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There’s a truth about Miami that maybe you didn’t know, something that’s developed over the last few years, pretty much out of nowhere: We now have a die-hard contingent of folks who will do whatever—brave the heat, long lines, uncomfortable seating and those daily hurricane-like rainstorms—just to eat something delicious.
Because of this, pop-up restaurants now thrive here. Those responsible for the pop-ups (both experienced chefs and young upstarts with no training) credit these people, the ones going above and beyond to discover Miami’s next best foods, with allowing them to do what they do.
There’s proof by the dozen across town, with many of Miami’s best restaurants growing out of pop-ups or humble food trucks. Among our favorites, Boia De, now a Michelin-starred restaurant, launched as a food truck serving fried chicken sandwiches; Zitz Sum, one of the city’s most awarded restaurants, started with a chef making dumplings in his home kitchen; Old Greg’s, some of the best pizza in town, began as a pandemic side project; and the new QP Tapas, technically still a pop-up, is among our favorite new restaurants this year.
The growth of these experimental, temporary restaurants and their committed followings has fundamentally changed the restaurant industry in Miami in ways that make it entirely better. How? Why? We spoke to the teams behind many of Miami’s pop-up success stories to find out.
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It’s not (only) TikTok
The original idea that Andy Rodriguez and his wife Amanda Pizarro had (and the one that would eventually become The Salty Donut) was to create a community gathering space. They began by buying and outfitting a vintage trailer that they parked in Wynwood. “Literally, we maxed out our credit card—quite a few times,” Rodriguez says of those early days. “It was really scary.”
But it wasn’t long before they had lines down the block. They’d sell out, every weekend, all the donuts they could make. Things snowballed quickly, and now they’ve got 12 Salty Donut locations from Miami to Austin, with 18 more planned by the end of 2024.
It’d be easy to assume, hearing this story, that business took off thanks to a few well-positioned Instagram or TikTok posts. Except this all began back in December 2015, well before influencer content became a primary avenue of discovery for today’s hungry masses.
We maxed out our credit card—quite a few times.
Actually, it happened the old-fashioned way: through folks telling their buddies about that trailer selling donut flavors like crème brûlée, guava and cheese and maple bacon, and those buddies telling their friends.
Owners of pop-ups say this word-of-mouth network still brings crowds. This is evidenced by the lines outside Miami Slice, a wildly popular pizza joint where the complicated online ordering system tends to lead to some pretty gnarly wait times. Does that stop people? Absolutely not. The slices are that good.
“I think pop-ups are such an amazing phenomenon,” Rodriguez affirms. “They’re a marvelous way to test what works and what doesn’t work.”
Less overhead, more delicious things
In the summer of 2020, when everyone suddenly had a lot more free time, chef Pablo Zitzmann began outfitting his kitchen for a dumpling pop-up he dubbed Zitz Sum. The first thing on his wishlist: was a top-end Robot Coupe, the $4,000 food processor he’d used in his previous restaurant. “The overhead on that was nuts,” he says. “So I went to Brandsmart and bought one for $50.”
It was like that all through the creation of his pop-up: For the first time in his career, Zitzmann questioned the cost of everything. He realized that over-complicated systems—anything more than three steps—were likely not serving anyone.
“You’re just figuring things out as you go and being a lot more resourceful,” Zitzmann says of the scrappy pop-up process. “You realize there’s a lot of bullshit you can strip away.”
You realize there’s a lot of bullshit you can strip away.
A pop-up also meant no investors to question his menu or concept, nobody looking to recoup the hundreds of thousands or even millions that they’d typically sink into a Miami build-out. Now with a permanent restaurant in Coral Gables, Zitzmann only opens five days a week, just for dinner. He regularly swaps out his most popular menu items to avoid complacency.
Without investors, though, there’s no fall guy besides himself. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since Zitz Sum started during the pandemic,” Zitzmann admits. “With a pop-up, you have no get-out-of-jail-free cards.”
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The freedom to pivot
In the intrepid world of pop-ups, you’ll also find people like Matteson Koche, a guy with a master’s degree in urban planning who ditched his architecture job after a fateful West Coast visit to see his brother. There, Koche encountered L.A.’s vibrant new-age bagel culture of young Jews hand-rolling their own creations and thought, “This is fucking cool,” he says.
El Bagel was conceived at his home in Little Haiti in 2017. He bought a pastelito cart, then a food truck, then maxed out his credit cards (this is a common theme for pop-ups) and finally opened up a restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard. Now, at just 32 years old, Koche and his business partner Simon Caicedo are selling thousands of bagels a week and recently announced a new El Bagel venture opening inside the Fontainebleau Las Vegas in December.
“Yeah, it’s pretty interesting that we got here,” he says. “A lot of people are like, ‘Your family are bakers. You’ve been a baker your whole life.’ And I’m like, ‘Nope, not at all.’”
It’s not easy and it’s not all glitz.
Because El Bagel started small and with relatively little overhead, Koche said he could afford to try out more labor-intensive methods. Each long-fermented bagel takes days to produce, resulting in a final product so unlike the bready bagels he grew up eating in South Florida.
But even with the lines outside the door every weekend, “It’s not easy and it’s not all glitz,” Koche warns of the pop-up life. “I’m not a pessimist per se—although I’m a bit of a cynical Jew—but just make sure you keep costs tight and have good people behind you.” And never, ever compromise on quality.
Of course, it also helps to be in the right place at the right time. Right now, that seems to be Miami, where a crop of fearless culinary talent has inspired an impassioned crowd of foodies who are ready and willing to line up and pay good money to consume (and spread the word about) their creations.