Late-night dining once meant grabbing a slice of pizza or settling for diner food. But in the years since the pandemic, the Biscayne corridor has seen a resurgence of restaurants with elevated menus for night owls.
Argentinian restaurant Lo de Lea serves its homemade pastas, empanadas and grilled specialties until midnight on the weekends. About eight miles south in Miami’s MiMo District, Uptown 66 Taqueria offers chef-driven Mexican fare until 2 a.m. nightly. Nearby, Moshi Moshi MiMo keeps the sushi rolling and ramen hot until 5 a.m. For those staying in, Prime After Dark delivers premium steaks and Wagyu beef well past midnight.
LEANDRO’S HOUSE
(Courtesy Lo De Lea)
Argentinian restaurant Lo de Lea serves its homemade pastas, empanadas and grilled specialties until midnight on the weekends.
Want a sit-down meal late into the evening?
“If you come in at 11 p.m., you can still get whatever you want from the menu,” said Lo de Lea’s chef-owner, Leandro De Vita, who runs the restaurant with his wife, co-owner Dana Lulic, and chef Paolo Restrepo Sarria.
His menu includes homemade gnocchi with Roquefort cream sauce, grilled steaks, and fresh-baked bread and desserts made in-house.
(Courtesy Lo De Lea)
Lo de Lea’s chef-owner, Leandro De Vita, who runs the restaurant with his wife, co-owner Dana Lulic, and chef Paolo Restrepo Sarria.
“Everything is homemade,” De Vita said. “The bread, the pasta, the desserts — anything we can make ourselves, we do.”
After working in New York restaurants and opening Soprano’s Pizza on South Beach in 2001, De Vita established his Biscayne Boulevard roots with Vita’s Trattoria in 2007. He and his family later moved through a series of locations — from a small house at 7251 Biscayne Blvd. to 7001 Biscayne Blvd. and, most recently, to the larger North Miami space at 12210 Biscayne Blvd., home to Lo de Lea for the past four years.
(Courtesy Lo De Lea)
Lo de Lea’s Flan served with Dulce de Leche and Cream
The newer space, with plenty of parking and a pleasing outdoor patio, has become a neighborhood gathering place for diners from Miami Shores, Biscayne Park, Belle Meade and Keystone Point.
The place feels homey, with framed photographs covering the walls.
“Every time someone comes in, someone famous, we take a picture, we put it up, post it on the wall,” said De Vita. “We have a lot of artists from Argentina, actors and actresses, motorcycle riders, soccer players.”
Although not part of the late-night ritual, every Sunday afternoon, the restaurant hosts a “live pasta show” — an interactive culinary experience where families and kids gather to make fresh pasta by hand and then sit down to eat what they’ve created.
“It’s a tradition in Argentina,” De Vita explained. “Every Sunday the family gets together and they do their own pasta, the kids too. That’s what we’re doing at the restaurant.”
This idea of having a welcoming neighborhood gathering place open from early in the morning until late in the evening inspired the restaurant’s name.
“It’s an interpretation in Spanish, like, ‘Where are we going to? We’re going to Leandro’s house,’ so that’s why it’s Lo de Lea,” said De Vita. “That’s exactly the feeling we want people to have.”
NUNO GRULLON’S LATE-NIGHT VISION
(Courtesy Uptown 66)
Uptown 66’s Barria Taco, made with braised beef in a homemade tortilla, was named Best Taco by “Good Morning America” in 2023.
A few miles south, chef Nuno Grullon took a gamble in the middle of the pandemic and unlocked the doors of a taqueria across from Legion Park on Biscayne Boulevard to open his restaurant, Uptown 66.
He had signed the lease in September 2019 but had been working on getting the space since 2016, long before anyone was talking about COVID. The plan had been a phased buildout with outdoor seating and a slow, deliberate opening. But everything had to change course because of the pandemic.
Grullon stripped the idea down to what he could do with what he had.
“I just said, you know what, I’m gonna paint this place myself,” Grullon said. “It was just me, my partner and a couple of cooks.”
He opened on May 13, 2020, as much of Miami remained shuttered.
While many restaurants responded to the pandemic by reducing hours or closing certain days, Grullon did the opposite.
“I wanted to be that late-night spot that opens every single day,” he said. “We didn’t have a day to close like a Monday or Tuesday, which everybody else was doing.”
With no advertising budget, his hours became his most powerful marketing tool. His mindset was that if someone was looking for good food late at night, they could count on Uptown 66.
Originally trained in French and Mediterranean cuisine, the Bronx-born chef of Dominican heritage had never cooked Mexican food professionally before taking on the concept.
“Why tacos? I don’t know. I was thinking something fast casual, and it was either burgers, pizzas or tacos. When I looked into Mexican cuisine, I saw that they have a lot of dishes and a lot of techniques, so for me it was a good challenge.”
Grullon’s vision for Uptown 66 was born while playing basketball at Legion Park soon after he lost his job.
He had helped launch the concept of Café Roval in Miami’s Upper East Side with Mark Soyka.
“Then he hired someone that, for whatever reason, couldn’t get along with me and they decided to let me go,” Grullon said. “That’s when I knew that I had to open my own little spot. I would be playing basketball at Legion Park, look across the street and wonder what the deal with this little abandoned café was.”
The neighborhood may have first discovered the restaurant by word of mouth, but national attention helped bring Uptown 66 into the spotlight.
In 2023, ABC’s Good Morning America featured the restaurant in its “United States of Tacos” competition, searching for the country’s best tacos.
“We ended up winning, which was great,” Grullon said. “We won a prize for $20,000. That came in clutch for us, and the amount of attention that we got was phenomenal.”
Grullon is quick to note that his restaurant is more than a taqueria, but the winning birria tacos — a blend of oxtail, beef cheek and short rib in house-made tortillas — remain one of its signature dishes.
Self-described as “not really the competition type of guy,” Grullon said the exposure translated into more business and helped put the Biscayne corridor firmly on Miami’s dining map. It also grew the business. He opened a second location in Hallandale Beach in April.
(Courtesy Moshi Moshi)
Moshi Moshi MiMo serves its sushi, sashimi, and small plates until 5 a.m.
Moshi Moshi Keeps the Sushi Rolling
If there’s a constant on Biscayne Boulevard for late-night dining, it’s Gastón Cury’s Moshi Moshi MiMo.
Open until 5 a.m. every day, the menu ranges from sushi and sashimi to steaming bowls of ramen, Japanese fried rice and small plates.
Moshi Moshi is modeled after a Japanese izakaya, a casual gathering place where the idea is to linger over sake and a variety of small plates. Like a tapas bar, it’s all about sharing and socializing so it is supposed to be as much about the experience as the food.
There’s plenty on the menu aside from the typical California roll, other traditional sushi rolls and ramen; there’s also house-made kimchi, ceviches, and other dishes that take in the restaurant’s broader pan-Asian influences.
Prime After Dark Brings Steakhouse Dining Home
(Courtesy Prime After Dark)
Prime After Dark will deliver a complete upscale, steakhouse-inspired meal until 5 a.m. on weekends.
For those who prefer to stay home, a new delivery platform called Prime After Dark is tapping into Miami’s late-night dining culture and now delivers steakhouse fare to much of the Biscayne corridor until as late as 5 a.m. on weekends.
“Miami has always had energy deep into the night, but the dining options rarely reflected that, especially along the Biscayne corridor where people are getting home from work or late evenings out,” said co-founder Dennis Arakelian.
Diners can order tuna tartare, burrata, spicy rigatoni, and New York strip steak, or opt for over-the-top offerings such as wagyu, caviar, and curated luxury full-course meals. Burgers, sandwiches, and sides like truffle fries round out the menu.
Pricing is intentionally broad, according to Arakelian and co-founder Jordan Culpepper, with menu items starting around $15 and premium packages priced up to $500.
The After Dark Caviar Service includes Golden Osetra caviar, chives and herbed crème fraîche. Prime Luxe Boxes, priced from $200 to $500, are designed for sharing. At the top end is the Golden Case, which may include 24-karat gold-crusted Wagyu tomahawk steak, colossal lobster, whole live crab and other rotating luxury ingredients.
“Some nights call for restraint,” said Culpepper. “Others call for excess.”
With places like Lo de Lea, Uptown 66, and Moshi Moshi, and concepts like Prime After Dark, the Biscayne corridor is proving that some of Miami’s best meals can be found late into the night.
Biscayne Boulevard Bites
If you’re looking for a great late-night meal along Biscayne, check out these options.
Lo De Lea
12210 Biscayne Blvd.
North Miami
305-530-8749
Moshi Moshi MiMo
7232 Biscayne Blvd.
Miami
844-466-6744
Prime After Dark
1082 NW 54 St.
Miami
206-931-8507
Uptown 66
6600 Biscayne Blvd,
Miami
305-960-7117