#ThankYouMiami Fitness Picks: CycleBar Doral

There is this magical land that opened up earlier this year out west called CityPlace Doral and in this magical land is a brand spanking new cycling studio that you need to visit ASAP: CycleBar Doral. In fact, there couldn't be a better time to visit than right now while you need to burn the billion-and-one calorie prix-fixe menus you're annihilating courtesy of Miami Spice.

#ThankYouMiami for New Food Finds: Dine Around At Dolphin Mall

Even though we're not typically mall-goers, we make the pilgrimage to our local malls just like everyone else this time of year—in December to pick up gifts, in January to return gifts and use newly acquired gift cards. Whether you're a mall regular or a seasonal visitor, eating is an integral part of the shopping experience. After all, how else are you going to power through all that walking and heavy lifting? Earlier this month we stopped by the Dolphin Mall with Jamison to dine around their rapidly expanding restaurant options and gather intel on where to refuel when you're in the area. Below we report back our findings—the vibe, cuisine, ambiance, and other fun facts—about the five spots we visited.

Cabo Flats

Cabo Flats is a tex-mex joint with—to our surprise and pleasure—a real Mexican chef at the helm. It's the perfect place to unwind over an El Cabo margarita, avocabo fries, and Mexican street corn, especially when they're $5 during their twice-daily happy hour. If you're looking for a full meal, they're open for lunch and dinner, as well as for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays to offer drool-worthy options like taco bowls, fajitas, and huevos rancheros. P.S. If you like spicy cocktails, we highly recommend their jalapeño/cilantro margarita (ask them to go light on the agave).

Burger & Beer Joint

We're super familiar with Burger & Beer Joint's locations in Brickell and South Beach, but we'd never before visited their outpost at the Dolphin Mall. We're happy to report that it is just as awesome a sports bar with mouthwatering burgers as the other two Miami locations and that they also have happy hour—two times a day in fact. On this visit, we indulged on their Mustang Sally burger (wagyu beef, red onion marmalade, brie and sliced prosciutto on a brioche bun) with green bean fries dipped in truffle aioli and french fries dipped in spicy ketchup. We washed all of the deliciousness down with an ice cold Magic City Pale Ale from Wynwood Brewing. In the words of Jamison, "F McDonalds."

Kona Grill

Earlier this year we stopped by Kona Grill to check out their seasonal summer offerings and praised their Dolphin Mall location for their digs, stellar service and ample menu. On our second visit, we grew an even stronger appreciation for their contemporary American menu, our favorite dish of which was the poke rice bowl shown above. It includes sticky rice, furakaki (or, if you ask Jamison, "fofumaki") with bonito flakes and seaweed, fresh hand-cut salmon and ahi tuna, wakame seaweed salad, avocado and cucumber. According to Jamison this is the "best poke since I caught my own poke in Costa Rica, which was the best experience ever." Same, Jamison, same.

BRIO Tuscan Grille

BRIO Tuscan Grille is another restaurant with which we're familiar and that we've previously raved about for brunch and lunch. (They've saved us on more than one occasion during past mall shopping experiences.) That said, we've never visited them at their Dolphin Mall location and never during dinner. During our visit, we had the espresso-rubbed rib eye which, to quote Jamison, had "fantastic espresso notes" and he would know because he has "six f&*#ing espressos a day". In all seriousness, it was excellent and has piqued our interest in exploring the rest of their dinner menu, particularly on Thursday wine nights when glasses of vino are only $5 at the bar. Plus, if you pick up their free loyalty card, you can get a freebie every 5th visit.

Brother Jimmy's

We remember a few years ago when we went to the opening of Brother Jimmy's in Mary Brickell Village. We had never heard of Brother Jimmy's, except for Brad who is from New York and was well acquainted with them from home. The first thing we wanted to do was order the swamp water because we're suckers for gimmicky drinks and between the plastic gator and the twenty colorful straws it's as gimmicky as cocktails get. We actually still have the gator from that visit as part of our living room décor. But we digress... The Brother Jimmy's at Dolphin Mall is the fun-loving, TV-laden sports bar we know and love. It's the perfect place when we want to go catch a UM football game (go 'Canes!) on TV while loading up on barbecue and large quantities of booze. Check out their weekly specials for other occasions well-worth a visit.

#ThankYouMiami for New Food Finds: Kona Grill

Many cafecitos ago we used to work in Doral. For lunch, the limited food options in the area meant daily $5 foot-longs from Subway—except on Fridays and other special occasions when we would treat ourselves to the Royal Thai lunch menu. (Dipping the complimentary spring roll into the sweet chili sauce was the highlight of our week.) The scarcity of acceptable food and beverage options was so severe our office would never do happy hour because we would have to drive too far to find anything worth our time. Seriously, that's how lame the Doral scene was back in those days.

These days high rents in Miami's urban core are driving drool-worthy restaurant concepts into suburban areas like Doral, giving the neighborhood a much overdue upgrade. Two weeks ago we decided to pay the area a visit to survey all the changes first hand. While we were there we stopped to check out Kona Grill at the Dolphin Mall because we'd heard a lot of great feedback from our friends and wanted to take advantage of their limited time summer menu. We were pleasantly surprised with our findings, particularly with the digs (they have a dope fish tank at the entrance!!), the stellar service, and the ample menu of Asian/American options. We were most surprised to find one of our old co-workers enjoying post-work drinks with his wife at the bar area—a testament to the fact that locals, whose choices we trust, actually frequent the spot. We're psyched our old co-workers finally have formidable options for lunch and post-work drinks/dinner (with happy hour bevs and bites for $3-$8.5).

The attentive and friendly staff were by far the highlight of our visit. While we're glad to see the migration of deliciousness from the metro areas to Doral, we're happy that our infamous subpar hospitality didn't tag along for the ride across the Dolphin. When it comes to the menu, we picked from both the regular and summer menus, sticking primarily to Japanese inspired dishes like the sushi rolls. The standouts were the picasso roll from the regular menu and the tuna mango roll from the summer menu. If you're looking for a cocktail, we recommend the Sun Kissed from the summer menu which has 1800 coconut tequila, Grand Marnier, coconut water, Monin agave nectar, and pineapple with a coconut rim. We were worried it was going to be too sweet, but it was just right.

Check out our photos from the night below, then stop by Kona Grill to taste all the goodness for yourself. The seasonal menu ends on Sunday, September 4 so you better move quickly!

Sun Kissed cocktail from the seasonal summer menu ending on September 4

Potstickers from the regular menu

Seven spice tuna over cucumber salad from the regular menu

Mango tuna sushi roll from the seasonal summer menu ending on September 4

Picasso sushi roll from the regular menu

#ThankYouMiami For New Food Finds - OCIO

Deep in the industrial, strip mall-laden outskirts of Miami International Airport hides OCIO, an Italian restaurant founded on such well-executed simplicity that it even impressed the discerning tastebuds of our friend Jamison. (You may remember Jamison and his "Yelp-vouched good taste" from our 2014 "Lunch Like A Local: Coral Gables" feature.) In fact, the entire 20 minute car ride to Doral he didn't stop amping about the menu saying, "I don't care how much it costs. We're getting the lobster ravioli and the chicken parm and the braised short rib and a bottle of wine and..." To be honest, we stopped listening after the third "and", primarily because we were amping ourselves about the spaghetti pomodoro we'd spotted on food writer Amber Bond's Instagram page earlier in the week.

Jamison's dreams were quickly crushed when he discovered our introduction to OCIO consisted of a pre-selected chef's tasting menu (featuring few of his wish list items) with little room for off roading into the full menu. He wistfully admired the menu's offerings while resolving himself to the notion that he would have to come back soon to try everything else. Meanwhile, across the table, we were in absolute awe at the captivatingly beautiful and colorful pages of the menus, which look like art that got lost on its way to Art Basel and made its surrogate home in the restaurant's dining room. (Seriously though, we wanted to take one of them home with us to perch on our coffee table.)

The first course was a citrusy octopus carpaccio that was so good Jamison had eaten half the plate by the time we finished taking photos. The second was a charcuterie plate surrounding a mound of artichoke hearts. If you know anything about us, you know we LOOOOVE charcuterie and we LOOOOVE artichokes so it comes as no surprise that we licked the second plate clean as well. The third and fourth courses were pasta dishes: the spaghetti pomodoro whose reputation preceded its arrival on our table and a three cheese tortellini in amaretto sauce that Jamison dubbed "pockets of heaven". Like the champs that we are, we ate every single bite of both and powered next through a tender ossobucco and a flaky corvina, straight into a cube of tiramisu.

We've seen other food writers talk about falling in love with a delicious dish or meal. And, while our Instagram page is practically an ode to how much we love food, we have never thought about our eating experiences as romantic—until we visited OCIO. (It sounds bizarre, we know. In fact, everyone we've verbally recapped the meal to thinks we're referring to Jamison when we talk about our romantic meal.) Jamison put it best when he raved about our experience and expressly referenced the chef's focus on perfecting classic recipes using fresh ingredients as the primary reason. In a city that tends to have a flare for the excessive and complex—which, to be clear, we love under the right circumstances—OCIO is an absolute breath of fresh air. We can't wait to follow its journey as it grows into the Miami staple we know it deserves to become.