Cotoa’s food always tasted more ambitious than the bizarre food hall it lived in. Now, they have their own restaurant in North Miami, where these inventive Ecuadorian dishes shine with no distractions. The most exciting things on the menu are dishes the chef grew up eating, which she’ll tell you about as she drops plates on the table. The cangrejada is a bowl of tomato bisque with blue crab and plantains that’s sweet, chilled, and made for Miami summers. It’s thrilling what they do with cacao. They make honey from it and use it in an outstanding iced tea. The menu will probably change often. Go before the hanger steak with a gloriously herbaceous chimichurri is no longer around. 

And don’t come with a part of 12. It’s small inside—so small that every corner of the terracotta-colored restaurant gets a whiff of the palo santo used in the cornbread and butter.