A guide to Florida, by the locals.
We started Florida Hidden Spots because the chains kept winning the search results, and the places we actually loved kept getting buried.
Florida Hidden Spots is a hand-picked guide to the independent restaurants, neighborhood coffee shops, dive bars, and odd little places worth a detour across the Sunshine State. We focus on what locals actually go to — not the sponsored top result, not the chain on the highway, not the place with the biggest ad budget.
Every spot on this site has been visited, eaten at, drunk at, or otherwise vouched for by a real human who lives in Florida. Our editors live in Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Tampa, and Miami. We pay for our own meals. We don't run sponsored listings or pay-for-play features.
What we do
- Hand-pick and review independent businesses across every Florida city.
- Publish the kind of long-form, on-the-ground reporting that actually helps you decide where to go.
- Refresh listings monthly so hours, menus, and details stay current.
- Run the Sunday Dispatch — one weekly email with the new opens and the locals' favorites.
What we don't do
- Take payment from businesses to get listed or to get a higher ranking.
- Run sponsored content disguised as editorial.
- Cover places we haven't personally visited.
- Cut and paste from Google reviews — we write our own.
Get in touch
Got a place we should know about? A correction we should make? A pitch for the journal? Send a note to [email protected] — a real person will read it.