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.
Restaurants spend a lot of time telling us what they want to do to us. They want to challenge us. They want to push boundaries. They want us to reconsider what dinner can be, often through foams, tweezers, and ingredients introduced with a family history.
Buccan has always seemed guided by a simpler idea: Make food that every person at the table will love.
That may sound obvious, because deliciousness should be the minimum requirement of dinner. Yet plenty of restaurants become so preoccupied with novelty that pleasure gets lost somewhere between the concept and the plate. When I lived in West Palm Beach, Buccan became one of my favorite restaurants because it solved the hardest problem in group dining. A table of people could order anything, pass everything around, and feel happy about every decision.
Now, Buccan has essentially cloned itself in the big city.
Buccan’s arrival in Coral Gables brings a restaurant that has spent 15 years winning over Palm Beach to Miracle Mile, giving Miami its own version of chef Clay Conley’s greatest hit. The expansion also signals a particular confidence. Plenty of successful restaurants open a second location with a tightened menu and a diluted personality. Buccan arrived in Coral Gables with its appetite intact: a sprawling restaurant, an expansive menu, and enough seats to test whether its crowd-pleasing formula travels.
And the TLDR: yes, it absolutely does.
Tuna crudo
Conley opened the original Buccan in Palm Beach in 2011, following a career that took him through some formidable kitchens, including a run as executive chef at Azul inside Mandarin Oriental in Miami. He went on to earn multiple James Beard Award nominations and build a restaurant group that includes Imoto, Grato, and Buccan Sandwich Shop. The original Buccan helped loosen Palm Beach dining from some of its white-tablecloth formality, serving globally influenced small plates in a lively setting where sharing became part of the point.
The Coral Gables restaurant translates that energy on a much larger scale. Wood floors and glass partitions give it a modern finish that feels handsome without becoming stuffy. The entrance opens into a large bar area, separated from the first section of the dining room by glass. We settled into a corner banquette there and assumed we had taken in the entire restaurant.
Then I went looking for the restroom and discovered another enormous dining room beyond it. By the middle of our dinner last night, that space had filled too. The restaurant felt lively yet remained easy enough for conversation. Around us were dates, families, and large groups passing plates back and forth. It was a crowd made up of people who appeared to understand Buccan’s essential promise: Everyone will find something here.
Our first plate delivered on it immediately. The tuna crudo came with mashed avocado atop remarkably crisp wontons, each bite cool and soft before the wrapper shattered underneath. It was recognizable enough to require no explanation and constructed carefully enough to keep it interesting. The prime New York strip tartare offered a richer variation on that formula. Black truffle deepened the beef, while a fried egg yolk sat on top looking solid until a knife released its runny center. Stirred together, the components became lush and savory, the yolk turning into a sauce for the tartare.
Maine lobster ceviche
Maine lobster ceviche arrived as a tower of tender lobster meat, mango, and avocado surrounded by coconut-mango sauce. The sauce brought a slight sweetness followed by a tangy edge, complementing the lobster while allowing the delicate shellfish to remain the focus. Restraint can be harder than embellishment, especially with lobster, an ingredient restaurants often bury under their enthusiasm.
NY strip tartare
Sweet corn agnolotti
More lobster followed in the gnocchetti, a pasta unlike the heavy lobster preparations I have encountered elsewhere. Too often, lobster pasta arrives overwhelmed by cream or an intensely reduced shellfish stock, each bite richer than the last until finishing the bowl begins to feel like an assignment. Buccan pairs its lobster with Sungold tomatoes and summer squash, bringing brightness and acidity to the plate. The vegetables lighten the sauce and let the lobster taste like itself.
Our server steered us toward the panca-marinated wagyu short rib. She had earned our trust by then, and the dish rewarded it. The short rib arrived sliced and plated like a steak, each piece remarkably tender, the meat giving way at the touch of a fork. Saltado jus added an umami punch that lingered after every bite. This was comfort food with sharper tailoring, familiar in its pleasures and precise in its execution.
Then came the sweet corn agnolotti. A carryover from Palm Beach, the dish consists of bite-sized clouds filled with whipped ricotta, surrounded by a rich Espelette butter sauce and finished with crispy bacon. Sweet corn brings a summery burst to all that richness, while the bacon supplies salt and crunch. Every piece seems engineered to deliver several small pleasures at once. Honestly and truly, it is one of the best things I have ever eaten.
That statement sounds dramatic until another agnolotto lands on your plate. The dish contains no dare and demands no explanation. It relies on pasta, cheese, corn, butter, and bacon, assembled with enough skill to remind you why people loved those ingredients in the first place. Buccan’s cooking can be inventive, globally informed, and technically exacting. It simply remembers that technique works best in service of pleasure.
We ended with a tall slice of chocolate layer cake, with vanilla ice cream and toasted hazelnuts. After the truffle, lobster, wagyu, and Espelette pepper, dessert brought us back to something elemental: birthday cake. Chocolate, vanilla, and the crunch of hazelnuts made it feel celebratory, a final plate designed to draw forks from every direction. Nobody at the table could dislike it.
Wagyu short rib
That may be Buccan’s quiet achievement. Conley has built a restaurant around consensus without sanding away its personality. The cooking remains thoughtful and sophisticated, yet the first response it seeks is the one restaurants sometimes forget while chasing every other reaction: This tastes good.
Lobster gnocchetti
Chocolate layer cake
On the Thursday night we visited, both dining rooms were full. Plates traveled around tables. Servers kept moving through the crowd. Nearly 70 miles from the original Buccan, Coral Gables had already grasped what Palm Beach learned years ago.
A restaurant can challenge diners, teach them, and show them something they have never encountered. Buccan understands that the most profound thing it can do is send an entire table home happy.
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