“She said, ‘I want to do a restaurant where I don’t have to serve every day. I want to serve no more than 25 to 30 people,’ ” Alcantara-Lansberg recalls. “I said, ‘That makes no business sense.’ She said, ‘Why don’t you make it work? There must be a way.’ ”

Together, investing their savings, they found the way. After looking at locations on too-expensive Miracle Mile and Coral Way, they settled on a former wood shop at 3328 N. Miami Ave., and by Nov. 15, Machado had the key. She designed the interior, creating an intimate L-shaped dining area with her office on one side, a space for wines on the other and a kitchen at the back.

The interior walls were painted in multiple coats and shades of copper that glow by candlelight. The exterior, an art-paint blend of penny and pink copper, reflects sunshine and moonlight. That distinctive look and a discreet plaque beside the entry door on Northeast 34th Street announce, “This is Copperbox.”

What the chef and her team have created, starting with invitation-only meals a year ago and expanding to two public “atelier nights” in March, is as much a dinner party as a restaurant. Couples, singles, friends and strangers who pay $125 each for food and wine arrive at 8 p.m. They spend an hour getting acquainted as they sip bubbly Gratien & Meyer Saumur Brut Rosé and sample Machado’s intensely flavored hors d’oeuvres.

Once seated, they move through the six courses of a menu Machado changes every eight weeks or so, each dish accompanied by a wine chosen by Leticia de Mello Bueno, Copperbox’s wine and cheese expert as well as its branding and development guru.

For a recent soup course — crème of Granny Smith apples with a mousse of ricotta, cilantro, pickled apple and scallions — de Mello Bueno found a wine that worked well, but then couldn’t get it anymore. So she began tasting again.

“On the fourth try, I found a wine from Hungary, which was drier and less minerally. Sometimes, you want to complement; sometimes, you want to contrast,” she says. “Doing the wine and cheese requires tasting each menu a few times and taking copious notes.”

Careful composition

Machado’s design sensibility is clear in the way each plate is composed. “She feels things need to be not just great but aesthetically satisfying,” her husband says.

For one of her signature dishes, she and five team members work together to place slices of Hudson Valley duck breast precisely in the center of a sauce striped diagonally across a white plate. Mousseline of Cara Cara oranges, puree of parsnips and leeks surround the meat, with tiny, perfect green leaves placed in exactly the same spot on each plate. If a crumb falls onto the pristine white, it’s plucked off with kitchen tweezers.

Gastronomes from South Florida and beyond have taken notice of Machado’s creativity, attention to detail and commitment to in-season, locally sourced food. While in Miami in March to judge a Slow Food competition, Cooking Light editor Scott Mowbray tasted her poached lane snapper with sweet tomato relish and beurre blanc made with coconut water and champagne, as well as her vibrant pink beet ice cream and tiny cotija cheesecake.

Her food, he comments in an email, “...was lively, almost fun. It made sense rather than being a stunt. It was, above all, delicious rather than just interesting. You could also see in the presentation her skills as a graphic designer — little plates and boxes and flourishes that, again, were not so much precious as happy and beautiful. My conversations with her revealed a very, very serious cook who I think will definitely be going places.”