Herb garnishes delicately sprinkled atop your pasta? Boring. Thin ribbons of sauce reductions adorning your entrée? Yawn. Lately, elaborate plating has been shoved aside for dramatic tableside preparations. Select staff members wow diners with made-to-order salads (Crispy-seared croutons? Coming right up!) and appetizers created right before your eyes (literally the manager’s special). If you’ve ever experienced a Pavlovian reaction to a server coming around to grate Parmesan over your plate (a small mountain of cheese forming before you even consider saying to stop), you’ll do more than perk up the next time you sit down to dinner at these restaurants.
Steak tartare at Employees Only
In case you haven’t noticed lately, some of the staff members at Employees Only are sporting some seriously muscular forearms. The reason? The number of steak tartare appetizers sold each night at the Miami Beach restaurant. The recipe is proprietary, and the method is always the same: Every order is made tableside exclusively by a partner or manager using house-made ingredients. “Each order is made individually—even if we have multiple orders for the same table—and we explain every step of the process to our guests,” says owner Billy Gilroy.
Caesar salad at Fi’lia
The Caesar salad cart at Michael Schwartz’s Italian restaurant even gets carnivores excited about salad. This isn’t just any plate of greens. Absolutely every element of the dish is made to order right next to you: crusty bread is cubed, drizzled with olive oil and grilled for the croutons; eggs are cracked and whisked with anchovy paste and fresh-squeezed lemon juice for dressing; and leafy romaine is cut and arranged just before the dish is composed and ready to serve.
Baked Alaska at Christy’s Restaurant
Ice cream cake set aflame is about as wild as it gets for the traditional Coral Gables steakhouse. But don’t write it off as basic. The giant log of Neapolitan ice cream (portions vary by party size and are left up to the discretion of the server) is topped with meringue and torched slowly until every peak is browned. The old-fashioned spectacle is fitting for the classic haunt, which will happily pack your leftover dessert to go.
Thai fried rice at Kyu
If you’re a stickler for eating food while it’s still warm, you’ll appreciate Kyu’s Thai fried rice production. This family-style dish is presented in an oversize stone bowl that’s so hot, it turns the rice at the bottom of the pot crispy. The best part is watching your server gingerly mix in a raw egg yolk and following the runny bits as they reach the edge and turn into a fluffy scramble.
Lemon champagne sorbet at Leynia
As a nod to Argentina’s ice cream bicycles (trucks never caught on), this South Beach restaurant makes its dessert sorbet tableside out of hand-painted two-wheelers imported from the South American country. The bikes are fitted with workstations over the handle bars, allowing the server to roll up next to you and get to work churning the champagne-and-lemon digestif right before your eyes, using liquid nitrogen. Slurp it up quickly; sorbet can’t stand up to the Miami heat.
Want more? Sign up here to stay in the know.