This is a restaurant that serves a lot of solid comfort food, but really it’s known for one thing: the Juicy Lucy. Born in flyover country, it’s a cheese-stuffed burger that moved to New York City when Whitmans opened there in 2010. Like any intelligent New Yorker, it then migrated to Miami in early 2022, when a Whitmans landed in the local’s section of South Beach on West Avenue. It sports a chic-diner vibe thanks to interior design firm Dekar, which laid the place out in a creamsicle-colored bullseye tile floor that keeps it from feeling too much like a hotel restaurant. A second, massive location is soon to follow in Wynwood.
It’s all good, and like the Walt Whitman-inspired name, a real slice of Americana.
At both of them, the headliner will always be a Juicy Lucy that breaks down like this: two short rib blend patties forged together with a hunk of pimento cheese in the center, a toupée of caramelized onions, a single layer of iceberg lettuce, a couple of tomato slices, pickles, special sauce and a hulking sesame seed bun that’ll make anyone wonder how the entire show is going to fit in a mouth, an Instagram photo, or maybe through a standard doorway.
One bite later and a whole lot of cheese is going to ooze—onto hands, the plate, and perhaps mudslide over to the next table. The Juicy Lucy is undoubtedly a thing someone in your group should order, but there’s more that’s worthy here, like the super-crispy fries blanketed in blue cheese and bacon crumbles, the tangy fried pickles, the brussels sprouts salad with feta, and a cheesesteak that leaves Philly behind with the addition of griddled onions. It’s all good, and like the Walt Whitman-inspired name, a real slice of Americana. But it’ll always be about that burger with cheese in the center, even if half of it ends up in your lap.
