Food of Miami. Caroline Stuart

mixes tuna steak with black beans and pineapple in Thai peanut sauce. At Atlantic's Edge, chef Dawn Sieber bakes dolphin in phyllo dough with spinach and balsamic glaze and cooks spicy orange shrimp in dark rum. For the seafood purist, the Islamorada Fish Co. offers up standards such as conch chowder, crab fritters and the absolute freshest of fish, served in a basket with coleslaw and french-fries, for less than ten dollars. At Louie's Backyard in Key West, chef Doug Shook is following in the illustrious footsteps of Norman Van Aken, who brought Louie's to the forefront of the then-nascent Keys fine-dining scene in the 1980s.

      Although neons and pastels are the dominant colors in South Beach architecture, The Tides breakfast atmosphere is enhanced by the facade's soothing off-white.

      Astor Place, the bistro-style restaurant at the Hotel Astor.

      Today, the region's emerging fine-dining destination is affluent Aventura, in the far northeast corner of Dade County. Aventura is home to Fish, which features a 20,000 Leagues atmosphere, a bustling raw bar, and such elegant entrees as grouper with creamy leeks, French lentils, and wild mushrooms. And at the private Turnberry Isle Resort & Club, chef Todd Weisz is serving the upscale clientele an upscale take on Floribbean.

      Flash south along the coast and east across Biscayne Bay to South Beach, or SoBe, the so-called American Riviera, where the Art Deco revival fostered a revolution in tourism, nightlife, and dining. The Beach scene has a reputation for high prices and indifferent service, and some of that is deserved, but there's a high degree of glamour at work here, too. Take the Blue Door restaurant at The Delano, a blindingly white hotel in northern South Beach. The restaurant is a bustling, chaotic, super-crowded, see-and-be-seen spot—you might even end up sitting ten feet from Calvin Klein or Madonna. The Delano has competition in the swank hotel department in The National, its neighbor to the south on suddenly exploding Collins Avenue. Refurbished and reopened to much fanfare in 1997, The National is home to the Oval Room, featuring one of the city's most sophisticated menus. Ocean Drive, ground zero for the SoBe revolution, is more oriented toward fun than food these days, with the exception of chef Christophe Gerard's elegant Twelve Twenty at The Tides Hotel. Two blocks inland on Washington Avenue, chef Johnny Vinczencz's Astor Place may offer the best combination of food and service on the Beach, with a menu that's all about fusion, from a fantastic Caribbean seafood soup to a cold sushi-plate entree. You can also catch his food at his nearby casual diner, Johnny V's Kitchen. Farther south on Washington is China Grill, an outpost of the wildly popular New York restaurant. The food is pan-Asian, excellent and expensive, and the wait can be forty-five minutes or more on a weekend, even with a reservation.

      The crowds are just as heavy a few blocks east at Nemo, the Schwartz-Chefetz team's flagship restaurant, where Schwartz matches fish with exotic greens and adds Vietnamese spice to an excellent beef tenderloin. Across the street is their budget house, the Big Pink,

       where the camp factor is so high that you can get a bona fide TV dinner on a compartmentalized tray. The food is homemade, though, and good.

      North of Fifth Street, Washington Avenue is evolving into a strand of nightclubs and clothing stores, but it is still home to the Beach's best Italian restaurant, Osteria del Teatro. By and large, Beach sophisticates have moved north to the newly renovated Lincoln Road, a pedestrian mall that spans the island from ocean nearly to bay. Much of the eating there is done outdoors, and on weekend nights during the season, the walkways are packed.

      Outstanding restaurants abound, not all of them expensive, and fans of Italian are especially well rewarded. Rosinella's, a tiny trattoria on the East End, features excellent homemade pastas, sauces and soups, with a full-meal ticket of about twenty dollars. Trattoria da Leo, farther west, has a similar menu and a surprisingly sophisticated decor and clientele (don't miss the world's best house salad).

      The British invasion of Lincoln Road, begun by Michael Caine with his South Beach Brasserie, continues with Balan's, opened by a London-based group with a flair for combining hip sophistication with fine Thai-, Chilean-, and Moroccan-influenced food at a budget price. Fiery Jamaican food, cooled a bit to state-side tastes, is on display at Norma's On The Beach, where chef Cindy Hutson flies in many ingredients from the island. Cuban cuisine at its most sophisticated is served at Yuca, on the mall neighboring the Lincoln Theatre, where the New World Symphony performs. When the orchestra plays early on a Saturday evening, you can sit outside, sip cafe con leche, and listen in as the concert is broadcast onto the mall.

      A symphony of flavors? Or better yet, call it a fusion. Bravo!

      Bigfish Mayaimx located on the Miami River, purveys an eclectic mix of seafood cuisine and scintillating artwork.

      Part Two: The Miami Kitchen

      Part With simple equipment, easy techniques, and a palette of local and international flavors, the food of South Florida comes dazzlingly alive

      For cooking the food of Miami and the Keys the equipment isn't elaborate and typical kitchens contain just about everything necessary. Stockpots, saucepans, and saute pans are essential. For frying, a deep fryer is useful, but a deep hying pan or heavy saucepan will suffice.