What's the matter with Miami?

I've only visited Miami once, and had some great Cuban sandwiches and a great Colombian brunch. But this article laments that Miami never makes any top ten lists, and has also been shut out of 210 Roadfood "best of" recommendations.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/Issues/2005-11-24/dining/cafe.html

Does Miami deserve to be shut out of the nation's cuisine destinations?

I haven't been to Miami in a very long time, but after reading the article I'm going to guess the answer to the question is, "Yes". I can tell you from experience in 2 "cuisine destinations" that they got that way because food is an obsession with the locals and because they are located in the middle of an area with an extraordinary bounty of local ingedients. I am speaking of San Francisco and New Orleans. Northern and central California have extraordinary produce (from wine grapes to strawberries and garlic) and many small farmers and dairies creating the highest possible quality food products. The Gulf coast, of course, has its seafood, sugar (that is, molasses, rum), pepper sauces and pecans among other things. These 2 areas also are rather old and had immigrants populations with culinary talent who came hundreds of years ago and began developing a regional cuisine (New Orleans being obvious, but think sourdough and cioppino from San Francisco).

Miami, by and large is a new place which got populated in the 1920's. The local produce tends toward rock-hard supermarket tomatoes. Yes, there's some sugar and seafood, but not much of the seafood is commercial (Florida's oyster grounds are far away in Appalachicola and even the orange groves aren't close--beyond stone crabs and a few species of fish like mahi mahi, it's hard to think of much popular seafood from SOUTH Florida). My guess is the locals are more obsessed with their tans and the beach than with eating. And if you want to look your best in a bikini, eating may be counter-productive.

Miami's best hope in the food area may be to encourage the rather recently-arrived (in historical terms) Cuban and South American populations to develop the food traditions of their homelands into something new in their new home as the Acadians did in south Louisiana or the Italian immigrants did in New York and San Francisco.