The Best Places in Miami to Get Mofongo

From food trucks to family restaurants to great spots for nightlife, these Puerto Rican establishments across Miami will cure your mofongo cravings.

Miami is home to many Puerto Rican restaurants and food trucks that offer up their unique take on the time-honored dish mofongo. The name of the meal traces its origins to the Angolan Kikongo term “mfwenge-mfwenge,” which means “a great amount of anything at all.” Appropriately, the spots serving Miami’s best mofongo will send you home with a wide variety of leftovers lasting days.

Milly’s Restaurant

Milly’s Restaurant is the kind of gem you can only find by keeping your eyes peeled. Located in the corner of a quiet shopping center in Little Havana, Milly’s interior transports you back to a more regal, elegant time with nature landscape paintings adorning the walls, Tiffany’s style, stained glass light fixtures on the ceiling, and cherry wood furniture. The house specialty at Milly’s is mofongo, and they offer it with a wide variety of meats and seafoods like Spanish longaniza sausage, lobster, and lambi guisado, or stewed conch. Milly’s has been drawing crowds from Little Havana and beyond for nearly three decades with its quality cooking and family atmosphere. Don’t forget to peruse the floor-to-ceiling collection of photos snapped of celebrities and beloved locals who have eaten at the restaurant.

Mofongo Restaurant

Just as its name suggests, Mofongo Restaurant on Calle Ocho in Little Havana serves many, many varieties of mofongo that you can customize to your tastes. No matter if you get the short rib variety or the popular mixto with chicken, shrimp, and grilled, marinated churrasco skirt steak, the mofonguito dish sits tall in a wooden pestle, a nod to the traditional method of starting mofongo by mashing plantains with a mortar. Mofongo Restaurant plantains—which you can order green or sweet and fried or substitute altogether for yuca—are topped with fresh, chopped onions and peppers, as well as a drizzle of chimichurri, garlic cream, or mushroom sauce, among other choices.

El Bori Food Truck 

When that late night craving for mofongo sets in, there’s only one place to go in Miami: Wynwood’s El Bori Food Truck. “We are the only authentic Puerto Rican food truck in the area,” says owner Jorge Corrales. El Bori is the kind of place where drunken clubgoers mingle with families in line, and everyone ends up with quality dishes plated beautifully. One of their popular mofongos is served with eight shrimp quick-seared in tons of garlic. The truck recently celebrated its fourth anniversary with a community barbeque, proving El Bori is here to stay in Wynwood, a neighborhood whose history is predominantly Puerto Rican.

100×35 Cocina Con Raíces

At this Puerto Rican restaurant just across the Biscayne Bay from Star Island in Miami’s South Beach, mofongo is served with a side of party. Latin nights on Fridays and live music Saturdays make the colorful and lushly decorated space feel like a nightclub, and the craft cocktails put on their own show of fizzing and smoking. After you’ve worked up an appetite from dancing, 100×35 Cocina Con Raíces’ mofongo comes with both classic and unique choices: fried pork, skirt steak, octopus salad, and lobster. The restaurant’s name is an ode to both Puerto Rico’s measurements in miles and the chef’s commitment to maintaining the cuisine’s Puerto Rican identity—that’s why every mofongo is served in a traditional pilón.

El Bajareque

This cozy kitchen and restaurant in Wynwood remains an icon of the neighborhood’s past as a quiet home to Puerto Rican families, before the art galleries and night clubs moved in. El Bajareque has no website or social media presence—instead it has a wide, shiny lunch counter on which empanadas and sweet pastries rest in a tiny hot box. For the past 40 years, El Bajareque has been whipping up mofongo with pork, shrimp, or churrasco skirt steak. Make sure to save room for a vanilla or coconut flan, or both.

Isla Del Encanto

Located in the Crossings, a suburb of southwest Miami near Kendall, Isla Del Encanto is the brainchild of Chef Tuti, who hails from Lares, Puerto Rico, with more than four decades of cooking Puerto Rican cuisine under his belt. Chef Tuti offers 16 varieties of mofongo, from a classic grilled chicken breast to the jaw dropping fried fish, which arrives on the plate sitting upright with scales, eyes, and all its delicious glory. This cozy family restaurant features a brightly colored mural highlighting Puerto Rican sites, celebrities, and culture, and offers a welcoming atmosphere perfect for family reunions or birthday parties.

Don Mofongo Food Truck

Though they usually park in Homestead, about 35 miles south of downtown Miami, this food truck offers authentic Puerto Rican and Dominican cuisine throughout Miami-Dade County at events and fairs. Don Mofongo values tradition, so of course the mofongo is made with plantains mashed by hand. Pair your mofongo with queso frito or pechurinas, the chef’s special chicken tenders infused with Dominican seasoning. When you’re waiting in line to get your food, look sharp—you might just end up on Don Mofongo’s Instagram page, which regularly posts shots of its satiated customers.