Serendipity is one of those words hard to explain off the top of your head even if you know what it means. I Googled the phrase “define serendipity” and the best and easiest explanation is this: “The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. Used in a sentence: “a fortunate stroke of serendipity”.
Everything at Serendipity is big and oversized, the menu, the portions and I even found the servers and the greeters to have great big gregarious personalities as well. So keeping in line with this apparent motto of “bigger is better” I went along for the ride.
If you’re on a diet and can’t handle temptation this would not be the place for you. However, for the strong willed dieters who must get out and do more than “juice and gym” there are healthy options on the over-sized Serendipity 3 Miami menu; I suppose this would be the first ” fortunate stroke of serendipity” of the evening. Starting with the Size 0 cocktail, made with Crystal Light Lemonade, vodka, muddled strawberries and garnished with a cucumber allows for a cocktail indulgence without the guilt.
There are a handful of menu items such as side dishes of Fresh Fruit ($4) and Steamed Broccoli ($4) along with entree choices of Cedar Plank Salmon ($19), the Very Veggie Burger ($14), Ahi Tuna Salad ($17) and others that are lean lifestyle food choices, all of which are designated with an aqua colored SOBE Fit icon, which blatantly calls out to every other item on the menu I’m skinnier than you! We didn’t order any of the SOBE Fit food, we allowed ourselves to be taunted.
The Small Plates/ Tapas style dishes have no place here at Serendipity 3 Miami as the concept is about “ample” portions which ironically are ideal for sharing; sort of making this scenario six and one half dozen of another. Everything we ordered we shared. The Thai Beef Salad ($16), ABC Burger ($15), and my favorite the Fried Chicken & Waffles ($20). Our chicken was cooked perfectly, moist and tender on the inside, seasoned just right with crunchy fried greatness on the outside. And now the waffles. The waffles are like eating air, this could be very dangerous. I was almost tempted to ask for a side of waffles and call it a night. But I needed to be cool. I was having dinner with a friend who hails from Italy and let’s face it Europeans do not eat like Americans do, so I needed to control my carb crazies lest he began to think I’m some food consuming maniac.
We also ordered the Tropical Tuna Tacos ($12) this item doesn’t sport the SOBE Fit icon but it is made with Sushi Grade Tuna topped with a housemade Mango Salsa which threw me for a loop because I don’t do the sweet and savory thing but somehow it came together and ended up being quite tasty. I suppose it’s the fried shell (that is freshly made in house) that kept it from being “icon’d” but nonetheless, our server did say that it is one of the more popular items on the menu.
OK so about dessert. I feel compelled to tell you we really only grazed and tasted all that food saving room for dessert. As another ” fortunate stroke of serendipity” would have it my dinner date knows the manager from a lifetime ago so as those two played catch up I tweeted and photographed and took in the vast menu. The manager spied me eyeing the cocktail list and urged me to order the Cake cocktail which is made with cake infused vodka, a sugared cream floater, and garnished with rainbow sprinkles, and cubes of buttery cake. It was actually the one I absolutely did not want. I don’t care for sweet drinks and this just screamed sugar. I was drinking wine and was going to stick with that as my drink of choice; but the manager really wanted me to try this cocktail so he made one and brought it over to me. Never judge a book by its cover or menu description; my friend and I both agreed it was surprisingly very good. You couldn’t even taste the sweet, I believe it was because the 70-proof vodka it was made with killed any traces of sugar. And this was how we began dessert, first by drinking it.
You cannot go to Serendipity and not get the famed Frozen Hot Chocolate. Big, creamy, chocolate-y and shareable. So we did. At this point we were ready to roll out of there…literally.
And with the final ” fortunate stroke of serendipity” the manager sends over a dessert he felt we should try. (Hell, if I knew he was going to do that I would have asked for a waffle!) Red Velvet Cake with cream cheese frosting. The cake was good, not as dense as you would think (this was a welcome surprise given what we had just eaten) with a wonderfully thick sweet cream cheese frosting but it was the size that was outrageous. This was no piece of cake but a slab. A 1/4 of a cake that is four layers high. My photo does not do it justice so you’ll have to take my word for it….or grab 3 friends some Sunday, afternoon park at Ocean Drive, walk to the west end of Lincoln Road almost to Alton and taste for yourself. Then walk back to your car. You’ll thank me for that bit of advice, think of it as a ” fortunate stroke of serendipity”. Click here to view more photos.
Love the South Florida food scene? Check out our newly published book (Globe Pequot Press, $14.95), Food Lovers’ Guide to Miami & Fort Lauderdale
Serendipity 3 Miami 1102 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, FL 33139 305.403.2210.
