Higher ground: a taste of the coffee revolution brewing in Miami Beach

This article is part of a guide to Miami from FT Globetrotter

Miami Beach, the promised land for snowbirds, tech bros and sybarites, is not a mecca for coffee snobs. The city is known for an abundance of lovely Cuban coffee shops where café Cubano (sweetened espresso) reigns supreme, and, of course, you can easily find a monolithic coffee chain that will serve you an iced latte the size of a Ford pick-up. Maybe it’s the heat, but for a place where nights easily slip into mornings and extravagances are heartily embraced, there has historically been a distinct lack of deliciously, pretentiously good coffee — the type of stuff made with magic beans, a scientific approach and served in small containers by an alchemist-cum-barista.

However, Miami’s coffee scene is rapidly changing: new cafés are popping up all over the Magic City, from the beach to the mainland. Much of Miami’s fledgling coffee revolution can be attributed to Panther, a local small-batch roaster and mini chain of specialty coffee shops.

Panther was founded in 2010 by Leticia and Joel Pollock, a wife-and-husband team and coffee-industry veterans, who during a visit to Miami discovered a major gap in the market for great beans and craft cafés. They launched Panther’s roastery and wholesale business in the (now hip) Wynwood neighbourhood of Miami, which eventually evolved into its first customer-facing coffee shop. Panther now has six locations, including one in Sunset Harbour (more on this below), a bougie waterside neighbourhood in western Miami Beach.

There’s more to Miami Beach’s caffeine scene too. On a recent visit that required plenty of help slapping off the sluggishness of jet lag, I made it my mission to track down the Beach’s best brews, badgering all of the locals and frequent visitors I know who never go without artisanal trimethylxanthine in their bloodstream. Below are my top five recommendations.

Panther Coffee 

1875 Purdy Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33139 (and other locations)

• Good for: Excellent coffee 

• Not so good for: There’s not much on offer in terms of food, but enough to satisfy someone in need of a quick bite, such as raspberry and lemon scones, banana chocolate muffins and vegetarian empanadas

• FYI: The café has good WiFi, plenty of light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows and a long communal table where customers work on their laptops

• Website; Directions

Panther has applied an oenophile’s enthusiasm to coffee. Here customers can choose their beans from the rotating selection of single-origin coffees; a menu offers information on each producer, their region (including coordinates), processing method and tasting notes. (The “sweet, round and silky” Finca Kilimanjaro coffee from El Salvador, for example, has notes of black cherry, lychee and vanilla coconut cream.) Should your palate not be refined enough to note the difference between beans from varying altitude and latitude, the decision can be made for you by a messianic barista.

Drinks are brewed in all of the methods and receptacles known in the English language (Chemex, Clever, cold, et cetera) and served with milk or a non-dairy alternative of your choice, many of which elicit the embarrassing “I didn’t know that could be milked” comment. If indecisiveness or confusion are still a problem, an espresso flight can be ordered ($6) should you wish to taste some options side by side and inevitably bounce off the slick, industrial-chic walls. I recommend the “espresso + milk”, which is served hot and “microfoamed” or iced. Try it with macadamia milk. It’s absolutely heavenly.

Bebito’s 

1504 Bay Road #106, Miami Beach, FL 33139

• Good for: A quick coffee and a bite to eat, or a casual work catch-up

• Not so good for: Anyone looking for an old-school Cuban café experience. Bebito’s is a modern take for the next generation

• FYI: Some exciting names in Miami’s food world are behind Bebito’s: pastry chef Dallas Wynne (previously at the excellent Stubborn Seed) and chef Henry Hane, owner and executive chef of the popular B Bistro + Bakery

• Website; Directions

Bebito’s, a neighbourhood café and bistro on the west side of South Beach, does it all. From inside a 1960s apartment block, it offers traditional Cuban classics (cafecito, cortadito, café con leche), alongside other espresso and steamed-milk drinks (macchiato, latte, cappuccino), all made with Bebito’s private-label coffee — a mix of Central and South American beans roasted in Miami. Prefer it cold-brewed? No problem. The same goes for pour-over — they do that too. All pair perfectly with one of the café’s pastries.

More robust sustenance comes from a menu created by an impressive roster of local chefs. An all-day breakfast menu seems to exist solely to make the hungover very happy, with croquetas, tostadas, cheesy scrambles and, curiously, an egg sandwich that features roast turkey, strawberry jam and provolone, which I was not brave nor desperate enough to try. The rest of the menu ranges from healthy salads and grain bowls (miso salmon with pickled daikon and avocado, for example) to “handhelds”, an intriguing way to describe sandwiches, wraps and burgers.

All can be enjoyed alfresco on Bebito’s street-facing terrace (shrouded with foliage for sun protection), or indoors, where there is plenty of seating and a strong Miami millennial aesthetic (pink pastel furnishings, teal tiling and hanging plants). The real luxury is that, despite the rather loud interior design, it is quiet, and a nice spot to bring a book, a laptop, a friend or work contact for a catch-up. Bebito’s ticks all the boxes.

Carlton Room Café at The Betsy

1433 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33139

• Good for: A beautiful, relaxing setting to work or read (with excellent coffee)

• Not so good for: A takeaway coffee. You’ll want to stay a while

• FYI: The Carlton Room can be accessed directly from Collins Avenue or via The Betsy hotel (its main entrance is on Ocean Drive)

• Website; Directions

Even some of the city’s finest hotels struggle to serve more than coffee-pod brews, carafes of watery drip or burning-hot milkshakes (which is especially crushing for jet-lagged business travellers desperate for a strong cup or 10). But it should come as no surprise that the Carlton Room Café bucks the trend: it’s part of the fabulous Betsy in South Beach, a boutique hotel and beachfront gem on Miami’s famed Ocean Drive.

The café is the former lobby of the Carlton Hotel, an Art Deco landmark that was taken over by The Betsy during a 2017 expansion that joined the two buildings with an orb-shaped sky bridge (which has become a popular piece of public art). The Carlton Room is also one of the hotel’s gallery spaces that features rotating art exhibitions, most of which are curated by Lesley Goldwasser, a friendly New York transplant who owns the hotel with her husband, and can often be spotted giving guests a tour. (When I last visited, the Carlton Room was showing the works of Zimbabwean fine-art photographer Tamary Kudita, whose beautiful and powerful portraits explore postcolonial identity.)

That is not to say this is a museum-like space that requires speaking in hushed tones before heading to the exit with a takeaway coffee in hand. You’ll want to savour the vibe. Coffee, which is brewed using Panther’s beans (and to their standard), is best enjoyed while sinking into the plush velvet and leather sofas with a pastry and a newspaper. It comes iced, nitro (cold brew made with nitrogen gas for an ultra-smooth texture) or hot, with all of the usual suspects represented: macchiato, cappuccino, cortadito et al. Local craft beers, cold-pressed juices and a short menu of fresh sandwiches are available too — or you can order a Neapolitan-style pizza from The Betsy’s in-house trattoria. There is fast and free WiFi for those looking to get a bit of work done.

Caffè Umbria 

959 West Avenue Suite 1, Miami Beach, FL 33139

• Good for: An alfresco coffee or cold drink

• Not so good for: Atmosphere

• FYI: Caffè Umbria sells its beans online and ships across the US

• Website; Directions

Caffè Umbria will look familiar to Pacific North-Westerners: the vibrant café in South Beach is the first east-coast venture from the Seattle-based coffee roasters, who have been in the coffee business for generations. (Co-founder Emanuele Bizzarri’s grandfather Ornello first opened a roastery in Perugia in the 1940s.)

Unsurprisingly, Umbria takes a traditional approach to coffee: single-origin desires should be satisfied elsewhere. Here the belief is that authentic Italian espresso relies on the blending of beans from multiple sources for a more complex flavour. But while all of the conventional espresso drinks are here, served hot or freddo, Umbria slips in a little American influence in the form of flavoured coffees, such as a lavender latte, caffè al pepe (its answer to pumpkin spice, made with honey, cinnamon and nutmeg) or a marocchino. The food offering is similarly Italian-American: pastries, cakes and cookies are served alongside tiramisu, cannoli and mortadella on focaccia.

The spacious indoor seating area is not particularly appealing, though it’s quiet and offers a reprieve from Miami’s heat. The best part about Caffè Umbria is its large cobblestone patio, which wraps around the corner of 10th Street and West Avenue and catches the sun all afternoon.

Bettant Bakery 

1043 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33139

• Good for: Tasty baked goods

• Not so good for: Mind-blowing coffee

• FYI: There is limited seating indoors and outdoors, so it’s best to grab your goods to take away. It also closes at 3pm

• Website; Directions

Bettant is a local gem in a rather touristy area. The mom-and-pop style bakery, hidden behind a modest storefront on Washington Avenue near the Art Deco District, is run by Matthieu Bettant and his wife Miriam, who took over the site in 2019. Matthieu is a fourth-generation baker from France (his great-grandfather opened a bakery in 1935, which his parents now own) who studied his art in Lyon.

Bettant is very much a traditional boulangerie, but with a Miami twist: it’s best known for its fabulous pastries and brilliant bread, but the empanadas, dulce de leche croissants (the dough hides a caramel centre) and creamy Key lime tart are not to be missed. Heartier fare comes in the form of sandwiches made on the excellent baguettes and traditional quiches. I seriously considered bringing home a beautiful galette des rois (a puff pastry and frangipane tart typically only available in France for the Epiphany) in my hand luggage.

And the coffee? This is perhaps where Bettant is the most French and the most Miami. The coffee is fine. Bettant will make you whichever drink you like, hot or cold, and it won’t blow your mind the way some of the other brews on this list will do. But if an injection of caffeine is what you need, it will certainly do the trick.

Share your Miami coffee-shop secrets in the comments

Follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter