Miami's Best Sushi

The Daily Meal recently published our Best Sushi in America roundup for 2014, and in order to compile our ranking, we started by reaching out to leading culinary authorities to ask what their favorite sushi restaurants are, and we supplemented those suggestions with sushi restaurants featured in local reviews and pre-existing regional and local rankings. Although many of these restaurants also serve a menu of traditional Japanese food, we stressed that the primary focus must be on sushi. We then took that list of 112 restaurants from across the country and built a survey, with the restaurants separated by region. We invited our group of trusted panelists, comprising chefs, bloggers, journalists, and other culinary authorities, to vote for their favorites. Our final list showcased the 35 best, with two from Miami making the cut.

For sushi lovers, Naoe is a little slice of heaven. The sushi here would be right at home even at a high-end spot in Japan, and at this tiny, eight-seat temple to raw fish, you can let sushi master Kevin Cory, dubbed the "Omakase King," be your guide. The accolades for Naoe just keep piling up: Five stars from Forbes Travel Guide, named one of the country's best sushi restaurants by Travel + Leisure, a nomination for best new chef from Food & Wine, and so on. If you can snag a reservation (only 16 guests are served each night), you'll be presented with a selection of some of the freshest seafood imaginable, from both Japanese and local waters. There's horse mackerel topped with fresh wasabi; fresh-roasted and basted eel; urchin-topped egg tofu; cured squid; Scottish salmon belly... the selection goes on and on, and by the time your meal is through, you may never look at sushi the same way again.

Cory's sushi is so good, it scored the #23 spot on our list, beating out local competitor Zuma (#27) as home of the top-ranking sushi in The Magic City this year.

Kate Kolenda is the Restaurant and City Guide Editor at The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @BeefWerky and @theconversant.