What Miami Spice? Hallandale Eats! wants to prove Hallandale Beach can dish big restaurant deals, too

There’s Miami Spice and Dine Out Lauderdale, and now Hallandale Beach joins the fray with a promotion designed to get diners into restaurants: The inaugural Hallandale Eats! week (yes, their exclamation point) will take place Sept. 24-30 with discounts at 22 participating restaurants.

Reservations are suggested, and restaurants will offer deals ranging from multi-course fixed-price meals of $39 or less, while others will discount the total check 10 to 20 percent. Some restaurants command big followings, such as Bagel Cove and Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine. Several eateries – such as Dumpling AF and Icebox Cafe – are newcomers to Hallandale’s dining scene, while many – Peruvian spot Ceviche Avenue, wine bar Il Mercato Café – are older but largely unknown outside Hallandale Beach.

What steered Hallandale Beach to embrace a week of dining promotions? Answer: It started with a South Beach diet, says Faith Phinn of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

In February, Gulfstream Park’s Pegasus Park staged a satellite South Beach Wine and Food Festival event called Food and Groove that convinced Phinn the city needed to champion its homegrown restaurants.

Then, during the pandemic, dining sales cratered across the city. “We had to keep supporting restaurants, which really take the brunt of COVID,” Phinn says. “It’s really a way to remind locals and snowbirds, which we have a lot of, to eat here instead of leaving Hallandale.”

Many participating eateries dwell inside an area the CRA is calling its FAD entertainment district (Food, Art and Design), located northwest of Gulfstream Park and west of US-1 where Foster Road meets Dixie Highway. Future restaurants in the area will include a franchise location of P. Pole Pizza, an outpost of celebrated Hollywood ramen joint GoBistro, and a shipping container restaurant from the owner behind Charcoal Garden Bar + Grill at Wynwood Yard.

Take your appetite to these five restaurants offering some of the most impressive Hallandale Eats! deals.

Icebox Café

219 NE Third St.; 754-777-7255; IceBoxCafe.com

Hallandale Beach’s newest restaurant – the soft opening is Sept. 24 – is a bright, minimalist cake box of a space, with white walls, murals and global cuisine from restaurateur Robert Siegmann. Its flagship Miami Beach location, of course, earned “best cake” from Oprah in 2006 (the same year she saluted Le Tub Saloon), when she spotlighted Icebox’s Chocolate Delight, a cheesecake brownie sandwiched inside chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling. Icebox’s $25 three-course menu includes this turducken of a dessert, so definitely choose that. Start with Buffalo or BBQ-style wings for appetizer, then, for entrée, order curry chicken on a bed of cilantro jasmine rice, roasted vegetables and Madras curry sauce.

Dumpling AF

26 Diplomat Parkway; 305-450-0853; DumplingAF.com

A celebration of the humble, handmade Asian pot sticker, Dumpling AF began its life at Booth 63 at Hollywood’s Yellow-Green Farmers Market, selling dumplings and mochi ice cream to ravenous crowds. They opened their first brick-and-mortar in February: a well-hidden poolside eatery inside the Knights Inn hotel on Hallandale Beach Boulevard. For Hallandale Eats the restaurant is offering a choice of slow-braised, short-rib pelmeni, a Russian-style dumpling ($10 for six, $15 for 10, steamed or fried); or manti ($8 for four pieces), a Turkish-style dumpling filled with six-hour brisket, mozzarella cheese and sautéed onion, and served with a side of sour cream. Don’t forget to dunk them in the eatery’s house-made chili sauce.

Nana’s Food For You

312 N. Federal Highway; 786-310-5184; NanasUSA.com

Open for takeout and delivery but not dine-in, Nana’s is part of the wave of so-called “prepared meals” spots that blinked into existence this spring and catered to quarantined eaters seeking chef-quality, ready-to-heat dishes at home. Nana’s, which comes from owner Oscar Amorelli, offers full meals ($4.90-$11.90 per entree) in TV dinner-style packaging, ranging from keto beef fajitas to Mediterranean baby octopus to a 6-ounce prime N.Y. strip. Sides are equally impressive for the price ($2.99-$3.85), and include herb-roasted potatoes, tuna-stuffed peppers and oven-roasted Brussels sprouts. Nana’s Hallandale Eats deal includes a free side with the purchase of two meals.

Doggi’s Arepa Bar

801 N. Federal Highway, Suite 118; 754-400-8115; EatDoggys.com

An offshoot of the flagship Venezuelan eatery in Miami’s MiMo district, Doggi’s does for arepas – the South American cornmeal cake – what Jaxson’s does for ice cream. There are 30 flavor combinations to stuff inside your warm arepa – fried pork belly, falafel and marinated churrasco are a few examples – as well as five types of patecons (a Venezuelan specialty sandwiched between two crispy, fried plantains). Bring an appetite to Doggi’s Hallandale Eats deal, a $39 three-course prix-fixe for two, which begins with curiara (a baked plantain canoe with brown butter and white cheese). The entrée is a meat smorgasbord called a parilla, with grill-fired chicken thighs, Argentinian chorizo and marinated churrasco.

Leroy’s Smokehouse BBQ

812 W. Hallandale Beach Blvd.; 954-613-4077; BBQLeroys.com

A barbecue joint from pitmaster Leon Brill, this year-old eatery specializes in low-and-slow, wood-fired 'cue, including Texas-style brisket, baby back and spare ribs, pulled pork and smoked sausage, and a tangy-sweet housemade barbecue sauce to tie it all together. Leroy’s boasts one of the best Hallandale Eats deals: choice of spare ribs, baked beans, rice and a corn muffin ($9.49) or a half-pound wood-fired cheeseburger with French fries ($9.99). Feeling indulgent? Bring three other barbecue lovers and order Leroy’s Family Sampler ($55, down from usual $65.99 price), a feast that includes a half-rack of ribs, half chicken, one pound each of pulled pork and beef brisket and five sides.

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