Spotlight 99-250429

Good morning. What we’re covering in today’s Spotlight:

The Price of a Michelin Star
Coconut Grove’s Spring Migration
The Return of Goombay

Star Struck: The Michelin Guide in Miami

The Michelin Guide has been rating Miami restaurants since 2022, thanks to a paid arrangement with the state of Florida and local tourism boards.

By Kathryn Mann

The hours leading up to the recent announcement of Florida’s 2025 Michelin Guide awardees was a nerve-wracking experience for some aspiring chefs in Coconut Grove.

Take Michael Beltran for example. The executive chef and owner of Ariete Hospitality Group earned one Michelin star three years ago for his intimate restaurant Ariete.

Days before the April 17 awards ceremony he told me, “This year there’s going to be a lot of pressure… because we’re going to try to go for two, which we haven’t done in the past.”

It was an ambitious goal. For reasons difficult to pinpoint, very few restaurants make the leap from one to two stars, and even fewer from two to three. Soon after the awards ceremony got underway, Beltran’s wishes were dashed.

Season’s Feathered Greetings

In Springtime, Coconut Grove is a key stopover for birds migrating north, catching the gaze of birding enthusiasts near and far.

By Carolina Drake

The sun is already blazing on a recent Sunday morning at South Grove’s Merrie Christmas Park. Ana Lima, binoculars in hand, points toward a tiny flickering of black and yellow, barely visible in the dense canopy of a sprawling banyan fig tree.

“An American redstart,” she whispers, noting both its distinctive tail markings and its taste for the banyan’s ripe fruit that has just begun to fall. “It’s right on time.”

Lima, a Grove resident, avid birder, and the communications director for the Tropical Audubon Society, is here in search of any of the dozens of bird species that make Coconut Grove home – briefly, at least – during their spring migration north.

Goombay Gears Up

The annual festival celebrating Bahamian culture in Coconut Grove returns for three days in early June.

By Don Finefrock

Organizers of this year’s Goombay Festival in Coconut Grove are hoping to attract bigger crowds, more vendors and additional funding to rebuild the three-day event into the festival they remember as the pulsing heart of Bahamian culture in Miami.

“As a young girl, growing up in Miami-Dade County, I looked forward to Goombay every year. I couldn’t wait to go to Goombay,” Congresswoman Frederica Wilson said last week at a media event announcing the dates of this year’s festival.

“I want to see this come back, so we are going to join hands today, and we’re going to raise money, and we are going to get people to come back to Goombay, and make it the festival that it was before.”

After a hiatus of several years, the Goombay Festival returned in 2022 as a smaller event. This year’s festival begins on Friday June 6 in Armbrister Park and then moves to Grand Avenue for the traditional street party on Saturday and Sunday June 6 and 7.