Zak Stern is the impressively bearded chef-owner Zak the Baker in Miami‘s bustling Wynwood neighborhood. He and wife Batsheva Wulfsohn clearly know how to draw a crowd. The humble bakery-cafe they run is hyper popular. People wait in lines out the door to gobble up pastries from the reclaimed wood counter and to snag dishes from the butcher paper menu.

I can appreciate the joys of creative toasts on crusty slabs of house-baked bread. However, the most memorable dish from my entire Miami trip involved the Latke ($9) at Zak the Baker. This burger-sized potato cake was crusty on the outside, buttery and almost creamy inside. Each order comes draped with a savory slab of country-smoked tuna, a fried egg, and tarragon sauce that seems to riff on chimichurri, a herbaceous hat tip to Latin-American surroundings.