock- ful of epis, garlic, and frizzled onions. There’s also a vegan sampler—curried or jerk jackfruit, legume (this version made without meat), chickpea stew, and tofu stroganoff—which co-owner Noam Yemini suggested to a young family with a stroller in tow. Most days, between its takeout window and online orders, Naomi’s workers feed 500 to 600 people.

Yemini’s parents, Yaron and Shula, traveled to Miami in the late 1970s to attend a festival and never left. They founded a spiritual community and vegan food truck, the latter of which evolved into a catering operation and then a commissary that supplied local grocers with prepared foods. The family lived in the garden behind their commercial kitchen; Yemini was born there with Melissane at his mother’s side. It was an only-in-Miami kind of dream: immigrant Israelis and Haitians building a business together amid ackee trees and a flock of chickens.

In 2006, the Yeminis shuttered their wholesale business and fully converted Naomi’s to a Haitian restaurant—albeit one with vegan and Caribbean leanings. Since then, Naomi’s has primarily served the community of Little Haiti. Its lush, palm-lined garden and affordable meals are an oasis in a food dessert. The most popular order is a $5 plate of starch— choose rice, mayi, or bulgur—topped with any gravy.

But in 2018, the restaurant’s clientele started to change, says Yemini, after President Donald Trump derided Haiti as one of the world’s “shithole” nations. Whether it was out of solidarity, defiance, or curiosity, a greater swath of Miami diners started to frequent Naomi’s. Melissane started to see even more unfamiliar faces during the 2020 election campaign, during which Trump claimed that Haitians in an Ohio town were eating cats and dogs.

Naomi's Garden in Miami cook Image courtesy of M B Koeth — Image courtesy of M.B. Koeth

But that support, no matter how well intentioned, won’t protect half a million Haitians whose Temporary Protective Status (TPS) was scheduled to be terminated on February 3, 2026 (although the status of this change was in flux as we were going to press). TPS work permits are available to individuals from countries the United States deems unsafe, and since the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, violent gangs have taken over 90 percent of Port-au-Prince. There’s been a nearly 500 percent rise in violence against children and a resurgence of cholera. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, however, says Haiti does not meet conditions for TPS.

As courts litigated TPS lawsuits last year, Yemini and the ACLU hosted a Know Your Rights event in the garden. The Florida Immigrant Coalition (FIL) coached immigrants on what to do if they were detained by law enforcement. In the fall, though, FIL started preparing families of mixed and uncertain status for repatriation. “There’s less hope when it comes to advocacy,” Petit tells me. “What people don’t realize is the dehumanizing part of being arrested, being put in shackles. You don’t want to be humiliated when you didn’t do anything except seek to survive and protect your children.”

Haitian immigration has always been subject to America’s racially tinged political whims. Some of Naomi’s workers arrived in the United States with green cards, thanks to family members who settled in Miami before them. They were among the Haitians who fled dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s violent rule, and built Little Haiti, between 1971 and 1990. One young employee arrived just last year. Her parents forced her to leave Port-au-Prince after two cousins were kidnapped.

Another worker traveled by plane with her husband and infant daughter to Brazil. Depending on the terrain and day, they rode or walked north until they reached Mexico. Her family waited in that foreign country for three months and then flew to Miami. “It was hard, very hard,” she says, leaving detail to the imagination.

Even as a safe haven, there are plenty of things left unsaid inside Naomi’s. “That has always been something that struck me, the silence,” says Yemini. “I’ve always known the vibrancy of Haitian culture, art, and food—and also how quiet it is. Because of the silence on their side, because they’re just living their lives, people don’t understand them. It’s the same with other immi- grant communities. We want guests to actually come and see who we are.”

“How do you know when sos pwa is ready?” I asked Jacqueline as she over- saw a pot of Haiti’s ubiquitous and silky bean gravy. It was still simmering on the stove and had an orange Scotch bonnet bobbing at the surface. She spooned a fat drop on the back of her hand, tasted it, looked me in the eyes, and nodded.