(Bloomberg) -- For everyone who has tried and failed to get into Carbone, a Plan B is on its way, at least if you’re in Miami. In December, the group that’s turned spicy rigatoni vodka and veal parmesan into international memes will launch Carbone Vino in Coconut Grove. The 165-seat restaurant is designed to evoke a rustic enoteca in a neighborhood that’s become a magnet for wealthy transplants, including Ken Griffin, who scooped up a sprawling estate there for roughly $107 million in 2022.
Along with a focus on the wine promised in the name, Vino will serve some Carbone classics—the Caesar alla ZZ, that spicy rigatoni. But many of dishes will be versions of ones created at Carbone Privato, the members-only restaurant at ZZ’s Club New York in Hudson Yards. “The mainstays at Carbone don’t change much; I’m conscious of people waiting to get in and what they expect,” says Mario Carbone, a Major Food Group co-founder. “But I mess with the menu very much at Privato.”
At Vino, the chef says he will serve dishes he makes for the tiny, elite audience at Privato, dishes that he “selfishly wants to cook.” Among them: veal parm transformed into a giant saltimbocca. “I’ve made a gajillion veal parms in my life. You get bored.” Instead he plans to serve a big, fat seared chop with thinly shaved pancetta and crispy sage topped with a rich lemon sauce.
Also on the menu will be spaghetti bambini, a very luxe version of a kid’s dish composed simply of top-of-the-line pasta, butter from grass-fed cows and aged red cow Parmigiano from Parma. “It will go out in a covered urn so it stays warm; a captain will toss it at the table.”
Other new dishes include pumpkin agnolotti, a seasonal dish coated in brown butter with rosemary and crushed walnuts; tortellini con tartufo featuring sheeps milk ricotta stuffed pasta with white truffle butter and red-wine-braised vitello osso bucco.
The dish that Carbone is palpably especially excited about, though, is a cannoli sundae, comprised of cannoli-flavored soft serve ice cream studded with chocolate chips, Sicilian pistachios, candied fruit and served with fresh fried cannoli shell rounds to drag through it all.
Vino’s wine program, overseen by Patrick Wert, the beverage manager, and John Slover, the corporate wine director. The 600-bottle list will have plenty of bottles from Italy, but they’re also sourcing wine from regions around the world. Among the heavyweight bottles they’ll pour are a 2008 Giovanni Rosso Serralunga d’Alba Barolo and a Bachelet Monnot Saint Aubin 1er Cru En Remilly 2020. They promise a range of price points and will also be prioritizing wines by the glass; around 30 will be on offer when they open, says Carbone.
The concept of a wine-forward place in a bottle-service-friendly Miami might seem counter-intuitive, but co-founder Jeff Zalaznick laughs it off. “Part of what we’ve done and are doing, is to meet a level of sophistication that people didn’t believe was here, but there’s a huge demand for it,” he says. Adding about the popularity of their places like Carbone and Sadelle’s: “That’s why they’ve been accepting of New Yorkers coming.”
He sees neighborhoody Coconut Grove as an especially good area for the concept: “The wine angle is gonna be well-received. It plays to what we do, a celebratory environment but not nightclubs.”
The restaurant’s design features a warmly lit dining room accented in dark walnut and mahogany with heavy burgundy velvet drapes and a tin-tiled ceiling, that’s perforated to balance acoustics. There will also be a long burnished bronze-accented bar in separate lounge and a private dining room with a Murano glass light fixture. Pieces from Julian Schnabel and Francesco Clemente will decorate the walls.
This is the group’s first standalone Vino; they have been testing the concept in Dallas since 2022, with options like pizza on the menu. There will be no pizza in Miami, says Carbone, and it will act as a distinct restaurant, as opposed to Dallas where “it’s an amenity.” He and Zalaznick describe Vino as a Carbone-meets-Italian-enoteca experience (with Carbone prices) that’s more accessible than their famed brand.
“So much of it will look and act like Carbone,” says the chef, who estimates the menu will be made up of 20–25% classics. But here there’s room for walk ins, including the chance to eat at the bar which you can’t do at the local Carbone.
It’s also tailor-made to be a concept that Major Food Group rolls out. “You never know when you’ll have a Vino in New York, in London,” says Zalaznick.
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