Miami Springs’ popular Southern restaurant was sold. Is it still a local favorite?
Two friends took the biggest kind of risk with one of their favorite Miami restaurants: They bought it.
Nedal Ahmad, co-founder of Pincho (nee Pincho Factory), teamed up with comfort food blogger and Burger Museum founder Sef Gonzalez (who writes under the pen name Burger Beast) to take over Miami Springs’ Crackers Southern Dining, which will turn 10 this summer.
This is perhaps a bigger risk than opening a new restaurant. A built-in clientele also has built-in expectations. Change one dish too much or chuck it altogether, and you might have a revolt. Worse, your customers could simply stop caring — and coming.
But Crackers chickee hut was crowded after four months of new ownership on a recent Thursday afternoon, with lunching locals, including the former Miami Springs mayor Zavier Garcia, kicking back across from the Miami River waterway.
A menu of Southern dishes grew with items like pimento cheese fritters, and tweaks to favorites like the chicken-fried chicken and mac and cheese showed the new owners are not resting on reputation. A new bar that runs the length of the outside seating area doubles down on the breezy, waterfront outdoors that is becoming rarer in an overdeveloped South Florida.
The restaurant intends to be less a reboot of the original than a sequel to its casual, tiki-hut Southern food vibe. To that end, they finessed the restaurant’s middle name from Casual to Southern to accentuate the cuisine it intends to continue serving. These new items and tweaked favorites show why locals are still coming:
Start With: Pimento Cheese Fritters
It’s hard to believe these weren’t already on the menu. And that immediately bodes well for the rest of the restaurant, like an addition to a Coral Gables house that looks original.
This version of fritter, overseen by Gonzalez, is a crispy Cadbury Creme Egg of a bite, dripping with creamy (but not molten) cheese. It’s an excellent expression of the South’s love and respect for pimento cheese, with a satisfying crunch. Skip the side of ranch dressing. You won’t need it.
Hands over forks
One of any local’s long-gone pleasures was ordering a low-key fish sandwich at the gone-but-not-forgotten Scotty’s Landing in Coconut Grove and watching the boats sway on the bay with a beer in hand. This is the vibe you feel under the chickee hut at Crackers, with a blackened mahi sandwich in one hand and a beer (or a lemonade at lunch time) in the other. It’s fresh and flavorful, comes out fast and at 12 bucks, won’t hurt your wallet.
A good alternative is the crispy-shrimp po’ boy sandwich, on a chewy white-bread roll and just the right amount of spicy mayo.
Gonzalez had said Crackers would not become a burger restaurant simply because he’s a burger aficionado. Nevertheless, Crackers makes a solid one under his and Ahmad’s supervision. A patty of about one-third pound comes smashed under melted cheese (reject the instinct to get fancy and go for American, cheddar if you must) and is served with a side of lettuce, tomato and onion. If you want to do like the Burger Beast, slather with ketchup and mustard and skip the veggies.
Heartier plates
Crackers doesn’t try to be something it’s not, an overdeveloped Southern-themed restaurant.
And that’s why you can’t go wrong with a dish like the chicken-fried chicken. The flattened hunk of breast meat has a thin but crispy coating that holds its crunch under a river of white chicken gravy. Some of the sides, like Ritz-cracker-topped mac and cheese (whose previous owners doused with Velveeta, Gonzalez had said) and a cloyingly sweet potato casserole, feel like a work in progress.
The shrimp and grits, though a little soupier than you might be used to, has strong New Orleans flavors and is loaded with tender shrimp.
All of it reminds you that Southern fare still holds an important place in a South Florida that skews Latin and Caribbean. And a blast of cool air while sitting in Crackers breezy outdoors reminds you of the best parts of living in South Florida.
Miami Herald food writers dine unannounced and at the newspaper’s expense.
CRACKERS SOUTHERN DINING
Address: 78 Canal St., Miami Springs
Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. Friday until 9:30 p.m. Saturday brunch 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., dinner 4-9:30 p.m. Sunday brunch 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Prices: Appetizers, $7-10. Sandwiches and entrees, $15-$25.
More info: EatAtCrackers.com, 786-518-3268
This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
