2025's 'Best Dessert Program' In America Is At This Wildly Inventive South Miami Restaurant

Known for its colorful neighborhoods and thriving arts, Miami is also one of America's best cities for foodies — dessert included. The creativity of its dishes stems, no doubt, from its mix of influences, with the Caribbean at its helm, embedded deeply into the cuisine and culture of neighborhoods like Little Havana, plus the seafood-centered sensibility of Southern coastal culture. Recoveco, a fairly new restaurant to the Miami scene (opened in June 2024), takes the best of Miami's wonderful eccentricity and applies it most notably to its desserts. Bon Appétit gave the eatery the "best desserts program" distinction among its top restaurants of 2025, highlighting a dessert selection that's tropical, unexpected, and, above all, delicious.

Take, for example, one of the dessert dishes described by the editors at Bon Appétit: A chocolate cake garnished with beads of finger lime and drizzled with a syrup derived from the pits of mamey sapote. Finger lime (a citrus native to the Australian rainforest) and mamey sapote (a stone fruit brought to Florida via Caribbean immigrants) are both tropical fruits that you might not have encountered before in the U.S. but which perfectly capture the lushness and diversity of Miami.

It was the philosophy of the restaurant's founding chefs, Nicolas Martinez and Teresa Gallina, to have a wide-reaching, innovative menu. "We intentionally ... aren't married to any cultural geography so we don't limit ourselves on what we can do," Gallina told Resy. Their shared backgrounds are a blueprint of this, having met at Alter, a progressive American restaurant, then moving to the Peruvian-Japanese restaurant Itamae (both now closed), before opening Recoveco. Since then, the restaurant has won multiple awards — not only in Bon Appétit, but also as a best new restaurant from the Miami New Times, and praise from the Michelin Guide.

Recoveco is open Wednesday through Saturday for dinner from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. You can book reservations online, which are released a month in advance. The restaurant's ethos is intimate and compact, down to its menu, which typically features just 10 items, including dessert. And those menu items lean unconventional. "The menu was more exotic than many, so wouldn't recommend Recoveco for children or picky eaters," wrote a local reviewer on Facebook. "But if you have a broad palate or want to try something unique, I highly recommend it."

The menu rotates seasonally, though the restaurant's website notes that it could change even daily, depending on what's available. Some of the unique standouts of its most recently offered menu include a chicken liver mousse, beef tongue with chimichurri, and grouper paired with a sabayon sauce. As for dessert, one of its recent offerings is a mulberry leaf and blueberry meringue — it's typical for the dessert menu to feature unexpected flora and tropical fruits.

Recoveco is located in South Miami, a 20 to 30-minute drive from the Miami International Airport. The neighborhood is more residential and relaxed than its busier central Miami counterparts, with many families and college students from the University of Miami campus, which is just five minutes from the restaurant. About a 15-minute drive from the restaurant is The Kampong garden of rare fruit and exotic plants (some of which might be featured in a Recoveco dish), a must-visit while you're in the area.