RESTAURANT NEWS | MIAMI
Cafe Fenicia Gives Miami Lebanese Cooking With Range
CAFE FENICIA | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Maria Rodriguez
6:31 a.m. ET, June 29, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: With a day job that requires constant travel, Maria Rodriguez is likely a regular at your favorite restaurant. She’s reviewed restaurants since 2007 in magazines from Spain to Seattle.
Cafe Fenicia in downtown Miami is a Lebanese restaurant that goes past the usual mezze-and-kebab shorthand: kibbeh nayyeh, seared halloumi, and coffee brewed through hot sand.
That’s enough to make the place worth paying attention to, especially in a part of Miami where dinner often has to compete with the DJ stand and somebody ordering Champagne like they’re closing a real estate deal. Cafe Fenicia doesn’t seem immune to the city’s taste for polish; it just puts the better argument on the table.
The restaurant describes itself as “rooted in Lebanon, designed for Miami.” The Miami part is the setting around it: a lounge-like dining room, hookah, zero-proof drinks, tea service, and a menu built less for a quick plate than for a full night.
Thing is, Lebanese food can get flattened fast in American restaurants. A little hummus, a little grilled meat, a little baklava, and suddenly a whole cuisine gets treated like a shared-apps category. Cafe Fenicia seems to be pushing against that.
Here, things start with a deep mezze list with buttery Beiruté shrimp, crispy cauiflower with tahini, and Lebanese sausage in molasses. Mains head into kabobs and a cedar-planked salmon, with New Zealand lamb Chops and lebanese rice. Afterwards, there's the familiar baklava and knafeh but then sweets not commonly found in Miami, like a Lebanese rice pudding and clotted cream with shredded phyllo and rose water.
So no, Cafe Fenicia doesn’t need to be Miami’s loudest restaurant. It has a better trick than that. It knows what it is.
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