Krüs Kitchen – Coconut Grove's quiet upstairs kitchen

Up a winding staircase above Los Félix on Main Highway, Krüs Kitchen occupies a second-floor loft in the heart of Coconut Grove, where an arched skylight floods a room of white brick and pale wood with daylight. It is one half of Grassfed Culture Hospitality, the group chef Sebastián Vargas founded in 2020 with Josh Hackler and Pili Restrepo Hackler, and what began as a pandemic-era delivery kitchen has grown into a seasonal restaurant and natural-wine shop in its own right. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, a recognition that follows two consecutive MICHELIN Green Stars, in 2024 and 2025, awarded for a kitchen built on regenerative farms, zero-waste habits and a refusal to use seed oils. The room is small, the menu changes with the season, and the open kitchen runs on wood and fire rather than spectacle — a quietly serious table in a neighbourhood better known for its tourist terraces.

01The room and the setting

From the street, Krüs Kitchen gives little away: an airy, glass-fronted building that blends in with its neighbours along bustling Main Highway. The real room is one flight up, reached by a staircase that opens onto a sunlit, loft-like space with a separate kitchen and a retail wall of small-farm goods and organic wines.

Inside, a massive arched skylight pours light over white brick walls, light wood furniture and shelves stocked with artisanal pantry goods and bottles for sale. The focal point is a lively open kitchen set around an open flame, where diners watch the cooks work — an intimate, energetic counterpoint to the hush of fine dining below street level.

02The chef

Sebastián Vargas is Colombian-born but discovered his love of food as a child living in New Delhi, India. He later moved to Paris to cook before enrolling at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park; after graduating he worked for Massimo Bottura and in New York kitchens before landing a job at Eleven Madison Park.

Insider tip

Closed Mondays; brunch weekends 11am–3:30pm; reservations via OpenTable.

In 2015 he went looking for a different discipline altogether, joining Maaemo in Oslo and then Fäviken in Järpen, Sweden, where over three years he learned to cook with the seasons and built a working relationship with the land that still shapes his menus today. In 2020 he joined Josh Hackler and Pili Restrepo Hackler to launch Grassfed Culture Hospitality, opening Krüs Kitchen as the group's first concept before Los Félix, now a MICHELIN-starred taquería, opened on the ground floor beneath it. The same hospitality group has since expanded to Atlanta with FÜM and its rooftop bar Rabbit Ears, and most recently lent its kitchen team to Wilder Market & Kitchen, a new Midtown Miami grocery with a chef-driven prepared-foods counter.

03The cooking

The kitchen describes itself as highly seasonal Contemporary American with a heavy lean toward coastal Mediterranean flavours, built on locally sourced Florida ingredients. Vargas designs the menu around fire, smoke and fresh-caught seafood, changing dishes frequently to match what regenerative local farms bring in that week.

The pantry rules are strict by choice: raw, unrefined ingredients, coconut sugar instead of white sugar, and no seed oils anywhere on the stove. Much of the produce now comes from a dedicated milpa — the ancient Mesoamerican system of corn, beans and squash grown together in mutual regeneration — that Grassfed Culture has helped build with a local farm to supply both Krüs Kitchen and Los Félix year-round.

04What to order

Seafood carries the room: the smoked coconut rice with crab has become something of a signature, and the kitchen's crudos lean on unexpected citrus and oils. The Day's Catch ceviche, marinated in coconut milk and set off with pickled mango and grilled pineapple, is the dish regulars steer newcomers toward.

On the pasta side, housemade agnolotti with truffle pecorino shows the more composed register the kitchen can hit, while the wider rotating menu has included tagliatelle, grilled oyster mushrooms and a pastrami sandwich — proof that the "Deli" half of its MICHELIN listing is no accident.

05Wine and drinks

The retail wall is not decoration — it is the point. Bottles of natural and biodynamic wine line the shelves alongside house-made pantry staples, and staff are used to walking guests through unfamiliar labels rather than steering them to anything safe. Order a glass with dinner or buy a bottle to carry home after; the shop operates as its own stop for Coconut Grove residents who never book a table at all.

06The neighbourhood

Main Highway sits at the centre of Coconut Grove's pedestrian-friendly, chef-driven commercial strip, and city officials have pointed to Krüs Kitchen specifically as the kind of sustainability-minded concept the district wanted to attract. It is a short walk from the bay, Grove sailing clubs and the neighbourhood's older banyan-shaded streets — a useful stop before or after dinner downstairs at Los Félix.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.