In the Spotlight,
- Grove restaurants thrive and struggle
- Coastal Cleanup sets records.
- A path to Playhouse compromise?
What makes Grove restaurant’s tick, or not? The Spotlight examines this engine of the Grove economy and village life. Record-setting numbers of volunteers spread across the Bay to collect tons of trash. A possible pathway to a Playhouse solution is proposed. The full archive of Spotlight stories, opinions and letters are always available on our website, where the Spotlight search tool excels at finding the news that matters to you.
Two recent restaurant closings may signal a shift in the Grove’s dining scene, and a tougher road ahead for local entrepreneurs and homegrown talent.
by Carlos Frías

Minty Z planned for the best-case scenario before it all went wrong.
The Chinese-inspired vegan restaurant opened on Grand Avenue near Commodore Plaza as throngs were moving to South Florida to escape COVID restrictions.
Owners Huimin “Minty” Zhu and her husband Alex Falco, a trained chef, had left New York amid rising rents in 2019 and found an eager audience of fellow transplants in the summer of 2020 as they sold homemade food in the Coconut Grove Organic Market.
With more than 70 sites countywide – including four in Coconut Grove – the annual event set a record for most participants and most trash collected.
by Jenny Jacoby

Knee-deep in a mangrove forest, Len Scinto worked for an hour to untangle an inflatable life raft and several feet of rope – the type of debris known to kill large marine animals – that was caught in a complex web of mangrove roots.
Nearby, on the shore of Clarington Island, just off Coconut Grove’s Dinner Key, community members of all ages sifted through the sand to remove thousands of pieces of plastic, clearing out a total of 496 pounds of trash in just two hours.
Readers respond to a news story we featured last week on the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Read letters here
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