What Food Means at Anyday Boca
Running a restaurant means spending a lot of time thinking about food—choosing it, preparing it, serving it. At Anyday Boca, the longer we do this, the more we realize that food is never just food. Food is more than flavors, more than filling. Food carries stories, connects people, and preserves cultures. Or at least that is our goal at Anyday. We want to provide healthy meals that you remember.
When you raise a bite of our pan-seared branzino with kale beurre-blanc to your lips, we want what is happening around you to forever be married to the flavor of that bite. When a plate of chicken and waffles—buttermilk fried chicken with a fluffy sweet potato waffle, bacon–cinnamon butter, and chipotle honey drizzle—arrives at your table, we want those fragrances and aromas to become part of the interaction you’re having with the people at your table. With every sip of matcha, we want another layer to accrue to your experience.
Anyday Boca: A Place for Healthy Tapas and Connection
Restaurants are for feeding people. But people can feed themselves, so an evening out a meal at a restaurant means more than eating. Restaurants endure because they are places where flavor fuels connection. They are gathering places, a stage perfectly lit for conversation, a fermata in any number of busy lives so that people can sit down together and feel peace, joy, fulfilment, affinity.
Restaurants reflect community. A city without restaurants would feel flat and dull. In South Florida the cafés, the food trucks, the fish joints and crab shacks and family-run spots define the rhythm and flavor of any given neighborhood. These are not merely places to eat; they’re places to belong.
To Chef Ali, tapas makes perfect sense for a multicultural place like South Florida, where people from different cultures come to a restaurant informed by different traditions and infused by different expectations.
Tapas Culture Through Food
Tapas is culture you can taste. It is identity you can smell in the paprika and pinchitos, heritage you can hand across a table. Every dish is replete with history, with recipes handed down through families, ingredients tied to geography, techniques shaped by necessity or celebration.
To eat food from another culture is to be invited into a long and complex story. It’s a way of saying, I want to understand you, not just intellectually, but my senses. Because tapas is elemental, simple in its construction, the addition of small variations create flights of flavorful fancy.
“Tapas allows for seasonality and for play,” Chef Ali says. “You can push boundaries, showcase technique, and still keep things approachable. For me, it’s the perfect balance of tradition and freedom—and it mirrors how people actually want to eat today: communally and curiously.
Small Plates and Tapas at Anyday Boca
Food has a uniquely powerful ability to bring people together. Even in the hellish depths of World War I, opposing soldiers met on Christmas Day and shared food across enemy lines. When we share a meal, we share time, trust, and intimacy. To eat alongside someone is to lower your guard. The momentous times in our lived—weddings, holidays, even business deals—revolve around food.
A tapas meal invites passing, tasting and leaning in. When we taste food from another part of the world, we lean from our own assumptions into a state like innocence. We don’t know what to expect from that first bite. We expand our palate, but also our empathy and understanding We begin to know and experience how other people eat, how they live, how they celebrate and endure.
In South Florida, we’re fortunate to taste Cuban ropa vieja, Haitian griot, Venezuelan arepas, Bahamian conch fritters—all within a short drive. This isn’t just convenience; it’s enrichment. Every bite is an opportunity to see the world from another angle, to recognize both difference and commonality.
Chef Inspired Tapas – From Brunch to Dinner
“When I was growing up, food was everything. It was how we gathered, how we expressed love,” says Chef Ali.
Sensory memories are so powerful. A fragrance, a flavor instantly transports you to sunny childhood afternoon, to an evening in a foreign city or a night with someone you have never forgotten. The scent of garlic sizzling in olive oil, the sweetness of ripe mango, the salt of the sea in fresh-caught fish—these are not just ingredients. They are emotional anchors.
Chef Ali still vividly remembers long childhood Sunday meals with his entire extended family in the Turkish countryside—a table filled with mezzes, roasted meats, fresh vegetables, and homemade desserts. “Everyone contributed, and the sense of connection was unforgettable,” he says. “It was the kind of meal that stays with you and shapes the way you think about food and togetherness.
“Some of my earliest food memories are of waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread, tomatoes still warm from the sun, and my grandmother slow-cooking dishes that had been passed down for generations. I also remember being fascinated by the way ingredients changed form with time, heat, and care.”
That’s why restaurants can feel so meaningful: as the echoes of old memories resonate in flavor, the stage is set for new ones. A first date, a reunion, a toast to a big milestone—all are made richer when they’re set around a table, segueing between juicy bits of marinated olives or the fragrances of saffron and lime.
“Food is universal. Sharing food is sharing identity, history, and love,” Chef Ali says. “It’s one of the most intimate and generous things we can do for one another.”
When we welcome guests to Anyday, we don’t just want them to leave satisfied. We want them to leave connected: to each other, to a culture that celebrates small bites and long conversations, and to the deeper meaning of what it is we’re really sharing when we share a meal.
