The best restaurants in Hollywood, FL sit in four pockets, and choosing between them is mostly a decision about what the meal should cost. The Intracoastal and the beach carry the seafood rooms and the view pricing. Downtown, around Young Circle, holds the walkable run of immigrant kitchens, cocktail bars and late dessert. The strip malls of west Hollywood, along Johnson Street, Hollywood Boulevard and State Road 7, hold the cheapest and, dish for dish, most interesting cooking in the city. The Seminole Hard Rock, 15 minutes west, holds the steakhouse. This guide covers all four by neighborhood, with what to order and where to park.
Hollywood’s Dining Map, Corridor by Corridor
Hollywood’s restaurants follow a handful of roads and one casino driveway, which is why a city of about 30 square miles is easier to eat through than it looks. Ocean Drive and the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk carry the waterfront rooms, Hollywood Boulevard and Harrison Street carry the dinner-and-drinks blocks downtown, Johnson Street and west Hollywood Boulevard carry the strip-mall kitchens, and the Seminole Hard Rock carries the steakhouse.
Price tracks geography almost perfectly here. A pupusa counter in west Hollywood and a stone crab dinner on the Intracoastal are 10 minutes and a whole price bracket apart. The surprise is the range at the cheap end, where Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, Romanian and Hungarian kitchens run within a few miles of each other. For what sits between the meals, see our guide to things to do in Hollywood.
Downtown Hollywood: Harrison Street, Hollywood Boulevard and Young Circle
Downtown is the only part of Hollywood where you can park once and get dinner, a drink and dessert without moving the car. Its core, the Hollywood Boulevard Historic Business District between 21st Avenue and Young Circle, has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1999.
Thanks to Harrison at 2001 Harrison Street is the most ambitious kitchen downtown and it works at any hour, from four variations of syrnyky, Ukrainian cottage-cheese pancakes, at breakfast to whole baked branzino at dinner. It’s open from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and weekend brunch is busy, so reserve.
Villa Romana at 1909 Hollywood Boulevard reads as an Italian restaurant, but the Romanian half of the menu is the reason to go. Start with the Romanian antipasto and its eggplant spread, then order the pork stew, braised pork and sausage in garlicky tomato sauce with mamaliga, feta and a fried egg. It’s open daily from noon and takes reservations.
Krakatoa Indonesian Cuisine at 1910 Hollywood Boulevard is small and open Wednesday through Sunday. Order the sate with peanut sauce, then rendang sapi, the slow-cooked spicy beef. Krakatoa started as a stall at Yellow Green Farmers Market in 2014 and opened this restaurant in October 2017, according to Edible South Florida, and kitchens on that path often rent climate-controlled storage in Hollywood for packaging and dry goods long before they sign a lease.
Bok Bok Baby Buriram at 2051 Hollywood Boulevard cooks the street food of northeast Thailand and rewards ignoring the front of the menu. Flip to the tum tum bar section, 15 dishes pounded to order with a mortar and pestle, and build the meal there. The heat is genuine, so ask your server to calibrate.
Block 40 Food Hall is the answer when nobody will agree, with nearly a dozen food and drink concepts plus bars under one roof at 1818 Hollywood Boulevard. It sits downtown, so it pairs with the mural blocks and ArtsPark rather than a beach afternoon.
Chocolada Bakery & Cafe at 1923 Hollywood Boulevard handles dessert. The order is the penguin cake, a chocolate penguin in a tuxedo hiding chocolate mousse, and the place runs until 10 p.m. daily, with live music on the patio on weekend nights.
Hollywood Beach and the Intracoastal Waterfront
The waterfront is where Hollywood charges for the view, and it earns the money in two cases: stone crab season and sunset.
Billy’s Stone Crab at 400 North Ocean Drive is the seasonal institution, a two-story room with floor-to-ceiling Intracoastal views and a seafood market attached. Florida’s stone crab season runs October 15 through May 1, per the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and outside that window you should order something else rather than pay for frozen claws.
Le Tub at 1100 North Ocean Drive serves a 13-ounce burger on a Kaiser roll from a former gas station with a deck over the water. There are no reservations, ever, and the outdoor seats carry a long wait at peak hours. Le Tub’s site lists hours to midnight Sunday through Thursday and 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
GG’s Waterfront at 606 North Ocean Drive is the dressier option, with day-boat fish, a raw bar, steaks and cocktails on a covered dockside patio. Book a table near sundown and save it for a date rather than a quick bite after the sand.
Terrazas at Lyfe at 4111 South Ocean Drive puts an Italian and Peruvian menu on a ninth-floor oceanfront rooftop, with poolside service and brunch. Sunset tables go first, so book ahead.
Taco Beach Shack at 334 Arizona Street covers the gap between a late beach afternoon and a real dinner. Tacos and margaritas a few steps off the sand, open daily until midnight, and cheap enough to feed a family without planning it.
Ocean Alley Restaurant & Beach Bar at 900 North Broadwalk serves Italian-style seafood and pasta, and you want a covered table in summer, because an open-air seat offers no escape from a 4 p.m. shower. It also does breakfast on the sand, a category deep enough here to have its own Hollywood brunch guide.
West Hollywood: The Value Corridor
The best value in Hollywood sits in strip malls around North 56th to 60th Avenues on Johnson Street and Hollywood Boulevard, 10 minutes west of downtown, with one standout a few blocks farther west on State Road 7. The strip malls aren’t scenic, but that’s where the Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Japanese and Italian-American kitchens cluster.
Pupusatime is Salvadoran and now sits at 1114 North State Road 7, just a few blocks from its original Johnson Street counter. Co-owners Hugo Miranda and Maria Perez Mejia moved into a bigger room with about 53 seats and on-site parking, according to Business Debut, so sitting down is now an option. Order the pupusa revuelta, tamales and pan con pollo.
El Meneo Restaurant & Lounge at 5701 Johnson Street cooks Guatemalan: pollo en pepian, chuchitos and desayuno chapin served all day. Pick your night, because it’s a casual restaurant on weekdays and stays open until 4 a.m. on weekends, when it turns into a nightclub.
Ceviche Dozo at 5715A Hollywood Boulevard is Japanese cooking with a few Nikkei dishes, run largely by chef Harumi on her own. The ceviche is good, but the hot entrees are the reason to sit down: from-scratch Japanese curry with chicken katsu, and okonomiyaki packed with seafood. Service moves at a one-woman pace, so go when you have time.
Mimi’s Ravioli at 5714 Johnson Street is a family-owned Italian-American grocery with its own pasta factory next door, more shop than restaurant. Buy the mozzarella made fresh daily, plus frozen house pastas and sauces, which makes it the right stop for a rental kitchen or a beach picnic. It’s closed Mondays.
Sub Center Hollywood and Siciliano’s Frozen Custard sit side by side at 5913 and 5917 Hollywood Boulevard under the same family, so lunch and dessert are one stop. Sub Center has been making sandwiches since 1961, and the lunch wait gets long, so go early. Siciliano’s sundaes are big enough that a small feeds two.
Everyday Counters Around Downtown
The cheapest bracket is breakfast, and it lives on the older commercial streets around downtown.
Jack’s Hollywood Diner at 1031 North Federal Highway runs out of a silver streetcar-style diner facing the highway and never closes. Mornings are pancakes and omelets, and later it turns into burgers, chops and shakes. It fills on weekend mornings and is the easy answer to a late-night craving.
JP’s Bagel Place at 2649 Hollywood Boulevard, across from City Hall, makes bagels and bialys that land soft and chewy in the right proportions. The breakfasts are solid, but the bagels are the point, and it closes by 2 p.m., so arrive early.
Tastes of Europe Bakery at 1811 Wiley Street is Hungarian, and Saturday is the day, when langos comes out of the fryer with garlic oil, cheese and sour cream. The wait is real, though the bakery sits between two Russian groceries, so you can shop while you wait.
Special Occasions and the Drive Out of Town
Council Oak Steaks & Seafood at 1 Seminole Way is the special-occasion room in this market, with USDA Prime steaks, a raw bar and a dry-aging room at the Seminole Hard Rock, about 15 minutes west of downtown. Follow the guitar-shaped tower from the highway and park in the garage rather than circling the resort.
Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor & Restaurant is in Dania Beach, not Hollywood, 10 minutes north at 128 South Federal Highway. Open since 1956, it pairs ice cream with a full restaurant menu, and the Kitchen Sink sundae is built at roughly a pound of ice cream per person. It stays open until 11 p.m., or midnight on Friday and Saturday. More short drives are in our guide to day trips from Hollywood.
Parking, Reservations and Getting Between Meals
Parking is what ruins a Hollywood dinner plan, and it’s almost entirely a beach problem. The city lists the Garfield, Nevada Street and Margaritaville garages plus on-street meters, and all of them fill on winter weekends. Oceanfront hotel dining carries its own math: Latitudes, inside the Hollywood Beach Marriott at 2501 North Ocean Drive, posts $9 per hour to self-park and $45 for valet. Downtown is metered street parking and rarely a fight.
The city’s shuttles solve the drink problem. The on-demand Sun Shuttle costs $2 per rider within its East or West zone, booked through the Circuit app, and the free Holly-Go shuttle runs fixed routes to the beach, downtown and shopping (City of Hollywood). If the room isn’t booked yet, our rundown of where to stay in Hollywood sorts properties by what they’re near.
Reservations split three ways. Thanks to Harrison, Villa Romana and Terrazas at Lyfe all take bookings and are worth one on weekends, the west Hollywood counters work as walk-ins, and Le Tub takes none at all, so timing is the only lever there. Late food is easier than in most of Broward: Mickey Byrne’s Irish Pub at 1921 Hollywood Boulevard serves pub food and stays open until 2 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 4 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, Jack’s never closes and Taco Beach Shack runs to midnight. The rest of the after-dark map is in our Hollywood nightlife guide.
Seasons, Storms and What Changes on the Menu
Two calendars govern eating in Hollywood. The first is stone crab season, October 15 through May 1, the only window in which a claw dinner at Billy’s makes sense. The second is the tourist calendar: peak season runs December through April, warm, dry and busy, while late summer into early fall is the quiet, cheaper stretch, when a Saturday table needs little planning.
That quiet stretch overlaps the busiest part of hurricane season, which runs June 1 to November 30. Most storms mean a watched forecast and a couple of disrupted days rather than a ruined trip, but it’s a trade rather than a free discount. Broadwalk restaurants spend part of that season moving patio furniture, umbrellas and signage indoors when a system tracks close, and a 5×10 storage unit, about the size of a small walk-in closet, swallows a patio set and a rack of signs.
Summer changes how you eat rather than whether you do. June is the wettest month at about 9.6 inches of rain, based on NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals for Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, but the showers are usually short, so locals move outdoor meals to the morning or the early evening and eat indoors in between.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the best restaurant in Hollywood, Florida?
There’s no single answer, because the city’s best food is spread across price brackets. For a full dinner with cocktails, Thanks to Harrison downtown is the most complete kitchen in town. For the meal people travel for, it’s the 13-ounce burger at Le Tub. At the cheap end, Pupusatime is hard to beat.
What food is Hollywood, Florida known for?
Hollywood is known for two things that rarely share a list. The first is Florida seafood, especially stone crab claws in season at the Intracoastal waterfront rooms. The second is immigrant home cooking, with Salvadoran and Guatemalan kitchens in west Hollywood, plus Romanian, Ukrainian-led and Hungarian spots downtown that most visitors never find.
What are the best restaurants in Hollywood, FL on the water?
Waterfront dining splits between the Intracoastal and the ocean. Billy’s Stone Crab, Le Tub and GG’s Waterfront all face the Intracoastal, which is where the boat traffic and the sunsets are. On the ocean side, Terrazas at Lyfe sits nine floors up, and Ocean Alley puts tables on the Broadwalk itself.
Where can you find fine dining in Hollywood, FL?
The upscale bracket is small and mostly tied to a view or a resort. Council Oak Steaks & Seafood at the Seminole Hard Rock is the special-occasion steakhouse, Billy’s Stone Crab and GG’s Waterfront are the dressier Intracoastal rooms, and Terrazas at Lyfe is the rooftop with the Italian and Peruvian menu.
What are the best casual restaurants in Hollywood, FL?
Casual is where Hollywood is strongest. Taco Beach Shack handles the walk-off-the-sand meal, Jack’s Hollywood Diner and JP’s Bagel Place cover breakfast, Sub Center makes the sandwich, and Block 40 Food Hall solves the group that can’t agree. None of them need a reservation.
Storage for Movers, Renovations and Small Food Businesses
Value Store It’s Hollywood self-storage facility sits a short drive from the west Hollywood corridor and rents month-to-month with no long-term contract. A 5×5 locker takes the boxes and seasonal bins a beach condo has nowhere to put. A 10×5 unit holds the contents of a single room during a kitchen remodel, and a 10×10 space holds a one-bedroom apartment’s worth of furniture while the floors go in. Bigger jobs move up to 10×15 units and 10×20 units, and a 10×30 unit covers a four-bedroom home or a small business’s inventory. If you’re moving here for the food and need somewhere to keep the furniture while you find an apartment, the storage size guide will size it before you book.
