The Katherine

FORT LAUDERDALE | FLORIDA

Fort Lauderdale Has Moved Far Beyond Spring Break

The city’s best restaurants now include Michelin-starred tasting menus, serious Thai cooking, waterfront sushi, and plenty of Italian swagger.

By Eric Barton
Updated Sept. 2, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

When I moved to Fort Lauderdale more than 20 years ago, the city’s dining scene leaned heavily on chains, fish houses, and menus that had survived several presidential administrations. Today, its strongest kitchens belong to nationally recognized chefs, ambitious newcomers, and local institutions still cooking at full volume. After two decades of eating my way across the city—from fiery Thai and oceanfront sushi to Michelin-starred tasting menus—these are the best restaurants in Fort Lauderdale right now.

Runway 84 Fort Lauderdale Best Restaurants

Anthony’s Runway 84

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If you suddenly feel like you’re in the supper club scene from Goodfellas, it’s no coincidence: that was the exact inspiration behind this part red-sauce temple, part live-music den, all swagger. After a recent multimillion-dollar renovation, it mixes classic Italian American dishes — think spicy rigatoni, veal chops, prime steaks — with nightly live performances straight out of a Copacabana set list. The vibe is glamorous, retro, and theatrical — it’s the kind of place where your dinner ends with a jazz ballad and a nightcap. Pro tip: the Danielle, pictured up top, is an off-the-menu stunner: a veal chop Milanese with vodka sauce, peas, and crispy prosciutto.

Best for: Italian classics and live music in full swing

Calusso

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Fort Lauderdale finally has a Michelin-quality restaurant that looks and feels like a yacht club fantasy, all polished marble and views of Pier 66’s marina. Chef Jonathan Kaiser’s menu leans heavily on handmade pastas and impressive plates like lobster Parmesan or a 40-ounce Florentine steak. It’s the kind of spot where you dress up, order wine by the magnum, and pretend you don’t have to be up for work in the morning. I’ve called it the most ambitious fine-dining restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, and it’s not slowing down.

Best for: Big nights with an equally big tab

D’s Sports Bar

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This is the one single sports bar that my better half is willing to accept as dinner plans. Imagine the classic Florida sports bar and then picture it upgraded by Danny Ganem, a chef who just simply knows how to create delicious things. Run by the team behind Daniel’s, which shares the building, turns out smash burgers with local beef and crisp chicken nugs topped with caviar in a slick-looking room lined with memorabilia and TV screens. It’s the rare sports bar where the food doesn’t feel like an afterthought.

Best for: Watching the game without compromising on dinner

Daniel’s

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Daniel’s calls itself a Florida steakhouse, but it’s also a statement about how Fort Lauderdale’s dining scene has grown up. The menu covers all the bases — prime cuts, big seafood towers, and a deep wine list — but it’s also home to Danny Ganem’s house-made pasta and sides showcasing Florida-grown products. This isn’t just good-enough for Lauderdale: the team behind Daniel’s recently exported it to Coral Gables, where it’s now also one of Miami’s best restaurants.

Best for: A steakhouse dinner without the stuffy steakhouse vibe

Evelyn’s

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From the third floor of the Four Seasons, Evelyn’s borrows flavors from the Mediterranean and grafts them onto South Florida seafood. Chef Brandon Salomon smokes octopus over olive wood and grills wagyu skewers, all in a dining room that seems to glow from the ocean light. It’s hotel dining, yes, but it’s also proof that a hotel kitchen can turn out food worth making a reservation for.

Best for: Date night with a side of ocean views

Heritage

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Chef Rino Cerbone grew up in his family’s Broward pizza shop, taking what he knew and turning it into something that’s earned the attention of the Michelin Guide. The pizzas are excellent — squash blossom and burrata is a standout — but so are the razor clams, the penne with vodka sauce, and the olive oil cake with strawberries. It’s buzzy and always busy, lunch or dinner, making it the sort of place you recommend to friends who don’t mind yelling over the crowd about how good everything is.

Best for: Pastas and pizzas that just simply never miss

The Katherine

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Chef Timon Balloo left Miami and gave Fort Lauderdale its most exciting little restaurant, a mashup of the flavors he grew up with: Thai curry, Caribbean jerk, clam chowder fries. The space is tiny, the tables close, and the menu constantly shifts, but the food is as confident as anything in South Florida. You eat here once and realize it’s the reason people are starting to talk about Fort Lauderdale dining.

Best for: A neighborhood restaurant where the dishes tell the chef’s story

Larb Thai-Isan

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Larb Thai doesn’t tone down the flavor and heat of traditional Thai dishes for tourists, and that’s exactly why locals love it. The menu covers the northern Thai and Isan hits: duck salad, larb, grilled meats, and soups that come out steaming and loaded with herbs. It’s a bright, not-fancy dining room where the kitchen pulls no punches.

Best for: A serious spice fix in simple strip-mall surroundings

MAASS

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MAASS is a Euro-spec tasting menu full of ingredients that’ll likely be new to you, plated with tweezers and foams and lots of care. Chef Ryan Ratino offers dishes à la carte, but from watching other tables, it seems like everyone is here for the seasonal tasting menu. The series of 12 or so small plates start playfully with a series of snacks like foie gras "nut butter" and truffle popcorn in a movie-theater-looking container. From there, things get serious: black truffle gnocchi, short ribs in bordelaise sauce, a chocolate tart with rum sauce. Every time I’ve been, there have been misses in both the uneven pace of courses and execution of dishes, and while that might not sound like a full endorsement, you have to give extra credit to a kitchen staff willing to go for it with a a seriously ambitious tasting menu.

Best for: Tasting menus that take lots of chances

Ocean Prime

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Ocean Prime occupies a jewel box of a space directly on the Intracoastal, with a simply desigdining room where the view is the ambiance and a patio that’s among the finest spots to spend a night in the city. You’ll see conference attendees still wearing their lanyards, linen-wearing boaters that just tied up, and folks dressed up for a night out. Part of a growing chain, Ocean Prime’s cooking isn’t reinventing anything — it’s seafood towers, prime cuts, and traditional cocktails to wash it all down — but it nails the classics with precision.

Best for: Dinner with a view and a little spectacle

Osteria Acqua & Farina Fort Lauderdale Best Restaurants

Osteria Acqua e Farina

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Osteria Acqua e Farina has spent more than 15 years quietly turning out some of Fort Lauderdale’s most satisfying Italian food from a modest Federal Highway storefront. Attilio Reale draws on his family roots in Turin and Naples, and his yearly pilgrimages home, for brick-oven pizzas, massive antipasti boards, and pastas such as orecchiette with sausage ragu and pappardelle with mushrooms. But know that what’s on the menu is merely a small sample: the long list of specials cover whatever Reale feels like cooking that night. The name translates to “water and flour,” an appropriately simple promise from a restaurant that understands exactly what to do with both.

Best for: Handmade pasta and brick-oven pizza without ceremony

Steak 954

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The W Hotel’s steakhouse is equal parts surf and turf, with dry-aged cuts and local fish backed by an aquarium full of glowing jellyfish. It’s slick, modern, and unapologetically expensive, but the food delivers: wagyu, lobster, and sides that never fall short of decadent. If you find yourself on the beach in the morning, breakfast here is as good as dinner — and that’s saying something.

Best for: Steaks and seafood with an oceanfront backdrop

Takato

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Takato is what happens when you pair a chef with serious sushi chops with a dining room perched directly above the sand. The rolls are sharp, the Korean-Japanese small plates inventive, and the whole place feels like the beachfront restaurant you’d hope this town would have. In the back, there’s a 10-seat omakase counter called Omakase by Takato, where $250 buys you access to the best sushi in town.

Best for: Sushi and Asian-fusion with the Atlantic in view

Vitolo

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Chef Anthony Vitolo brought a piece of New York’s old-school Italian dining to the Conrad, and the result is Vitolo. Expect the classics — handmade pastas, veal parm, pizzas with the right char — served in a dining room that feels polished but still warm. It’s not trying to reinvent Italian food, just to cook it better than anyone else in town.

Best for: Traditional Italian and Italian-American dishes done with polish