Their Design District taco cart was a hit. Now they’re opening an Italian spot in Buena Vista
There are two ways to look at a new, upcoming restaurant from the founders of a great hidden taco cart in the Design District.
Either, its a sad time for those who loved La Pollita, the joint venture between Miami native Luciana Giangrandi and her Los Angeles beau and transplant Alex Meyer, which served its last tacos and killer crispy chicken sandwich May 29.
Or it’s a great day for Miami’s evolving dining scene, as the two will open the restaurant they’ve been planning for years, Boia De, in the Buena Vista on June 27.
What they’re calling “a modern American restaurant with Italian accents,” according to a release, will seat just 24 and feature dishes such as a baked clams with ‘njuda pork salami lemon, bone marrow with roasted garlic tomatillo salsa verde, and crispy potato skins with burrata cheese and caviar.
The restaurant is a fusion of both chefs’ backgrounds — and what they practiced at the taco cart. Giangrandi is from a Latin-Italian Miami family, worked at Scott Conant’s New York Scarpetta (the restaurant brand that also fostered the talent of James Beard winner Nina Compton) and spent a summer cooking in Tuscany. The restaurant’s name, Boia De, is an Italian exclamation roughly used in place of, “Oh my!”
Meyer grew up on the west coast, where he worked at Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s Animal and Son of Gun. Both worked in fine dining in New York City, Meyer at Eleven Madison Park and later at Daniel Humm’s Nomad, where the two met.
La Pollita was a parenthesis in their culinary careers.
They moved together to Miami, where Giangrandi’s family resides, and cooked nuanced, deep-flavored meat dishes and the aforementioned crispy chicken sandwich topped with slaw. The cart was stashed in an alley in the swank Design District and was a worthy find for locals and a welcome surprise to out-of-towners shopping for Christian Louboutin and Prada.
The new locations aims to be an intimate and casual restaurant with the kind of buttoned down cuisine both learned alongside talented chefs. They expect to use local artisans in the Buena Vista neighborhood for their bread (Sullivan Street Bakery), meats (butchers Proper Sausage, which also supplied their taco cart), ice cream (Frice) and coffee (Great Circle).
However, the restaurant will have a ventanita, repurposing a previous walk-up window, from which they hope to reprise the crispy chicken sandwich in a nod to their former selves.
Boia De
5205 NE Second Ave., Buena Vista
This story was originally published May 29, 2019 at 3:27 PM.