Snapshot: Miami New Wave Barbecue

These pitmasters are infusing South Florida into a new style of barbecue

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The definition of Miami barbecue, as far as I knew, was an all-you-can-eat salad bar at a halfway-decent chain. Or the almost-too-tender ribs at Flanigan’s. Or the Texas-style brisket at a random gas station food truck.

Then I sat down one day for lunch at Apocalypse BBQ, which had popped up in a former golf course caddy shack. After a bite of brisket sandwich, I licked the sauce from my fingers and tasted guava, mango, and habanero. The guava reminded me of pastelitos, the Cuban breakfast pastries filled with jelly and cheese; the mango tasted like the start of Florida summer; and the habanero was reminiscent of the peppa sauce at Caribbean strip-mall spots. It tasted like Miami. These days there’s a growing list of Miami restaurants infusing the flavors of South Florida into smoked meats. It’s worth a trip to the city just to try them, so here’s a two-day itinerary that’ll get you neck-deep into a very new thing: Miami-style barbecue.

Friday

Begin by checking into the Mayfair House. It’s fresh off a $50 million renovation of a brutalist-style building designed in 1985 by architect Kenneth Treister, with a leafy central courtyard that rises five stories above. There’s a restaurant on the bottom floor, the Mayfair Grill, where Miami native Giorgio Rapicavoli grills almost everything, including one of my favorite dishes in town, a crispy-skinned whole chicken with cilantro salsa verde.

But for tonight we’re sticking to the barbecue theme and headed to KYU in Wynwood for one dish, a $76 beef short rib that looks ready to topple Fred Flintstone’s car. There’s pickled veggies and spices and sweet soy on the side, but it’s really about that rib, smoked with oak for 48 hours until it’s so tender it’ll fall off as you pick up the bone, which you should proudly gnaw on, even though this is a fine-dining restaurant. KYU’s Raheem Sealey is among the first chefs who began this new Miami-style barbecue trend; during the pandemic he started the pop-up Drinking Pig at the turn-around of a North Miami dead-end street. Nowadays, though, there are newcomers, out-of-towners, and local pitmasters offering new definitions. But for that you’ll have to wait for day two.

Saturday

The second stop on this barbecue weekend is in Allapattah, the up-and-coming Miami arts neighborhood where Hometown Barbecue opened an outpost. Back in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where it began, Hometown’s menu hits Vietnamese hot wings and Texas brisket chili, but for lunch today you’re looking for dishes with Miami’s Latin influence, like a yucca bowl with avocado and Fresno chiles and the smoked wings with queso fresco and mole dust.

It’d be tempting to stay for the banana cream pudding, but instead let’s head south, past farms with banana trees nearly tipping over with bunches, their purple flowers hanging nearly down to Homestead soil as rich as tres leches. Smack in the center of it all is Knaus Berry Farm, a 69-year-old roadside fruit stand famous for tomatoes sweet enough to eat like apples, strawberry milkshakes, and cinnamon rolls. There will be a line on a Saturday afternoon, but it moves quickly, and the wait builds anticipation for the sheet of still-warm rolls that should be eaten in the parking lot off a trunk lid. (Keep in mind that the farm is closed during summer months.)

After a cocktail poolside on the Mayfair’s roof, rideshare your way west to Smoke & Dough, the spot that gave Miami-style barbecue more notoriety than anywhere else, thanks to The New York Times naming it one of America’s Best Restaurants in 2023. Owners Harry and Michelle Coleman couldn’t find jobs after journalism school, so they started a bakery first and then this sit-down barbecue place next door. They took every item on the Smoke & Dough menu and wondered how they could make it more Miami. There are ribs layered in a caramelized sauce of guava and ancho chiles, a Cuban coffee rub on the brisket, and a flan that’s slow smoked for five hours. This is true Miami barbecue—but don’t fill up yet, because it’s a warm-up before the last stop.

Sunday

Burn off the barbecue by borrowing a bike from the Mayfair and heading north on The Underline, a linear park that parallels US 1 all the way to Brickell’s skyline. Grab a coffee and a pastelito, the inspiration for so much of this barbecue, at Cortadito Coffee House, before meandering through Coconut Grove neighborhoods back to the hotel, past the regal Vizcaya Museum and the views of Biscayne Bay.

Afterward, lunch at Apocalypse is the best yet. The barbecue joint gets its name from something Jeff Bud said to himself back in 2020: “F— the apocalypse, let’s BBQ!” He started selling ribs he smoked in his backyard, which snowballed into a Wynwood pop-up, then a permanent location. Bud recently moved the restaurant from the old caddy shack into a 190-seat space in Kendall. He has infused everything on the menu with the flavors of his city, like adding guava to the sauce slathered on pork belly burnt ends. He dusted his beef rib with cafecito grounds. And he brewed gallons of colada, the typically thimble-sized rocket fuel of Cuban coffee, and added it to a sauce he used to glaze ribs.

Eating at Apocalypse, it occurred to me that there are no rules to Miami barbecue. This new wave is about finding the flavors of this city, yes. But what comes next is entirely up to pitmasters who are finding ways to define a new culinary identity.

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