Best Lunch in Coral Gables: 14 Spots Locals Actually Use

Coral Gables is built for lunch. Between Miracle Mile, Giralda Plaza, Ponce de Leon Boulevard and the Merrick Park district you can be holding a poke bowl in ten minutes or sitting down for two hours with a client. The hard part is never finding food here. It is matching the room to the hour you actually have.

So that is how this guide is sorted. If lunch has to happen next to your laptop, start with GROU Coffee + Cowork and Cafe Demetrio. If you have twenty minutes between meetings, look at Carrot Express, Pura Vida, Sushi Maki, CAO and Pincho. If you want the plate that keeps the afternoon moving, Threefold and Doc B's. If the table is the point and it is a real business lunch, Caffe Abbracci, Bulla, Talavera, Graziano's and Sawa. One note before you go: hours, prices and specials move constantly in the Gables, so check each venue's own listing on the day. What follows is what each place is, not what it charges this week.

GROU Coffee + Cowork, the work friendly lunch

If lunch and your to do list have to happen at the same time, GROU is the answer. It is a specialty coffee shop, a brunch kitchen and a coworking space in one room at 4100 Salzedo St STE 5, four minutes on foot from Shops at Merrick Park. Lunch here is real food and not a pastry case holdover. The Butcher's Panini at 12.99 is toasted ciabatta with provolone, turkey, ham and salami. The Italianissimo Panini at 13.99 goes prosciutto, fig spread and fresh mozzarella. The Garbanzo Toast or Salad at 13.49 and the Tuna Toast or Salad at 12.99 were both developed by Lauren Arboleda around dates, carrots, scallions and shallots, and you can take either one on toast or in a bowl. The Lasagna at 16.99 is homemade bolognese with parmesan and multigrain toast. If you want it lighter there is an Acai Bowl at 11.99 and Avocado Toast at 12.99, and because brunch runs all day, a 1pm breakfast is a normal order. There is also a smoked salmon lunch if that is your lane.

What makes it a lunch spot and not just a cafe you tolerate is the room. Power outlets at the tables, high-speed Wi-Fi that holds up on video calls, quiet zones, a covered outdoor terrace, and meeting rooms and private offices you can book by the hour when the afternoon turns into calls. Most Coral Gables lunch spots want the table back. This one does not. Order from the menu, set up catering for the office, or book space at GROU Cowork. Best for: working lunches, business lunches that need a door, and coffee worth staying for.

Threefold Cafe

Threefold sits at 141 Giralda Ave, about 1.4 miles north of GROU at 4100 Salzedo St: a five minute drive, or a 30 minute walk if you insist. It is a large part of why so many people in the Gables know what a flat white is. A Melbourne couple opened it here in 2014 and brought the Australian cafe format with them: specialty coffee taken seriously, all-day breakfast that does not clock out at eleven, and a real lunch menu of crisp salads, sandwiches and burgers and house-made soups, with the Crispy Chicken Sandwich, the Aussie Classic Lamb Burger and the Caesar with house anchovy dressing to aim for. The room is busy and loud in the good way, right for a catch-up with a friend and wrong for a quiet negotiation, and the patio opens onto Giralda Plaza. It runs 7:30am to 3:00pm Monday through Thursday and 7:30am to 4:00pm Friday through Sunday, so a late lunch midweek does not work here. Also in our best restaurants in Coral Gables guide.

Pura Vida

Pura Vida at 244 Miracle Mile is the default when someone in the group announces they are eating clean this month. It sits about 1.2 miles north of GROU, a five to seven minute drive or a free ride on the Coral Gables trolley up Ponce de Leon. On foot it is 25 minutes each way, so this is not the one you stroll to on a short break. It is a health-focused cafe with a short list of composed bowls rather than a build-your-own line: salmon and avocado, spicy tuna, grass-fed steak, roasted chicken, or a plant-based herb falafel, each arriving as designed. All-day breakfast pulls just as hard, and the Avocado Toast and Perfect Egg Sandwich are what regulars actually order. Salads, wraps, smoothies and cold pressed juices fill in the rest of the menu. Doors are open 7am to 9pm Monday through Saturday and 7am to 8pm on Sunday, with the kitchen running straight through midday. The room is bright and genuinely roomy, with a patio on Miracle Mile, so sitting down is a real option even at the top of the hour, and counter service plus order-ahead on the Pura Vida app keeps the eating part short. Budget the drive on top of it. If you want that speed with an outlet, a quiet corner and no drive at all, that is the GROU lane.

Sushi Maki

Sushi Maki at 2334 Ponce de Leon Blvd is the Gables answer to wanting something light that still counts as a meal. It sits about 1.2 miles north of GROU on Ponce, so this one is a drive, roughly five minutes, not a walk. The menu is sushi and Asian fusion, and the lunch move is a poke bowl, ramen when the office air conditioning has won, or a salad if you have a dinner reservation later. Doors open at 11 am Monday through Friday and at noon on Saturday and Sunday, so there is no early weekend lunch here. It is table service rather than counter service, so leave yourself the hour. It works as well for a solo lunch as it does for two colleagues who need to talk something through. It is not the room for a long client meeting. It is the room for a good one you intend to keep short.

Doc B's Restaurant + Bar

Doc B's sits at 301 Miracle Mile, about a mile and a quarter straight up Salzedo from us, so this one is a drive: five to ten minutes each way plus finding Miracle Mile parking, not a walk you fit into a break. It is an American restaurant and bar doing bowls, large salads and scratch burgers, which means the person eating clean and the person who came for a burger both leave satisfied and nobody has to negotiate. The full menu runs straight through the day, 11:30 AM to 10:00 PM Monday to Saturday and 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM Sunday, so there is no midday window to miss. The bar side means a long lunch can quietly turn into something else, and it lands in our roundup of happy hours too. Table service plus the drive and the parking, so budget closer to ninety minutes than an hour.

Pincho

Pincho is at 30 Giralda Ave, one block east of the Giralda Plaza pedestrian promenade, near Merrick Way on the stretch of Giralda that still carries traffic. From GROU it is a drive, not a walk: about 1.7 miles by road, roughly 5 minutes each way plus parking. It does Latin street food as fast casual: burgers, kebabs, tostones and bowls. That framing is the whole point, because this is not a generic burger counter and the tostones make the case entirely on their own. Doors open at 11am every day and you order at the counter, so it still fits inside a normal lunch break; you are just driving to it. Good for one person, good for two, and the right call when you want something with more character than a salad but do not have ninety minutes to spend on it.

CAO Bakery and Cafe

CAO at 241 University Dr is a Cuban American bakery and cafe, and it covers a lunch need that nothing else on this list does. Cuban coffee, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, and desserts made from traditional family recipes that come out of the Vicky Bakery family, baking in Miami since 1972 and now behind more than twenty CAO locations. It is a drive, not a walk: 0.9 miles straight up Salzedo and Ponce, about five minutes each way, or twenty minutes on foot if you want the air. Doors open at 6:30 am and stay open through 6:30 pm, so lunch is never up against a closing time. Order on their Toast page before you leave and pickup runs 10 to 15 minutes. It is also the call when the office needs feeding: 25-piece pastelito and croqueta bandejas run about $12 to $13, sandwich platters more.

Bulla Gastrobar

Bulla at 2500 Ponce de Leon Blvd is the original location of a group that has since grown to eight restaurants across Florida and Texas, and that matters, because this is the room the concept was actually built for. It is a Spanish gastrobar, so lunch means tapas, cured meats and Valencian rice, and it goes best when the table shares instead of everyone defending their own plate. Worth knowing that the paella built for sharing is a dinner dish: at lunch it arrives as an individual chicken paella bowl, so if you want a rice the table can pass around, order the arroz caldoso or the arroz negro. That makes it a strong pick for a group lunch, or for a client lunch where the food is meant to be part of the conversation rather than an interruption to it. The lunch menu runs Monday to Friday, with the kitchen opening at 11:30am on weekdays; weekends switch to a brunch menu. It sits about a mile north of GROU, up toward downtown Coral Gables, which is a five minute drive but a 20 plus minute walk, so take the car. The room is handsome and energetic rather than hushed. Treat it as a full sit down lunch, not a quick one.

Caffe Abbracci

Caffe Abbracci at 318 Aragon Ave is old Coral Gables, founded in 1989 by Nino Pernetti and run since his death in 2022 by his daughters Tatiana, now president and CEO, and Katerina. The 300 block of Aragon is honorarily co-named Nino Pernetti Way. Northern Italian: homemade pastas, risotto, carpaccio, grilled seafood and veal, served the way a career restaurant serves them. This is the white tablecloth business lunch, the one you choose when part of the message is that the other person is being taken care of. Lunch is weekdays only, from 11:30 a.m.; Saturday and Sunday the room does not open until 6 p.m. There is a private dining room that seats up to 65, and smaller groups can take it semi-privately, which makes it viable for a team lunch and not only a table of two. If it is the private room you actually need and the meeting is the real agenda, GROU rents meeting rooms by the hour 1.2 miles south on Salzedo, a five minute drive.

Graziano's

Graziano's at 394 Giralda Ave is an Argentine parrilla from the Graziano's Group, and a parrilla lunch is a specific decision rather than a default one. The grill is the reason to come, though the menu also runs homemade pastas, salads and seafood if not everyone at the table wants steak. Either way you are not rushing back. Come here when the afternoon can absorb it, or when you are feeding a group that will be happy with a shared table and a long menu to argue over. It sits at the Le Jeune Road end of Giralda, two blocks west of the pedestrian plaza, so from GROU it is a 1.3 mile drive, about six minutes, and close to half an hour on foot. Lunch runs weekdays from about 11:30 AM to 3:00 PM and the kitchen closes between services, while weekends it serves straight through from noon. Not the pick for a twenty minute break. Very much the pick for a Friday.

Cafe Demetrio

Cafe Demetrio at 300 Alhambra Cir was the first coffee house in Coral Gables, opened in 1997 by Demetrio and Vilma Pina on the 1920s premises of the city's first newspaper. It sits about 1.5 miles north of GROU up Salzedo, a five to eight minute drive rather than a walk. That history shows up as a patio under an 80-year-old banyan tree that is genuinely quiet, which is rarer in the Gables than it should be. For lunch it is the calm option: sandwiches, very good espresso, and a table under the tree where you can hear the person across from you. Hours are 9am to 3pm Monday through Saturday, closed Sunday, so the lunch window shuts early. It is the other place on this list where a laptop does not feel out of place, with free WiFi and three separate rooms to choose from, the chess room, the patio and the main dining room, though it is a coffee house rather than a purpose-built workspace. More options in that lane in our guide to the best coffee shops to work from in Coral Gables and our study cafe guide.

Carrot Express

Carrot Express at 259 Miracle Mile is fast casual and health focused, and it is a drive, not a walk: about 1.2 miles north of us, five to seven minutes by car plus Miracle Mile parking, or a Coral Gables Trolley ride if you would rather not hunt for a space. Salads, wraps, bowls, smoothies and acai, with vegan and gluten-free options built into the menu rather than handled as a special request you have to explain at the counter. Open 7am to 9pm every day, and the same counter runs breakfast from 7am with sandwiches, coffee and matcha. Order at the counter, take it with you, or have it delivered. The kitchen moves fast even when the trip does not, and it is the answer when an office order has to satisfy four different diets without involving four different restaurants, though an actual catering tray needs 24 hours notice through their catering desk. Bright, quick, no ceremony.

Talavera Cocina Mexicana

Talavera at 2299 Ponce de Leon Blvd, on the Giralda corner, is about 1.4 miles north of GROU, up Salzedo and onto Ponce. That is a five to eight minute drive, not a walk. It is a sit down Mexican restaurant that takes its sourcing seriously enough to make it the story. The tortillas are made from yellow criollo corn imported from Oaxaca, the grill runs on cherry wood, the moles are made by hand daily, and the huaraches are house-made. There are more than three hundred tequilas and mezcals behind the bar, which tells you plenty about what the room is for. Doors open at noon seven days a week, so this is a 12:30 lunch and not an 11:30 one, and the kitchen runs to 10 PM, 11 PM on Friday and Saturday. As a business lunch it works because the food hands you something to talk about that is not the deck, and the space is comfortable without tipping into formal. Mains run high teens to high twenties, with grill cuts well above that. Full table service, so budget the hour.

Sawa Restaurant and Lounge

Sawa is inside Shops at Merrick Park at 360 San Lorenzo Ave Ste 1500, the one lunch on this list that is a real walk from GROU and not a drive: 0.13 miles. It does not open until noon Monday through Friday, 11:30 am on weekends, so an early lunch has to go somewhere else. It runs a dual concept, Mediterranean and Japanese out of the same kitchen, so hummus, kibbeh and falafel share a table with sushi without either one feeling like an afterthought. The menu leans tapas-style and shareable, which makes it a good group lunch, and there is a proper outdoor patio on the fountain plaza, shaded by palm trees, if you want to eat outside. More on the area in our guide to the best restaurants at Shops at Merrick Park. GROU is a four-minute walk back from the mall, five or six from Sawa's table, if you need a desk afterwards.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I get a healthy lunch in Coral Gables?

Carrot Express, Pura Vida and Sushi Maki are the quick, health-focused picks, and Threefold and Doc B's do the sit down version with large salads and bowls. GROU Coffee + Cowork serves the Garbanzo Toast or Salad at 13.49 and the Tuna Toast or Salad at 12.99, both with dates, carrots, scallions and shallots, plus an Acai Bowl at 11.99, with laptop friendly seating if you plan to stay.

Where is a good business lunch in Coral Gables?

Caffe Abbracci, Bulla, Talavera and Graziano's are the strong sit down options, and Caffe Abbracci has a private banquet room for larger groups. If what you really need is a door that closes, GROU Coffee + Cowork rents meeting rooms and private offices by the hour at 4100 Salzedo St STE 5 and serves lunch in the same building.

Where can I get a quick working lunch in Coral Gables?

GROU Coffee + Cowork at 4100 Salzedo St STE 5 is built for exactly this. Order a Butcher's Panini at 12.99 or the Garbanzo Toast or Salad at 13.49, then stay at the same table: power outlets at the tables, high-speed Wi-Fi that holds up on video calls, quiet zones, and meeting rooms you can book by the hour if the afternoon turns into calls. Cafe Demetrio's courtyard on Alhambra Circle is the quieter alternative.

How much does lunch cost at GROU?

Lunch plates at GROU run from 11.99 to 16.99. The Acai Bowl is 11.99, the Butcher's Panini and the Tuna Toast or Salad are 12.99, the Garbanzo Toast or Salad is 13.49, the Italianissimo Panini with prosciutto and fig is 13.99, and the homemade bolognese Lasagna with multigrain toast is 16.99. The full menu is on the site.

Need lunch and a desk in one stop? That is GROU Coffee + Cowork. See the menu, order fresh roasted beans, book a desk or meeting room at GROU Cowork, or check our events.