Top Five North Miami-Dade Restaurants

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Shing Wang Banh Mi

​​Our North Miami-Dade designation includes North Miami, North Miami Beach, Aventura and Sunny Isles. That's a wide swath of real estate, and it encompasses a whole lot of worthy dining establishments -- including the exceptional Yakko-San of North Miami Beach, which nabbed our Best Restaurant in North Miami-Dade last year. Few would quibble with that choice -- least of all the many Miami chefs who make it their post-shift dining destination.

Here are five other great restaurants; all but one are relatively modest, privately-owned businesses.

5. Shing Wang Bubble Tea Cafe
What started out in April of 2008 as an all-vegetarian Chinese restaurant and bubble tea emporium in North Miami has grown into an all-purpose Chinese restaurant with noteworthy Taiwanese specialties -- and bubble tea emporium. You can still get convincing faux-meat appetizers such as BBQ pork and chicken egg rolls, drumsticks and nuggets. And entrees include a fantastic faux smokin soy duck, as well as crispy soy chicken. It won our Best Vegetarian Restaurant nod in 2009. But nowadays you can also nab Taiwanese braised pork stew, steamed pork bun, and curry or lemongrass renditions that use real chicken -- and also a real good banh mi on authentic Vietnamese baguette. One thing that's consistent is clean, fresh flavors, friendly service, and attractive prices (entrees are $12 and under). Bubble teas still refresh in various flavors too.

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Ho's dumplings.

4. Chef Philip Ho
The namesake Ho knows his Asian fare, having served as dim sum chef at the Setai for several years before opening this place of his own in Sunny Isles Beach last September. Dim sum is the star here; on weekends it gets rolled out on carts, rest of the time it comes from the kitchen. Either way, it's the best dim sum this side of Tropical Chinese. Steamed green-tea duck dumplings, scallop and black truffle dumplings, chive and shrimp dumplings, taro cakes...these are just a few of our favorite things. The rice porridge congee is superb as well, as are non-dim sum chow like thin hand-pulled noodles with shiitake mushrooms and a show-stopping house-made tofu and eggplant in black-bean-chili sauce that will force you to rethink tofu entirely. Egg custard tarts for dessert are pretty cool too.