Cuban cuisine just landed its first Michelin star, and it happened in West Palm Beach. Emelina, the 16-seat tasting-menu restaurant in the historic Flamingo Park District, was elevated to Michelin-Star status today at the 2026 Michelin Guide Florida ceremony, becoming the first Cuban restaurant in the world to receive the recognition, and the only Michelin-starred restaurant in Palm Beach County.
The recognition arrives less than four months after Emelina's February 2026 debut, making it among the youngest restaurants ever to earn a Star in Florida. The restaurant is led by husband-and-wife chefs Osmel González and Camila Salazar, and operates as a concept by APM Restaurant Group — the Miami-based hospitality group led by founder Álvaro Perez Miranda — developed in partnership with Welteroth Property Group as the anchor culinary tenant of the firm's curated design, wellness, and epicurean community within the Flamingo Park District. Located at 424 Park Place, Unit 101, the restaurant seats just 16 guests around a U-shaped counter where the chefs and their small team cook and plate in real time, framed by warm custom walnut millwork, Shou Sugi Ban-treated walls, a black soapstone chef's counter, and lime-wash walls finished with a gently aged patina.
Cuban cuisine has shaped the culinary identity of South Florida for more than half a century, yet it has remained largely absent from the upper tiers of global gastronomic recognition. The reasons are historical as much as culinary: decades of political isolation cut Cuban cooking off from the cross-cultural exchange, technical evolution, and ingredient access that defined the modernization of so many other world cuisines. Emelina is the first restaurant to ask, on the Michelin stage, what Cuban food might have become with freedom, global influence, creativity, and abundance — and today's recognition marks the first time that question has been answered with the highest culinary honor in the world.
Rather than reproduce familiar Cuban dishes, González and Salazar speculate. The menu pairs the chefs' memories and heritage with refined methods honed at SingleThread in Healdsburg, La Botica in Matapozuelos, Disfrutar in Barcelona, and most recently at their acclaimed Miami pop-up EntreNos — which itself earned a Michelin Star in 2024 and 2025, a Green Michelin Star in 2025, and the Rising Star Chef Game Changer award in 2025. Local Florida farmers and purveyors supply ingredients that echo Cuba's tropical bounty. Each course layers memory, story, and provenance: the nostalgic Minuta, a reinterpreted fried-fish sandwich served on a handmade wooden plate alongside a beef-tallow consommé; Yuca rendered in three textures and paired with lightly pickled Florida Sebastian oysters; and Pusandao, a Colombian-Cuban dialogue rooted in shared African heritage, built around coconut milk, fish, hierbas de azotea, and a Nam Wah banana fufu drawing from ancestral African technique.
The restaurant takes its name from Chef Osmel's grandmother, whose grace, warmth, and effortless glamour embodied the Cuba that once was — and the Cuba that still lives in the dreams of many who left. "This recognition is for the Cuba we remember, and the Cuba we imagine," said Chef Osmel González. "When Camila and I built this menu, we weren't trying to make Cuban food more sophisticated — it has always been sophisticated, in the hands of the grandmothers and home cooks who shaped it. We were trying to imagine what it could have become if history had been different. This Star belongs to every Cuban cook who came before us, and to my grandmother Emelina, whose name is on our door."
"We poured everything we have into Emelina — our training, our heritage, our love for each other, and our deep respect for the farmers and producers of Florida who make this menu possible," said Chef Camila Salazar. "For a restaurant of sixteen seats in West Palm Beach to be recognized in this way is humbling beyond words. Cuban cuisine has been waiting a long time for this moment, and we are deeply grateful to be part of it."
For APM Restaurant Group, Emelina's star is part of a Florida-wide clean sweep. With Ogawa retaining its Michelin Star for a third consecutive year and Hiyakawa continuing to be recommended by the Michelin Guide, APM becomes the first Latin-led hospitality group in Florida to have every one of its fine-dining concepts recognized on the Guide. "In my career of opening over 70 restaurant concepts between Tokyo and Miami, I can safely say that Emelina is one of the most thought-provoking, emotionally-charged, and genuinely exciting restaurants of our time," said Álvaro Perez Miranda. "For Cuban cuisine to be elevated to the Michelin-Star level for the first time, in this unexpected corner of West Palm Beach, at this precise moment in time, is profoundly meaningful. I could not be prouder of this team, or of what this recognition represents for Latin chefs everywhere."
The win also marks a milestone for the Flamingo Park District itself. "For Emelina to earn a Michelin Star within four months of opening is an incredible moment for the Flamingo Park District and for West Palm Beach," said Gregory Welteroth, President of Welteroth Property Group. "It validates a vision we've been building toward for years: that great neighborhoods are made not by scale, but by the careful curation of the people and ideas you invite in." Another APM concept, the casual sushi and donburi bowl restaurant Midorie, is set to join the district this fall at 500 Palm Street.
Since opening, Emelina has been named to Bon Appétit's "Most Anticipated Restaurant Openings," called "the most exciting tasting menu in South Florida" by The Infatuation Miami — which gave the restaurant its highest rating of the year — and described by Palm Beach Illustrated as "a multicourse tasting experience that is a master class…a special-occasion meal that will linger long after your final bites." Reservations are available on Tock, with Wednesday and Thursday seatings at 7:00 PM, and Friday and Saturday seatings at 5:00 PM and 8:00 PM, plus two additional tables for two at 5:30 PM and 8:30 PM.
With today's recognition, Emelina arrives as one of the most consequential restaurant stories in South Florida in years — a 16-seat tasting-menu room in West Palm Beach that has, in less than four months, redefined what Cuban cuisine can be on the global stage.
Book your seat at: https://www.emelinawpb.com/