MIAGuide
Miami’s Best New Desserts Of 2023
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc
If ever there was a reason to go to a restaurant exclusively for dessert, it's these fluffy churros, cinnamon rolls, and the rest of the year's best new desserts. They came into our lives for the first time in 2023—and you’re not just saving room for them, you should be prioritizing them.
MIA Guide
Miami’s Best New Dishes Of 2023
THE DESSERTS
photo credit: Courtesy Kaori
Ube Flan
We love a good flan riff, and Kaori’s ube flan might be our favorite one since Ariete’s candy cap mushroom flan. It really delivers on both the ube and flan flavor. It also passes the very important spoon test and has a deep purple hue. Little dollops of white chocolate ganache, crumbled yogurt sponge cake, and burnt caramel contribute to its deliciousness as well. Kaori revamped their menu (for the better) a lot this year. It’s now a restaurant that provides the motivation many of us non-Brickell residents need to journey into the neighborhood. And this flan is well worth the parking anxiety.
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc
Bust A Rhyme
If churros and s’mores had a baby, you’d end up with this masterpiece from Walrus Rodeo. Three graham churros sit in a bittersweet Oaxacan chocolate sauce covered in fluffy marshmallow cream that snakes its way across each churro, clinging to their grooves like velcro. The churros themselves are incredibly airy and the birch marshmallow is torched like the ones you had at camp. The whole thing is so nostalgic, eating it feels like hearing the last bell before school’s out for summer.
photo credit: CLEVELAND JENNINGS / @EATTHECANVASLLC
Soft Serve
Peel isn’t technically new—this banana-based soft serve concept was in pop-up mode before 2023. But this was the year Peel finally got their own shop, consistent hours, and a slightly expanded menu. That’s enough newness for us. Peel has not only added another excellent spot to Miami’s soft serve map, but they’ve added something entirely unique to our dessert scene too. There’s nowhere else making this kind of fruit-based soft serve, and certainly no one doing it as sustainably by using locally rescued fruit and giving away every banana peel to a farm for compost.
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc
Sourdough Cinnamon Roll
We have a rule for this cinnamon roll. You’ve got to let them warm it up for you and eat it there. You can bring it home and try yourself, but you won’t do as good a job. Trust us. The magic of this sweet and tangy pastry is revealed while it’s in its fresh-from-the-oven state. It is like everything else at this Buena Vista spot: simple and baked to perfection. The icing finds its way into every crack—but isn’t so heavy that it distracts from the sourdough flavor. And, yes, a cinnamon roll is dessert. Just because you eat it before noon doesn’t change that. Embrace the concept of breakfast dessert.
Pistachio Gelato
Erba uses Bronte pistachios to create this gelato, resulting in a rich, nutty flavor with every creamy spoonful. We also suspect there’s some kind of Michelangelo prodigy working on Erba’s dessert station. Each gelato is sculpted in a way that makes no gravitational sense—with impossibly thin pistachio slices interspersed between slanted peaks of ice cream. To whoever is creating these cold works of art: you should be in art school, but we’re so glad you’re at Erba.
