Carbone Vino Lands in Coconut Grove, Draped in Velvet and Nostalgia

Doris Troy’s classic “Just One Look” is the soundtrack as Major Food Group’s Jeff Zalaznick walks Observer through the gleaming back room of Carbone Vino during the Coconut Grove restaurant’s VIP grand opening last Thursday (December 19). Zalaznick explains that this room, with its own entrance and its own bar, could be used for lavish private parties. Guests stop Zalaznick to congratulate him and tell him they feel transported to New York, that this feels more like the original Greenwich Village Carbone than the Carbone in Miami Beach does. These guests are making the point that Zalaznick himself wants to make: Don’t think of Carbone Vino as a spinoff. This is Carbone-plus.

“This is Carbone,” Zalaznick tells Observer. “You have the whole Carbone menu and an extensive wine-by-the-glass selection. You want to come in and have baked clams, Caesar salad, spicy rigatoni, veal parm, we have it.” But, of course, chef Mario Carbone likes to create new dishes (like he did at Carbone in Miami Beach and at Carbone Privato in New York) whenever he opens a restaurant. So he looked at every category on the menu and made thoughtful additions for his new Miami hot spot. For starters, there’s a spicy shrimp toast that’s like an Italian version of something he ate in Hong Kong (where the second location of Carbone recently celebrated its 10th anniversary). For pasta, there’s spaghettini bambini.

“It’s just somewhere in-between Alfredo and the pasta you give a kid,” Carbone tells Observer. “It’s a beautiful dried spaghettini with grass-fed butter and a really special Parmesan cheese called Vacche Rosse.” Like Alfredo in Rome, it has only three ingredients. But using dried pasta instead of fresh pasta makes it resemble the buttered noodles on kids’ menus. Using the special cheese amplifies the umami. For main courses, Carbone serves local mahi-mahi and does a version of veal saltimbocca with pancetta instead of the typical prosciutto. After searing veal tenderloin and making a lemony pan sauce, he drapes the cured pancetta all over the veal.

“It just kind of melts on top of it, so I think it’s a smart upgrade to prosciutto, which gets kind of tough and dry when you sear it,” he says. For dessert, there’s a cannoli sundae featuring crushed cannoli shells and cannoli-flavored soft-serve topped with pistachios, amaretto, cherries, candied orange and mini chocolate chips. As always, Carbone wants his restaurants to feel celebratory and over-the-top.

The wine list at Carbone Vino will no doubt enhance the convivial experience. And unlike Carbone in Miami Beach, Carbone Vino will welcome walk-ins and serve food at its front bar. The restaurant, in fact, wants to encourage walk-ins so much that it’s created a bar-only cicchetti menu for guests who want snacks. But also feel free to sit solo at the bar and pair your pasta, veal or steak with a glass of ForteMasso Barolo Castelletto, one of close to 20 wines by the glass available at Carbone Vino.

“First and foremost, we have at our disposal the great weapon that is John Slover,” Carbone says of Major Food Group’s corporate wine director. “Putting a robust wine list together, leaning very heavy on things like Super Tuscans, is very much in our wheelhouse. But I kind of tasked John with rekindling a little bit of the energy he had at Bar Henry in New York, which had a wine list I remember fondly. Opening things by the glass that would not normally be done.”

Major Food Group is no doubt taking a big swing in Coconut Grove. But this new adventure also feels like a homecoming of sorts. 

“Coconut Grove is more New York than Miami Beach,” Zalaznick says. “This is a walking neighborhood. It has the most similarities to Greenwich Village. And this is the first time we’ve really tried to replicate the original Carbone.” There’s art curated by longtime Major Food Group friend and collaborator Vito Schabel in a Bishop Design space that pays homage to what Zalaznick, Carbone and Rich Torrisi opened on New York’s Thompson Street in 2013. Think velvet drapes, ceramic tiles, gold-accented wallpaper, warm moody lighting and custom-made leather-upholstered banquettes.

“When we were looking at the space and the neighborhood, it evoked a little bit of the Greenwich Village vibe,” Carbone says. “It’s a long space with low ceilings. There’s a coziness to it. As we put pen to paper, we thought that, instead of trying to reinvent what Carbone is in Coconut Grove, maybe we could recreate that little bit of Greenwich Village.” It helps, of course, that the spicy rigatoni vodka tastes exactly the same.