An Under-The-Radar Palm Tree-Lined City On Florida's Atlantic Coast Is A Foodie Paradise

In 2023, Prevention named West Palm Beach the most underrated city in Florida, citing it as an alternative to Miami and Fort Lauderdale's packed beaches. If you fly into Palm Beach International Airport — maybe on your way to the romantic Breakers resort — you'll be just down the road from West Palm. The hotel's acclaimed Flagler Steakhouse isn't the only game in town when it comes to good food. West Palm's dining scene is a big part of what makes it so underrated, in addition to its arts scene, its zoological attractions, and its proximity to South Florida's largest water park.

For some of us who grew up near West Palm, its 21st-century image remains synonymous with the palm-tree-lined CityPlace. This 72-acre, walkable Florida city (within a city) revitalized the downtown area with new shopping and dining venues in 2000. CityPlace has since weathered some name changes, and its AMC multiplex (the only movie theater downtown) closed in 2023. However, the rebranding attempts didn't stick, and it finally reverted to its original, tourist-friendly name in 2024.

In CityPlace, you can still find restaurants recommended by local chefs (via West Palm Beach Food Tours), such as the upscale Italian kitchen, Il Bellagio. On busy days, look for the line out the door in the central fountain plaza. Il Bellagio's service is sometimes slow, but the all-day dinner menu includes classic comfort foods like chicken parmigiana and fettuccine Alfredo, made with Italian techniques. For lunch, you can also enjoy dishes like baked rigatoni and veal tortellini in chicken broth. This is just the beginning of what West Palm Beach has to offer in terms of food (and fun).

Another place that multiple local chefs recommend in West Palm Beach is the gourmet bakery Aioli, which caters to locavores — anyone seeking out the best locally sourced food. Speaking to West Palm Beach Food Tours, Chef Clay Carnes, owner of Latin-American street food joint, Cholo Soy Cocina, said of Aioli: "It's not enough to say this is the best bakery in town. Get the cold roast beef and douse it in their homemade sriracha and don't miss the potato salad."

On the menu at Cholo Soy Cocina, the carne asada burrito comes recommended as "something special." When Guy Fieri rolled into town with his Food Network show in 2021, he went for the Ecuadorian-style shrimp ceviche and the pescadito frito (tempura fish) tacos, praising the latter as "dynamite." For a midnight Cuban snack, meanwhile, the family-owned Havana Restaurant has a walk-up window that's open 24 hours. The restaurant and/or its Cuban sandwiches were winners in The Palm Beach Post's Official Community Choice Awards every year from 2019 to 2024.

Havana Restaurant has also received recognition from USA Today as one of the 10 best restaurants in town, attracting celebrity patrons like Robert Duvall, Martha Stewart, James Taylor, and Sofia Vergara. You can sip café con leche and get a special hot-pressed "West Palm Beach" sandwich. Owner Martha Reyes further recommends Florida's oldest steakhouse, the Okeechobee Steakhouse, on Okeechobee Boulevard. The "Old Florida" crab cake makes for a good appetizer there, while the Wagyu French dip sandwich gives you good-quality meat that's $130 cheaper than the fancy Tomahawk steak. A side of lobster mac-n-cheese is a must.

Southern Living has called West Palm Beach's Tropical Smokehouse "the best locally-owned restaurant in Florida." Where else are you going to chow down on Cajun gator sausage? Don't just settle for spotting alligators in the Everglades when you could be dining on wild gator meat. The restaurant's 500-gallon smoker also serves up seafood like salmon and mahi alongside ribs, brisket, and pulled pork. Its colorful selection of sides includes black beans, collard greens, golden rice, white cheddar mac, and Jimmy Red cornbread (made from the same kind of corn bootleggers once used to make moonshine).

This is where craft barbecue meets Floribbean cuisine. For those who aren't familiar with the whole Florribbean concept, it's a Florida fusion of Caribbean influences. Tropical Smokehouse is your chance to give your taste buds a crash course in Caribbean slaw and other multicultural flavors like curry chicken. Start with the chorizo queso or spicy wahoo dip, and end with the official Florida state pie, key lime.

Since opening on Dixie Highway in 2021, Tropical Smokehouse has expanded to a second location in downtown West Palm. Pitmaster Rick Mace was a semifinalist for "Best Chef: South" in the 2023 James Beard Awards. For better or worse, the original restaurant is just across the bridge from the Mar-a-Lago Club on Palm Beach Island. Nicknamed the "Winter White House," Mar-a-Lago is a National Historic Landmark that businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post built in the 1920s, though it's now owned by U.S. president Donald Trump.

For fast-casual health food in West Palm Beach, take rideWPB's free Yellow Line shuttle from CityPlace (on Rosemary Avenue) to Clematis Street, where you can pop into Field of Greens. The menu includes homemade soups, gluten-free salads, breakfast wraps, sandwiches with local names like Juno Beach, and plant-based smoothies and protein shakes. Apart from food, Clematis Street — which has been likened to West Palm's version of Main Street — will put you in the heart of the city's palm-filled entertainment district. It's known for its nightlife, which you can experience at places like Roxy's Pub, a neighborhood bar that's been in business since 1933.

The Norton Museum of Art, which credits itself as South Florida's first museum, has acquired over 8,000 works since it opened in 1941. In its permanent collections, you'll see art by the likes of Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso. Over at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, you can see the Palm Beach Opera and Ballet Palm Beach take to the stage. The venue hosts Broadway musicals, stand-up comedy shows, and concerts of both the contemporary and classical variety, too.

To cool off outdoors when summer hits in the Sunshine State, it's only seven miles from West Palm Beach to South Florida's biggest water park, the Rapids, in Riviera Beach. Since 1979, the Rapids has expanded to include a wave pool, a quarter-mile lazy river, and 40 water slides across 35 acres. Its original four mat slides, collectively known as Old Yellar, closed in summer 2022 to make way for a dueling water coaster called Mega Mayhem.

At the Palm Beach Zoo (formerly known as the Dreher Park Zoo), you can see over 550 animals, including the critically endangered white alligator. While the zoo has an Asia section with animals like tigers, it also shows off species from nearby regions like the Florida Wetlands and the Tropics of the Americas. Visitors can register in advance for up-close encounters with flamingos and Florida panthers. After walking around the zoo all day, head to the planetarium at the adjacent Cox Science Center, where you can sit back and relax in a laser-light show, set to music by artists likes Daft Punk and Pink Floyd.

License plates aren't the only place where you can see the Florida manatee in West Palm Beach. There's also the free science museum, Manatee Lagoon, which opened in 2016, and which received a Tripadvisor Travelers' Choice Award in 2024. It has an upper and lower observation deck overlooking Lake Worth Lagoon, where you might spot the beloved sea cows during manatee season from mid-November to the end of March.

If you're not wedded to the idea of Florida animals, you can see some of America's biggest herds of giraffes, rhinos, and zebras roaming Lion Country Safari. This drive-through safari park — which has African lions, too, naturally, hence the name — is about 20 miles from West Palm proper in Loxahatchee. Newsweek's 2024 Readers' Choice Awards named it the best animal encounter in the U.S. After you wind through seven habitats in your car, you — the well-fed tourist — can even return the favor by feeding a giraffe on-site in Safari World.