If you want to feel like a tourist in Miami Beach, just stroll -- if you can call it that -- down Ocean Drive on a Saturday night. Busty babes in bikinis hawk cheap cigars, tattooed muscle heads slink along wrapped in mammoth snakes, and well-tanned restaurant touts beckon with promises of half-priced meals and all-you-can drink cocktails.

Oriente, the new restaurant at the luxurious Cardozo Hotel, offers refuge. Redone in earthy hues of tobacco leaves and deeply roasted coffee beans, it glows with soft candlelight. We skipped the richly upholstered booths for seats on the patio so we could ogle the freak parade from a safe distance.

Celebrity owners Emilio and Gloria Estefan peddle a generic brand of food from their Cuban homeland at Larios on The Beach and Bongos. Here, the idea is to upscale the offerings and add a fusion element from the Far East and beyond. (Oriente also refers to Emilio's Lebanese ancestry and to his home province in easternmost Cuba.)

With teriyaki salmon, mojito-glazed New York strip, five-spice seared tuna, burgers, Cuban sandwiches and noodles from Latin Pad Thai to penne pomodoro, the menu is exotic enough to interest jaded palates, yet familiar enough not to scare off more timid tongues.

Chef Rufino Rengifo is a talented Venezuelan who trained in the United States and Italy, and much of what he does works beautifully. The calamari, for example, served in a tin-handled, cardboard takeout box with a tahini chili sauce, is snappy, sweet and sour with just enough cilantro to lend a fresh bite.

Likewise, the crab croqueta, really a meaty and moist crab cake, is deftly paired with gorgeously grainy taboulleh salad, hunks of buttery avocado and a fiery tomato-and-chive vinaigrette.

Rufino's best ideas include an inspired duck confit ropa vieja, rich and tender meat seasoned aggressively, layered with coconut sticky rice and flanked by a pair of sensational, sugar-fried plantains. Some dishes rely on squiggles of telltale neon-red chili sauce, but most are well-balanced with ultra-fresh elements and fresh ideas.