A. An outdoor patio café.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. Somewhere in Miami.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 6 (of season 3), "Si Se Puede".

Debra suspects that Miguel's brother, Ramon Prado, might be the serial killer known as
"The Skinner". So she begins to follow him.

In this brief scene, we see Debra phoning her brother, Dexter. It is night time, and she is spying on Ramon while he eats alone at a table on an outdoor patio café.

She watches from a distance, while she peers into his car with a flashlight.

When Dexter starts to warn her, she tells him to relax, that Ramon is "Busy scarfing down a second portion of arroz con pollo" (chicken & rice).

When Dexter asks her if she's found anything interesting, she sarcastically jokes: "A set of
German steel filet knives, a couple of straight razors, and like 12 pounds of human skin."

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. The front of a private school.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This is the Oakwood Academy, at 3850 Long Beach Blvd, Long Beach, CA.

They shot the scene looking south down Long Beach Blvd, with Debra standing partially hidden by a wall and bushes next to a parking lot (see the photos below), while they created a fake café under a carport in front of the school. (The carport bears the address 3840.)

Under the existing carport, they added a wrought-iron railing, tables & chairs, overhead lamps, a sign and their trademark Christmas lights, to create the look of a thriving outdoor café.

The school is just a few doors south of the Big Donut where Debra does more spying on Ramon, later in this same episode. It's just a few blocks east of several other Dexter locations: Prado's house, LaGuerta's house, the murder scene with the grieving fiancé, and the white house being sold by Rita and Syl.




I shot the photos below in 2009.

In the photo below, we are standing approximately where Debra was standing, looking south/southeast.



The photo below is a closeup of the shelter used for Ramon's patio café.



The photo below looks in the opposite direction, north/northeast.  (Notice how close we are to the big donut. )




Here is an aerial photo of the area. And here is a map link.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  This was tricky, because they didn't show much, and it was a night time scene. My first thought, noting the car port, was that they might have used a converted gas station. But that led nowhere.  Eventually, I more or less wrote off finding it as a lost cause.

I know that they tend to "cluster shoot", that is, shoot more than one scene in a given area, so it wasn't surprising when someone in the know tipped me that it was shot near the Big Donut.  With that knowledge, and armed with Google StreetView, it didn't take me long to track it down.