Enjoy cool and glamorous surroundings while sampling the best dishes and creative cocktails from up-and-coming chefs.

Some newer hotels in South Florida introduce locals and travelers alike to their properties by opening up Happy Hours to everyone. Guests and non-guests enjoy new concoctions they won’t find elsewhere in attractive, comfortable contemporary indoor-outdoor-lounging and dining areas at happy hour prices.

Chef Niven Patel, a James Beard award nominee and Food + Wine winner, helms THesis Hotel’s two restaurants, Mamey (“Islands Cuisine”) and Orno (“New American”) His creations feature fresh produce from his two-acre garden an hour south of the hotel.

Chef Michael Mayer blends coastal Italian flavors with South Florida tastes at La Fuga (The Escape) at the Kimpton Shorebreak‘s pretty indoor-outdoor poolside courtyard in Fort Lauderdale.

Jamaican-born chef, Kevin Baker brings a taste of the Caribbean to South Florida at  Steelpan in the Sonesta Hotel. Rum is the spirit of choice in the Caribbean and Steelpan’s Coco Loco is the perfect cocktail, a tasty blend of coconut cream, M,ount Gay rum and orange juice, served in a giant cocktail glass, complete with a paper parasol.