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Review | Chef lifts Soleá to excellence

Soleá, the W Hotel's newly launched Spanish stunner, is as warm and welcoming as a cup of steaming chocolate on a cold winter night.

This is not the same Soleá that made its faltering debut in August. After being pushed to open for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a watered-down Mediterranean concept, restaurateurs Karim Masri, Nicola Siervo and Rony Seikaly (Quattro Gastronomia Italiana, Sosta Pizzeria) lured talented executive chef Marc Vidal to give South Beach its first real taste of Spanish cuisine.

Dishes can be as simple as a plate of thin-shaved Iberico ham or as sublime as braised veal cheeks alongside toast slathered with Idiazabal cheese. In all cases, the cooking is deliberate, confident and relaxed.

Review | Tiny Candela a rare and delightful find

Dining at Candela is like having a personal chef. Give talented toque Armando Vega a few days notice and he'll cook whatever you want (within reason, of course). Plus you'll be amazed at the quality and quantity of the food at such modest prices.

Candela is the kind of find that restaurant critics live for yet share with some trepidation. There's a sweet harmony you'd hate to disturb.

That said, the chef richly deserves the recognition, and it's unlikely you'd just happen upon his restaurant, wedged as it is between a mini market and vacant storefronts in a shopping strip off Wilton Manors Drive.

Viva Chile celebrates bounty of land and sea

Chilean cuisine is a fusion of European and native influences and ingredients that celebrates the bounty of land and sea in this 2,700-mile-long country sandwiched between the Andes and the Pacific.

On a trip to Patagonia several years ago, my first taste of Chile was a bowl of steaming crab soup in a picada (family-style restaurant) that warmed me from the cold sleet. At Viva Chile, a new place in Davie, a mixed seafood soup in a briny broth spiked with paprika oil reminded me of that comforting meal.

Owners Isabel Klagges and Maria Angelica San Juan have created a Broward hangout for Chileans and other fans of the country's flavorful, not-too-spicy-hot cuisine.

Dominican cuisine's a miraculously good deal

Milagro means ``miracle'' in Spanish, and it's something of a miracle to find Milagro's Dominican Cuisine, with its good food and downright cheap prices, in the heart of South Beach.

The café is named for Milagro Espinal, the cook and co-owner with her son Gerald Marcelino. (Her son Hugo does the books.) As a child in Santiago, she cooked for her nine siblings while her mother worked in another household.

Milagro worked in a clothing factory when she first immigrated to New York in 1970, and then opened a restaurant in Washington Heights. The family moved to South Florida in 2002 and opened the original Milagro's in Pembroke Pines, but closed it to finance the new place.

Miami Gardens street offers Caribbean culinary delights

You don't need a passport to get a taste of Caribbean cuisine. A ride or stroll along Northwest Second Avenue in Miami Gardens will yield fritay , traditional fried treats from Haiti, roti , a burrito-like curry meal popular in Trinidad and succulent meat marinated in Jamaica's famous jerk seasoning.

With regular customers from nearby Miramar and Northeast Dade, this busy strip lined with mom and pop small businesses and big box stores draws faithful devotees to newbies who want to indulge in island culinary adventures for $25 or less.

At Chef Creole, authentic Haitian food with a Bahamian flair is dished up in standard white to-go foam containers even if you're eating in.