Spotlight 74-250204

In today’s Spotlight:

  • Oldest Grove restaurant forced to move
  • Arrest in homicide investigation

The Grove’s oldest continually operating restaurant needs to move to a new location by November 1.

By Christopher Pearson

Erin Compton has managed the health food restaurant her father opened in 1975 since his death in 2001. (Patrick Farrell for the Spotlight)

Michael Compton had just earned a degree in art from the University of Miami and was a serious bodybuilder when he decided to open a health food restaurant in Coconut Grove in 1975.

A lifelong lover of Western movies, Compton named his new venture The Last Carrot. His daughters Meadow and Erin Compton remember him explaining that “those movies were always named The Last Stagecoach or The Last Saloon or something, so The Last Carrot sounded good to me.”

After fifty years, the stagecoach may have reached the end of the trail unless Meadow and Erin, who have owned the restaurant since their father’s passing in 2001, can find a new location by November 1. 

That’s the date Coral Gables-based developer Allen Morris Company has given them to move the business from its address at 3133 Grand Avenue.


Charges stem from the execution of a search warrant as police investigate allegations of domestic violence and a gang-related homicide.

By Mike Clary 

Dwight A. Dupuch, Jr., 21, shown here in 2024, was arrested last week on charges that include aggravated assault with a firearm, battery, unlawful possession of five or more forms of identification and resisting an officer without violence.

Late on Thursday morning last week, heavily-armed Miami police SWAT officers, backed up by the department’s gang unit and agents with the FBI’s violent gang task force, rolled up on a small house on Charles Terrace and shouted for everyone inside to come out immediately.

Among those who obeyed the command was Patricia Dupuch, a 73-year-old retired teacher, and about seven other people, including young children, who were either inside or just arriving. All were herded to the middle of the street and ordered to sit down on the pavement next to a police truck.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” Dupuch said. “They didn’t tell us anything.”

One person who did not obey the initial police command was the man targeted by the raid: Dupuch’s grandson, 21-year-old Dwight A. Dupuch, Jr.


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