In Underrated Miami, we take a look at very cool Miami things that, for some strange reason, we don’t seem to appreciate as much as we should.
If Miami-Dade County is the parent and its neighborhoods are children, we can’t pretend there aren’t favorites. If this was a family, there’s no doubt Wynwood would be at the head of the table eating lobster and watching cartoons as late as it wants while West Kendall would be scrubbing floors Cinderella-style and surviving off expired cat food and stale Lucky Charms. Nobody said life was fair.
But that is all the more reason why we should force ourselves to look outside Miami’s buzziest parts every once in a while to explore and, hopefully, discover some very cool things we never knew existed. Case in point: Doral! Oh, what’s wrong? You didn’t wake up this morning prepared to fall in love with Doral? Too bad, dweeb, because you’re going to sit there while we name a series of very cool things about Doral in no particular order while using excessive exclamation points!
Beer!
You like beer, right? (Also, you’re over 21, right? If not, just mentally replace the word “beer” with “apple juice” for the next paragraph.) Well, Doral has beer, pal. Swimming pools full of it! The very tasty Biscayne Bay Brewing and M.I.A. Beer Company both have their tap rooms in Doral and Tank Brewing lies just on the outskirts of the neighborhood. That’s the highest concentration of breweries outside Wynwood.
Extreme things!
Doral is full of incredibly random but deliriously fun activities for adrenaline junkies of all ages. The tiny junkies (that doesn’t sound right but let’s just go with it) can play some good ol’ laser tag at Laserland & Adventure. There’s also a venue for private parties called Ball Mania that appears to be devoted to all things ball-related (throw them, catch them, stare at them, etc). More advanced options include Sky Zone trampoline park, indoor go-kart racing at K1 Speed or indoor soccer at the 35,000-square-foot Champions Florida.
Food!
The fact that you can get a hamburger the size of a Hyundai Sonata piled high with ham and eggs and shoestring potatoes and six sauces and, like, fourteen other things at Pepito's Plaza should be all you need to know about Doral’s culinary scene but if you aren’t the type who likes to get lost in Rubeus Hagrid-size hotdogs and hamburgers (and, honestly, how dare you) maybe you’d prefer a more refined meal at the tasty Dragonfly Izakaya & Fish Market?
Entertainment!
Have you been to CityPlace Doral yet? At the shopping/dining/entertainment complex you can bowl, drink, cycle, watch stand-up comedy, drink more, see a movie, eat, remember you forgot to turn the stove off, go home, come back and do it all again. The place is huge! Downtown Doral is also doing a summer pop-up series you can check out here.
So, there you have it. Doral: a city where you can get drunk and jump on trampolines. As far as we’re concerned, that’s their new official slogan for eternity.
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