Eating House

Maturity is a beautiful thing — especially when it comes to dining. Without it, you might find yourself eating cereal for dinner with friends who just discovered they can use Totino's Pizza Rolls as a pizza topping. But we all have to grow up at some point. That's exactly what Eating House did after closing its doors and reopening a year and a half later in Giralda Plaza — and the evolution suits it well.

The original Eating House was a scrappy pop-up-turned-restaurant that served the kind of gloriously unhinged dishes one might attempt to create at 3am. It threw raucous parties on April 20, hung graffiti art on the walls, served Tang mimosas at brunch, and paired steak with a blueberry teriyaki sauce the kitchen cheekily dubbed "blueberryaki."

The new Eating House is a striking departure. Plain white walls lined with long mirrors. A spare dining room of black chairs and tables. The space practically whispers corporate buzzwords like "streamlined" and "optimized." It's grown up — maybe even a little too grown up, aesthetically speaking.

But the kitchen hasn't lost its sense of play. That spirit is most alive in the rotating tasting menu, which pays loving homage to Miami dining institutions like Knaus Berry Farm and Tropical Chinese. The regular dinner menu still carries a few beloved Eating House originals — the heirloom tomatoes with frozen coconut milk and the brussels sprouts caesar among them. But at this new iteration, those aren't the dishes to chase. The real standouts are the deceptively simple: pillowy Parker House rolls, a deeply satisfying rigatoni, and a flawlessly executed NY strip.

Dining at Eating House today feels a bit like running into that kid who ate Play-Doh in high school — only now he's got a 401(k) and genuinely good taste. It's come a long way. And while it still knows how to cut loose (Cap'n Crunch pancakes remain on the brunch menu, bless), it has also learned an important lesson: just because you can put Totino's on a pizza doesn't mean you should.