Best of Miami® 2025

Imagine for a minute that it’s 2015. You get blasted, Back to the Future Part II-style, into present-day Miami.

You find that Biff Tannen did indeed become president. You quickly learn new vocabulary words like “COVID” and “Ozempic.” And, there’s no fluoride in the water, so you’re pissed you didn’t go into dentistry.

But after your head stops spinning like a DeLorean tire, you look around and see the maturation of a city that has long seemed on the precipice of cultural and culinary adulthood, and you feel a touch of pride.

This is the coming-of-age story we’ve been waiting to read. And it’s right here in this year’s Miami New Times Best of Miami® issue.

For 2025, we honor our city’s “Modern Classic” period. Sure, we may be known for paving over our past with careless abandon, but we’re also made up of communities that take time to preserve and resurrect cultural anchors. We’re a mixed bag, baby!

Here at New Times, our writers came together in a mind-meld to compile this outsize compendium of Miami’s future landmarks and mainstays in the categories of Arts & Entertainment, Sports & Recreation, Shopping & Services, and Eat & Drink.

You, dear reader, also made your own choices in our annual Readers’ Poll; be sure to check who came out on top.

We encourage you to seek out a print copy or save a link to this year’s edition to serve as a guide to the present and the future of this Magic City. Because even if you’re not into it yet, your kids are gonna love it.

—Liz Tracy, Best of Miami® editor

Best of Miami 2025® was written by Grant Albert, Celia Almeida, Clarissa Buch Zilberman, Carolina del Busto, Alex DeLuca, Jose D. Duran, Asha Elias, Naomi Feinstein, Cindy Ferreiro, Tom Finkel, Theo Karantsalis, Samuel Loetscher, Nicole Lopez-Alvar, Anna Magluta, Douglas Markowitz, Isabel Maza, Sophia Medina, David Rolland, Jesse Scott, Shanae Hardy, Michelle Solomon, Liz Tracy, Caroline Val, Isabel Wilder, and Ryan Yousefi

Design by Kristin Bjornsen. Cover, section openers, and spot illustrations by Rocco Malatesta