Located at 423 Washington Avenue, between 4th and 5th St., Izzy’s Restaurant serves New England fare in a cool, hip South Beach setting.

The restaurant has a laid back feel, with white walls, royal blue seating, and large windows. The restaurant is small, it seats around 40, it has seats around the bar and a few outside tables as well. It has only been open for about a half year and I have already read reviews in the New York Times, the Miami Herald, Miami Times and the Food Network to name a few.

Chef Jamie de Rosa, who had opened Tongue and cheek already had quite a following. He previously worked for some well renowned chefs such as Miami’s Allen Susser and Wolfgang Puck to name drop a few. Chef de Rosa serves such seafood staples as clam chowder (ours was served luke warm), lobster rolls served warm with a brown butter hollandaise type sauce or cold with a mayo dressing. There is also fried clam bellies, fresh oysters, crab cakes and fish and chips. This is a child-friendly restaurant. They provided crayons and paper and had a very nice well priced children’s menu.

We were told that the chef gets much of his seafood shipped directly from Maine every other day.

Dinner service was friendly by our waiter Danny, but the kitchen and bar service was extremely slooow. It’s not easy to keep young children waiting two hours for a pretty simple meal. Thank goodness for the crayons.

We started with some warm, parker house rolls and some butter.

As mentioned the clam chowder was not warm enough, but it was tasty. The sugar snap salad with shredded cheese, mint and marcona almonds was a lighter option. The oysters were very fresh and I was given a nice selection with 4 sauces as an option. If you go between 5-7 each night the oysters are half price at the bar along with the house wines. The bar was quite busy for that reason. The fish and chips were very good. The lobster rolls had a great sauce and were on a lovely roll, but if I am being honest the lobster meat was a little on the tough side. Maybe this could be remedied with a little less cooking time. For dessert we tried all three options on the menu. The lemon meringue pie, the whoopie sandwich and the Boston cream cake. All three were quite good, but I felt the lemon tart was the best choice of the three.

They are open daily for dinner from 6-11pm, and they are open for brunch on Saturday and Sunday from 11-3pm, where they serve bottomless Rosé and sparkling wine.

There are not a lot of great choices of restaurants in this part of SoBe, so this place could be a good option. But if I was driving down this far I would drive a little further and go to Joe’s. However, the bill would be a lot more expensive and they don’t take reservations like they do at Izzy’s.

Happy dining,
Shanea

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