Lighthouse Cafe

Me and my friend made a beach day down in Key Biscayne by the Lighthouse.
We were so hungry and thirsty and this little restaurant was our life saver!
I ordered the grilled pork with french fries and plantains and my friend the grilled fish.
We both really enjoyed our late lunch and were almost 2 hours on their little restaurant pavilion. The service was friendly and on point.
The french fries were a little overcooked, but besides this we enjoyed our food and visit.

Did not enjoy this restaurant, we only went because it was the only option nearby. The food was bland and the portion size was very small. The fish tasted dodgy. The staff here was not friendly at all, they glared at us while we ordered our food.

I’m not very impressed, one star for the convenience of it being on the beach when you get hungry. But the food isn’t good, the portions are small, and the service isn’t friendly. I ordered the chicken fingers and fries and they were. Okay, but I was playing it safe. My friend ordered the salmon burger and she said it tasted frozen, she maybe got 5 fries as her side. Like I said the convenience is great so you don’t have to be hungry in case you didn’t bring food, but next time I will bring my own. If you do order, order something that’s hard to mess up :)

I would give no stars if I could. This place was horrible. Never got service. Go to the Boaters grill. Same menu. Little more expensive but worth the wonderful service.

I wish Unilocal offers minus stars. I can’t believe that this kind of place still exist. Worst customer service. We ordered pasta Alfredo, veg burger and tuna. Food was edible but we got it in like an hour and they took more than 45 minutes to send us bill. When I complained about it to server then she said this is how we operate. Really?

Great view, standard beach food. The lobster bisque is basically puréed lobster and tomato soup. The salmon burger had maybe a one ounce piece of salmon.

DO NOT EAT HERE
If I could give no stars I would! This is how it went:
The short is — terrible service, terrible food, pathetic portions, view is the only good thing.
Lunch, Christmas Eve Day, arrive at 1:20 pm, stand there aimlessly as staff walks by without paying any attention. After a few minutes a waitress gives us two menus and says go find a table. The place is half full and all the unoccupied tables are covered in dirty plates except for one table attached to some people eating so we ask them if we can separate the table, they kindly say yes.
Ok I’m calm, the view is amazing out onto the water. It turns out this is all they have going for them.
After a few minutes a mopey waitress comes over with a sad, pathetic face on making it clear she is pissed she is working on Christmas Eve. We order drinks, waters, avocado salad, wife orders salmon sandwich, I order red snapper sandwich. We order simple food thinking this is not the type of place to get fancy.
Drinks come in a few minutes and then the long hard silence. At around 1:50 a plate with half an avocado and a couple of lifeless, disgusting pieces of salad. Literally 5 pieces of iceberg lettuce and 1, yes only 1 slice of tomato. This is the avocado «salad»! Ok, I stay calm as I enjoy the glass of sauv blanc, the view and my wife’s company.
It took until almost 2:30 for our sandwiches to arrive — uncooked French fries, and a sliver of red snapper on Cuban bread with soggy lettuce. We’re starving now so we eat quickly and fed up with the place ask for the check from a random staffer walking by because our waitress is nowhere to be seen, not that I miss her happy face.
After 10 minutes waiting for the check my wife and I have had enough. We walk up to the register and try and get someone’s attention but none of the staff is giving me the time of day. My wife insists we should just walk out without paying. We should have.
Finally our waitress shows up, her face unchanged. As she rings up the check and some of the other staff are near the register I start almost yelling about our experience, how it took almost an hour to get our food the check. He staff are literally ignoring my complaint, not even looking at me she puts the bill down. I paid and left no tip, I don’t think I have ever done that.
I am going to call the credit card company to cancel payment but I doubt they will. But that is how I feel about this place. I will tell all my friends here in Miami never to go here.

This place was awesome! Very casual, in the middle of the beach. I got the Large fried red snapper. It was quite big! Good enough to share. Very well cooked. I like my fried fish crispy on the outside and this place got it exactly right. Our waitress was very nice and helpful. I would definitely come back again!

Love the food and service here. If u like avocados, always fresh

We ate here after the beach which is conveniently located on the beach @ Bill Baggs. The food is average but their beat dish is the churrasco and papaya/​mango cheesecake. The service is good and prices reasonable (thou pricey) for the location. A added benefit is that they service beer & wine which is refreshing after a day on the beach!

Worked a catering event and I can honestly say that the owners are slave drivers. They stood around and watched 4 women move tables while she stood there and yelled orders. I have never had such a bad experience working at event as I did today.

3 stars for existence in this wonderful, wonderful park. Food? 1 star.
You shouldn’t come to this park for food. Come for the beutiful beach. I came hungry and left full. While food was bad at best, I ate my grilled chicken sandwich, because the hole in my stomach was vast and there was no other place to eat. No complaints here. I was glad for this place. It fed us. Next time I visit I’ll just make sure I bring my own food. Service was fine, and the view is great. Understand that you’re eating at a state park and you won’t be disappointed.

… Es ist das einzige Restaurant hier ;-)
Also gibt’s Fisch als Ganzes frittiert und mein Avocado Salat war: 1 Scheibe Tomate /​5 Stücke Eisberg Salat und eine halbe wirklich gute Avocado.
Der Cheeseburger dagegen wurde mit Pommes serviert die minimum seit 1 Stunde warm gehalten wurden.
6 Leute am arbeiten, frische Ware scheinbar da und ein miserablen Ergebnis.
Kellnerin bekommt die 2 Sterne war sehr freundlich.
Das ganze hat mit 3 Colas immerhin 23 Dollar gekostet.
Und was mich langsam nervt: gibt’s in Amerika kein Porzellan ?!? Leute ich bin hier nicht in ein unterentwickeltes Kontinent.

I enjoyed the seasonal avocado salad and a side of red beans and rice… Very good… The avocado was massive and perfectly ripe!

Looking for a different beach experience, then this the place. Conveniently located beachside you don’t have to go far to enjoy good food.
Here you’re not subject to the typical fast food or food-​cart scenario found at many beach locations but instead fresh seafood and side dishes.
Give it a try

I’ve been coming to the Lighthouse Café for years, and I’m always struck immediately by the view of the beautiful ocean. It’s wonderful to sit near the water, drink a café con Leche, and eat everything from croquetas to empanada to lechon. This is by far my favorite spot in Miami.
But I’ve never thought about the Lighthouse as a place for a wedding until I attended one, and now, I can’t imagine a better place to say I Do. The wedding had a space for a live band, a beautiful table, and all the dancing one wedding can handle. Plus, I ate the food prepared by the Gonzalez family. If I could do it all over, then I would probably get married there. The photos, man, the photos with the colors from the sunset… Wonderful.

My friend and I were in Miami for a day and wanted to eat somewhere unique and on the water. Lighthouse Café came up on a few lists and we decided to try it. The «incredible view» they say you get here it really just a small glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean, as it is within walking distance. It is not «on the water» as we expected. The seating is on plastic chairs and the place is nothing special. Everyone is coming from the ocean for a quick bite to eat and most of their menu is fish, which I can’t eat right now due to dietary restrictions. We got to pick our own seating, but there were only two tables available at the time, both in the sun. We waited about 20 minutes before a waiter came to take our order. As we started ordering, the table behind us came available. We told our server that we wanted to switch tables to sit in the shade. He said «the table is dirty, you can’t sit there.» I looked at him puzzled and asked if he could get the table cleaned off; he said we had to wait until they got to it. After 10 minutes, we chased down a man who looked like he was bussing the tables and it was cleaned off. I asked the waiter what was good on the menu other than fish. Everything he recommended had fish. I said a second time, I can’t eat fish. He proceeded to point out more fish items on the menu…
We ordered frozen mango and lemonade drinks, mozzarella sticks, a cheeseburger, conch, and a piece of Key lime pie. The cheeseburger and conch came out, but the cheese sticks didn’t. The conch was good, but it’s hard to mess up fried food. The cheeseburger was a frozen patty and it tasted terrible. The bun was also rock hard. The condiments on the tables were very dirty, they had sand all over the caps. You would think someone would wipe those down every once in a while. Our waiter didn’t ask how our meal was for 30 minutes, when he brought out the pie. I reminded him of our cheese sticks and he ran back before I could finish my sentence to put the order in. Once he brought them out I didn’t even want them anymore. The bill was $ 40. He also wrote at the top of our receipt «15% Tip Not Included: $ 5.99» — the nerve. The food is horrible and the service is worse. Go somewhere else, or if you’re on the beach, bring your own food. The only cool thing about this place is the walk to the ocean and seeing the beautiful lighthouse its named after.

So after some time in the water, my friends and I decided to get a bite to eat. We waited in line for a few minutes, and the whole seating process seemed unorganized. There were people trying to pay, people trying to be seated, and others trying to order to-​go plates. We were finally seated and we waited there for about 15 minutes before our waitress asked for drinks. I ordered the salmon burger, a side of fries, and a coke.
We got our drinks and we waited for our food.
we waited…
we waited…
Oh food is coming, but it’s not ours… we waited some more.
We look over at the kitchen and no food is coming out. We basically waited for 50 minutes until our food came. All that wait for horrible food. The only thing decent thing on the plate was the fries. My salmon patty tasted like it was frozen. It was cold in the middle, but hot on the outside. It was just horrible.
So I asked for the check to be split and she brings me one check with everything that we ordered. Then I infer that maybe I’ll have to split it at the register. We go to pay and there is so much chaos and I was really annoyed. The lady at the register didn’t even look like she wanted to spilt the check for us. We eventually paid for our food separately, but it was just a very unorganized process. And make sure you order over 10 dollars to use your credit card or debit card. I honestly find that ridiculous…
Overall, this place was terrible. Bad service with a kitchen that takes vacations every 5 minutes. Food was not worth the wait. Never coming back. I will bring a packed lunch next time.

Atrocious and overpriced. We decided to stop by after the beach and check this place out to see if it was any good. Walking in, it was packed full of people whom overwhelming were having the snapper for dinner. I thought it a bit odd that so many people were having 1 dish, but I just attributed it to the fact that it was a beach restaurant.
They must’ve known something that I didn’t.
Upon sitting down, it literally took the waitress 15 minutes to even make initial contact with us. Once she finally did, I ordered the shrimp with tostones appetizer ($ 14) and the grilled snapper sandwich with no onions (approximately $ 8). I specifically asked her to bring the appetizer before she brought the sandwich — because that only normal, right?
We waited approximately 40 minutes — during which the waitress not once stopped to bring us our appetizer or refill our drinks. After the 40 minutes, she brought us the appetizer and the sandwich — AT THE SAME TIME. I was a bit annoyed at this point, but my hunger allowed me to just shrug it off.
First the appetizer, for $ 14 I expected one hell of a plate of shrimp and some amazing tostones. Instead what I got were some tiny, miniature shrimp in a rather medicore tasting sauce. The tostones were practically inedible as well. They were overcooked and were sliced way too thin. There was no semi-​soft interior to balance out the crunchy exterior — it was just crunchy all over. It was like eating an excessively hard to chew potato chip.
As for the sandwich, well… the size of the sandwich was a bit on the smaller size… but i guess it was still acceptable. What was not acceptable is that there were onions on my sandwich after I specifically asked that there be none. Perhaps even worse… the piece of fish that they put on the sandwich was absolutely pititful. I’m sorry… but when I can get a damn fish sandwich with twice the girth at Wendy’s for $ 2 less than your damn fish sandwich is garbage. It wasn’t enough that the meat in the sandwich was insubstantial… but it also didn’t taste all that great. It tasted undercooked.
Overall, this was an absolutely horrible experience and we ended up having to go spend some more money elsewhere to wash out that horrible experience from our minds and mouths. If you ever go to the beach at Bill Baggs, avoid this garbage place.

Das Beste an diesem Platz ist die Lage. Nur wenige Meter vom Strand des Stateparks entfernt, der naturbelassen ist, keine Badeaufsicht hat, dafür aber einen Vermieter für Sonnenschirme und Liegen.
Das Café besteht aus einer großen überdachten Terrasse, von der man einen guten Blick über das Grün auf das Meer hat. Die Überdachung ist sinnvoll, denn zum Essen ist die hiesige Sonne einfach zu heiß. Hier gibt es kein «wait to be seated» — wie bei uns steuert man auf einen freien, genehmen Tisch zu.
Es gibt all die üblichen schnellen Gerichte, die aber leider nicht schnell serviert werden. Einige mit lateinamerikanischem/​kubanischem Bezug. Überhaupt war die Bedienung bei unserem Besuch alles andere als flink und bemüht. Die Qualität des Essens entspricht dem Standard eines Schnellimbisses. Das Fleisch des Burgers etwas zu trocken, der Salat ohne Tadel, aber auch ohne Lob, die Pommes konnte man essen.
Das Lighthouse Café lebt sicherlich gut davon, dass es weit und breit keine Alternative gibt und der Strand im State Park gut besucht ist. Insofern sieht man über die Unzulänglichkeiten hinweg und genießt den Ausblick und den Urlaub, weniger das Essen.
Restrooms gibt es für Gäste nicht im Café, direkt daneben aber gute öffentliche Toiletten des State Parks. Achtung: Hier laufen fast domestizierte Waschbären herum, die gerne betteln.

We went here for the first time. My husband waited at the cashier and was ready to order our food but the guy who worked there told us we could have a seat and the waiter would take care of it. We waited at the table but no one actually came to us, so we decided to order for togo. The same guy then told us if we ordered for togo we couldn’t sit in the restaurant… well…who didn’t know this rule ?!? very rude…
We ordered Shrimp basket for togo but when we opened the foam container we found that they probably put the hot fried shrimp into the container right after they took it from very hot oil… so…the hot oil and foam container… you know right? It melted the foam and caused several holes… yukkkk don’t order togo if you don’t want to die of cancer !! Will never be back !!

There aren’t a lot of places to eat at the park. Lighthouse Café — near the eponymous lighthouse — and Boaters Grill at No Name Bay. We tried Boaters. There was a 45 minute wait just to be seated. No thanks.
Lighthouse is exactly what you’d expect from a lunch place at the beach. Hamburgers, hotdogs, fried and grilled fish, fries, plus ceviche, flan and arroz con leche.
Service was fast if you got the right waiter, slow if you didn’t. The dining room is a covered deck; the tables and chairs are pretty standard white plastic.
Benj. Franklin said ‘hunger is the best pickle.’ He was right, as always. We were hungry and by the time we got our food, it tasted great.